“Getting pretty wild around here,” Sidney said.
“Young knuckleheads,” Jude said.
— from Jervey Tervalon’s Living for the City (1998)
Today, Joshua Villas is downright boring. A few dudes stand on a second-story balcony of an orange-colored building. Another pair stand near a violet-colored one. A kid drops two trash bags in a Dumpster and then wanders back across the rocks, head bowed. A car with a broken muffler rumbles out of the gated entrance. It’s just another uneventful afternoon at a Las Vegas public housing project. Nothing to see here.
But Joshua Villas back on March 31? It wasn’t some sleepy suburb yawning with inactivity. That evening, the apartment complex at 3985 E. Cheyenne Ave. was home to a party attended by 13-year-old Edgar Dewayne Poe. He strolled in, surveyed the scene, mingled and let slip a choice observation some other kid didn’t like. The six-foot-tall Poe — perhaps believing his size had the same effect on older teens as it did on his peers — bragged he could beat up everyone there. His comment drew the angry attention of Richard Satterfield, a boy three years his senior (an eternity in teen years). Then Poe started home.
He never made it. Still burning from Poe’s quip, Satterfield and several other guys hopped in a car and hunted Poe down. Words were exchanged, with Satterfield offering peace and Poe accepting, only to find a punch instead of a handshake from Satterfield coming his way. Poe bolted.
As he sprinted away, Satterfield reached into the car, grabbed a handgun and fired a .380-caliber bullet into Poe’s back. He died before the ambulance arrived.
That’s more or less the way the Review-Journal told it in a story published May 12. Another detail, that Satterfield was a gangbanger from California representing the Insane Crips, received a brief mention in the article. There really wouldn’t be much else to say if you’re a beat reporter charged with dusting bare narrative bones. A teen gangbanger from California shoots a younger teen from Vegas for mouthing off. Another senseless tragedy punctuated by the dry pop of a gun blast.
But if you’re on the front lines of Vegas’ gang wars, Satterfield’s affiliation with the Crips sticks out as a factor contributing to gangland’s changing ecosystem. As the calendar pages flip from spring and into summer, some gang experts, not to mention bangers themselves, worry it’s more than just the weather heating up. And the migration of the Golden State’s street warriors across the border and into town is just one of the problems.
The other problem threw its angry fists around over Easter weekend. On April 15, MGM cameras captured 10 to 15 teens pummeling a landscaper, breaking his jaw and collarbone. Earlier in the evening, police say those same teens, or at least some, beat and robbed a woman at a Wal-Mart. They ended their spree by doing more of the same — beating and robbing a man at a Travelodge motel.
A day later, the dirty deeds continued. Again, some or all of the teens playing Braveheart in the streets with weaponless foes the previous night spent Easter robbing a convenience store; beating a man outside the store; and ambushing a couple in a park, where they ended their bloody romp by shooting a man. He survived. All told, there were six attacks ending on the day Jesus is said to have risen from the dead.
Because the MGM attack was caught on tape, the national media jumped aboard, airing the Strip’s unofficial Buck Wild show, complete with a running commentary. Even more startling than the vicious reality of the attacks was the apparent lack of motive. Add to that the fact that some of the perpetrators were so-called “good kids” who were enrolled in high school and on-track to graduate, and the crimes become even more baffling.
But one thing the commentary didn’t mention and the tape didn’t show is the other factor contributing to the potential for a boiling hot season in our “What happens here, stays here” world: the advent of cliques.
An 18-year-old high school junior we’ll call John (he asked CityLife not to identify him for fear of increased attention from the police and gang reprisals) is intimately familiar with both trends. While these days the wiry coil of muscles plays basketball and hits the books, he used to run with the notorious Rolling ’60s Crips. Because of his past affiliation and where he lives, John has a clear view down the brutal rabbit hole at the influx of California bangers and the development of Vegas cliques.
Indeed, like Poe, he’s already feeling the heat from the Golden State’s gangsters. Recently, John rode his motorcycle over to a convenience store near his house. Three guys, one of whom his “homeboy” had gotten into a fight with a little while back, were also at the store. “But they didn’t do nothing,” he says. Then one of the guys pulled out a gun, “probably a little deuce-deuce
“It’s not so much the Vegas gangs [causing trouble this summer], it’s the Cali gangs. Everybody from out here is fakin’ it,” he says of the low opinion California’s gangsters have of Vegas sets. “So they’re coming down here to check it. Cali’s trying to take over Vegas. After a while, it’s not even gonna be gangs versus gangs. It’s gonna be this state versus that state, or this city versus that city, ’cause you’re from Compton, and I’m from Vegas.”
As a result, he says, Vegas gangs “are very prepared. We’re waiting for them.”
And cliques, while not necessarily as sure in their motivation, may be doing just that, too, John adds.
Webster’s Dictionary defines a clique as “a small, exclusive group of people.” In Vegas, however, clique takes on a whole new meaning, its membership, collective identity and reason for being varying widely. You might have two or three gang members from rival sets in a clique who say to themselves, “We hang together, so we give ourselves a name,” John says. Some of the more dangerous and well-known — the two go hand-in-hand on the streets — are Wood, Squad Up and Hustlers Taking Over.
Young women are even getting down, forming their own cliques like Boss Bitches and H.T.G, a spin-off of Hustlers Taking Over. Even though some of the male bangers and cliques scoff at the ladies, John warns, “I think people need to watch out for girl cliques, too.”
“Cliques don’t have any colors,” he continues. “They just say their name and throw up a sign.” John adds many gangsters form a clique just to throw off the police.
Even more ominous is that cliques often form sporadically, like a tornado, and whip through an area out of sheer boredom, something John says the MGM attackers may have done. “It could be kids that’s not even in a gang,” he says. Adding, “It was sad, ’cause I knew the dudes. I didn’t know they would go and do something like that on the Strip. It was crazy.”
“Oh, I see, what we got here is a crusader.”
— Keith Davis in Oliver Stone’s Platoon (1986)
Some of the folks who will spend their days and nights this summer battling gangs are just as concerned as John — and maybe a little demoralized.
Built like a Baltimore dockworker, with fierce blue eyes that burrow right into you, Mike Fletcher, who helped run an after-school program at Cashman Middle School this year, says, “This summer it just seems like they don’t give a damn. Around the rec centers, especially, there’s always a little extra vandalism or stuff during the summer. But that kind of stuff is going on now. I don’t think we’ve seen half of what’s coming out.”
But it’s not just petty scrawls on walls that worry him; it’s the California connection, too. “The old original guys are coming into town, and saying, ‘You know what? You’re not gonna be claimin’ if you’re not legit.’ They’re saying, ‘We’ll run you right up to Hoover Dam and get rid of you. No one’s gonna know where you’re at.’ If those guys from California do come in and regulate, there’s going to be a lot of scared kids running around.”
Tony Morales, a detective with Metro’s gang unit, doesn’t necessarily see a summer of blood on the horizon. Still, he acknowledges the mutation of gangs into cliques is a dangerous phenomenon.
“The cliques are nothing new. It’s just come more to light because of the … more violent play [they’re bringing] to the table,” he says. “Their attitude is that they don’t have to respect authority. They don’t care what some of these older gang members have to say, where years ago they had rules that they would abide by.”
Nevertheless, he says global warming in gangland this summer isn’t guaranteed.
“It varies on who you talk to,” says Morales, who does a lot of talking via “community policing,” or pounding the pavement in order to establish relationships in neighborhoods most affected by gang violence. “We always try to anticipate that it’s gonna be a busy summer, and we try to prevent it.”
But word traveling along the highways and byways on Fletcher’s end suggests more violence this summer is imminent.
“People that I’m talking about aren’t going to camps or doing anything positive this summer,” he says “It’s just like, ‘Mom and Dad are out of town, now I can bring these older guys into my home.’ It’s just these older kids sucking these kids in. And it’s these younger kids trying to prove themselves.”
If only the solutions were as pronounced as the problems, Fletcher continues, further progress could be made. But the philosophy at the top and from those who don’t have to duck bullets when they head out to the grocery store has to change before that can happen. The crusaders can only do so much on their own.
“The attitude seems to be, yeah, we know there’s a problem over there, so let’s decrease services in that town because we don’t wanna have to deal with the problems,” he says.
Case in point: The after-school program at Cashman. “That was really successful and they wanna expand that again next year. But, once again, it comes down to a funding issue. It was a one-year pilot program,” he says.
Not that the bad omens are spooking Fletcher into inaction. And not that the status quo is preventing Morales from keeping an eye out for intensified rude-boy antics.
“The thing is building relationships in these neighborhoods where people don’t wanna build relationships. That mob mentality,” says Fletcher of the MGM mayhem, “wasn’t something that happened on the spur of the moment. We need to put people where there are problems, put people who care and who can build relationships.”
Morales has an aphorism he likes to throw out when he encounters moms and dads while out crusading on the rounds. “As parents we need to be parents. We don’t need to be our children’s homies or best friends.”
“We are all responsible, and we must learn to think collectively, to care for each other as we care for ourselves.”
— from David L. Ulin’s Talkin’ Bout a Revolution (2002)
It’s late Saturday morning, and inside the Walnut Recreation Center, right across the street from the neighborhood where 13-year-old Poe attended his last party, about a dozen gang counselors have gathered in a back room to discuss solutions for this summer.
John Munoz, a youth parole officer with the state, begins the meeting with some sobering numbers: as of April 2006, there were 74 gang shootings, 13 assaults or stabbings and 16 homicides.
It serves as a grim reminder of the importance of the Clark County Gang Intervention Team’s work. Staffed by a trio of specialists — Melvin Ennis, Kevin Niday and Alex Bernal — the team is gearing up for two major events next month: the “Back on Track Camp” and “Late Night Solutions.”
The former (which Fletcher will attend again this year as a counselor) is a three-day seminar for gang members combining mental, spiritual and physical exercises beginning June 2 at Mount Charleston. The latter provides a safe haven where gang members and their friends can discuss their problems during what amounts to prime time in gangland. It launches June 8 at Cambridge Community Center and June 15 at Walnut.
“I’m really excited about this summer,” says Ennis, a short, teddy-bear of a man who heads up the intervention team. “I know we always say it’s gonna be a tough summer, so on and so forth, but some of the activities we got planned …” He trails off into an excited list of events, from outings to Lake Mead to a play involving Krump dancing, a dance movement blending street and African culture, and popularized in the 2005 documentary Rize.
“Through our ‘Back on Track,’ we’re trying to get every kid we can employed,” adds Niday of the team’s other program, of which the camp is an offshoot. “That’s our whole goal: employment and education.”
Still, the summer’s thermal waves weigh on their minds. “It’s like a full moon to a werewolf,” says Munoz of summertime and gangs. “They come out, they change.”
And it applies to cliques, he says. “It’s an evolution of where we have been and where we are going. We’re not dealing with traditional gangs anymore. We’re dealing with a lot more hybrid gangs. On any given weekend, Las Vegas gangs will meet up with a California clique walking down the Strip just looking to represent whoever they’re going to represent.”
Yet many in the community, especially local businesses, have “stepped up” to offer youth a way to earn money without hanging on the block, says Ennis, including Fed Ex and Direct Cable. “That’s been giving our kids some opportunities just to get some employment. A lot of these young people really don’t want to disappoint they mamma. They done let they momma down so much. But just to go tell momma, ‘You know what? I’m working now. I’m taking care of my responsibilities’ — sometimes as community we have to help out.”
Especially when the mercury begins to rise. “It seems like when it’s real, real hot,” Ennis says, stopping with a chuckle. “I don’t know if you can understand. I’ve just been here [Las Vegas] all my life. Heat intensifies. It’s just one of those things. Heat — you get frustrated. The hotter it is, the worse people act.”
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