NEW GANG STRATEGY PLANNED

Members To Be Charged With Federal Crimes

Gang members now face an old nemesis with a new plan: Law-enforcement
officers who want to keep gang members behind bars longer and incarcerated
in out-of-state facilities where their local gang status is meaningless.

Stockton police, prosecutors and the U.S. Attorney's Office recently
announced a plan to begin charging more gang members with federal crimes.
The purpose, they say, is to send a strong message to gangs who have in
recent months been escalating their rivalries and shedding more blood on
Stockton streets.

"Perhaps other gang members will see what happened to this guy ... and it
may prevent somebody else from getting shot," said Stockton police Lt. Wayne
Hose, who heads the city's gang unit. "Maybe they'll know we're not playing
games. People are getting killed."

Deputy District Attorney Ron Freitas said sentences for federal convictions
may be several years longer than convictions under state law. The convicted
are also sent to one of the dozens of federal institutions across the
country, where they would be farther away from family and friends, and where
locally prominent gangs such as the NorteF1os and SureF1os have less
following.

Officials said gang members don't typically "swap" gangs, and the smaller
the clan, the less dangerous they usually are. Also, if a Stockton gang
member is imprisoned hundreds or thousands of miles away, he can't as easily
order his allies to carry out more crime or revenge.

"We're serious about cutting down and stopping the violence," Hose said. "If
that means sending (gang members) to federal prison, that's what we'll do."

However, American Civil Liberties Union spokesman John Crew said he fears
some youths might be wrongfully categorized as a gang member or gang
associate, and therefore may not deserve a stiffer federal sentence.

"What you sometimes have is an enormous disparity of who is labeled a gang
member," he said. "You run into the problem of guilt by association."

Stewart Wakeling, juvenile justice system coordinator for San Joaquin
County, said police officials here are primarily going to focus on gang
members who are driving crime, adding that most of them will be adult
"career criminals."

"We're not after the kid who made one mistake ... or is just misunderstood
and pulled out a gun in an argument," he said.

However, Hose said some first offenders who are known gang members and who
have been accused of a serious felony could face federal charges. Freitas
said the idea of prosecuting serious gang offenders in federal court is not
new. In fact, he said, the county and U.S. government has in past years
tried Stockton gang members federally.

But, in the last 11/2 years, the city has developed a closer working
relationship with Sacramento-based assistant U.S. attorneys who have
participated in the Peacekeepers Program. Peacekeepers is an effort by local
police, probation officers, court officials and others to put a cap on the
gang problem in the city.

Wakeling, who is among those who spearheaded Peacekeepers, added that
gang-related crime is once again on the rise, and the time is right to begin
filing federal drug or weapons charges.

Two men who police say are Stockton gang members are facing federal
drug-and-weapons charges as a result of the local push for tougher
sentencing, said Patty Pontello, spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office.
Humberto Martinez of Stockton is one of them.

Martinez, a 21-year-old documented Southside Stocktone gang member, was
arrested Aug. 27 in connection with a fatal drive-by shooting on Sixth
Street. About 30 shots were fired into a closed garage; one person was
killed and two were wounded. While Martinez was arrested for the homicide,
he has not been charged. Sources say he is still a suspect.

During the initial investigation into this murder, however, Stockton police
detectives found a golf-ball size amount of methamphetamine in a drawer of
Martinez's trailer in the 2600 block of South Van Buren Street. It was in a
clear plastic sandwich bag and weighed just more than 20 grams, according to
the affidavit filed in the federal courthouse in Sacramento.

For this, investigators opted to federally charge him with possession of
methamphetamine with the intent to distribute the drug. On Oct. 8, a federal
grand jury indicted Martinez on the charge.

While Martinez does not have an adult record (juvenile records are not
public), officials said he is considered a dangerous gang member who may
have been involved in a recent murder.

Conviction in superior court on the drug charge would net Martinez about six
months in the county jail, but if he is found guilty in U.S. District Court
in Sacramento, he could face three to five years in federal prison, Freitas
said.

The longer sentence would give detectives more time to investigate the
homicide without the chance of Martinez fleeing, Freitas said.

Martinez's attorney, Kenneth Moore, has no say about his client's case being
prosecuted in federal court, but he's not sure it belongs there. He
emphasized Martinez' lack of gang-related offenses.

"Once you call someone a gang member, they are all of a sudden held up to
more scrutiny and you throw the other rules out the window," he said.

Stockton police use a point system to determine gang status. The criteria
include self-admission, gang tattoos, wearing clothing only associated with
a gang, or repeatedly being seen with gang members.

Records listing the factors that led police to classify Martinez as a gang
member were not immediately available last week.

According to records filed in San Joaquin Superior Court, Martinez was
arrested in August 1996 on a charge of burglarizing a vehicle. However, that
charge was dismissed four months later due to insufficient evidence.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Bender said his office has to be selective
in the type of cases it takes and will only accept them on an individual and
by-merit basis.

He said that while both the state and federal agencies have jurisdiction
over certain crimes, there are many that overlap. Some drug-and-weapons
violations often associated with gangs are included.

For those, he said, police and court officials determine which type of
prosecution will net the longer sentence.

In some cases, he said, it's more prudent to try a suspect in state court
because California has the "three-strikes law" and "10-20-Life" sentencing
guidelines, both of which yield longer sentences, as well as some of the
strongest gun laws in the nation.

Hose said that from a law enforcement standpoint, there are many advantages
to trying a case federally. He said that because the federal system deals
with fewer cases, they get resolved faster.

Freitas, a senior prosecutor, also said the federal system doesn't appear to
have as many gang members as state corrections because the U.S. government
doesn't handle a lot of gang-related crime.

Common criminal cases heard in federal court, which does not have the same
broad jurisdiction that state courts have, include bank robberies, drug
smuggling and distribution or U.S mail fraud.

"We want to get these young people's attention," Wakeling said. "Many times
going to (the California Youth Authority) or going to Tracy is no big deal
to them."

Many local convicts -- gang members included -- are incarcerated at Deuel
Vocational Institution, a medium-security state prison near Tracy.

After a spate of 46 youth- and gang-related killings in early 1997, police
stepped up their presence in gang-plagued neighborhoods. Stockton police and
county probation officials also began using restraining orders to restrict
gangs' activities in select areas. And, a team of various agencies conducted
probation sweeps.

Crime declined dramatically after those efforts were put in place.

But the tide has turned in recent months and there is once again a
stubbornly increasing number of homicides, local authorities said.

Stockton police reported 18 homicides from January through June 1999, twice
as many as for the same period in 1998.

More recently, between Sept. 11 and 19, three youths ages 16 to 27 were
killed in three separate gang-or youth-related slayings.

Also, Hose said gang enforcement officers have in the past several months
noticed members of some of the smaller gangs joining forces with the larger
gangs, making their force that much stronger on the streets.