Gang activity throughout Kansas has become so acute that many police departments, even in smaller cities and suburban communities, have dedicated officers or whole units to gang investigations and suppression.

KansasLiberty.com spoke this week to representatives from law-enforcement agencies in three key areas to get a statewide perspective on the problem of gang crime and violence.

Here’s what we found:

Garden City

Det. Mike Velasquez, a member of the Garden City Police Department’s Gang Unit, said gangs were an “ongoing problem” in this southwestern Kansas community of about 30,000.

He said some gangs were organized along ethnic lines, and, because of a large Hispanic population in the city – many Hispanics work in the region’s meatpacking industry – some of those traditional gangs were made up of Hispanic members.

“We still see some of that but we also are running into hybrid gangs, where young people from all ethnic groups and walks of life are involved,” he said. “We have gangs that are really pretty diverse.”

He said the department regularly arrests gang members on charges ranging from criminal damage to property to drug crimes to violent crimes involving guns.

Velasquez said gang recruitment occurs in schools and other venues in which young people congregate. But they’ve also gotten more high-tech.

“We’ve seen instances where they’ve recruited through My Space and other sites like that on the Internet,” he said.

The police department has assigned 10 officers to gang suppression activities, though it’s not a full-time assignment.

In addition, Velasquez said the city, in conjunction with the business community, has established a program in which gang graffiti – a form of expression among gang members – is quickly obliterated by a crew using paint removal equipment.

Ironically, in some cases, it’s gang members themselves who help eradicate gang graffiti.

“We have had gang members who get community service as part of their sentence, and they are sometimes assigned to do paint-overs of graffiti,” Velasquez said.

While the gang problem is ongoing, Velasquez said some in the community still seemed to be in a state of denial about the existence of gangs in Garden City.

“I think it’s perceived as more of a big-city problem, and I don’t think a lot of parents in the community take the problem very seriously,” he said.

Wichita

In Wichita, the police department, working in cooperation with federal authorities, will soon see the first-ever prosecution in Kansas of gang members under federal RICO statutes, the same statutes under which many organized crime figures have been prosecuted.

Lt. Todd Ojile, commander of the Wichita Police Department’s Gang Unit, said 22 members of the Crips would soon be tried in federal court on a variety of charges, including homicide, prostitution, welfare fraud and sale and possession of narcotics.

The high profile case and other round-ups of suspected gang members, including one this summer in which more than 20 illegal immigrants affiliated with gangs were arrested, are sending a message to the gang community, Ojile said.

“The RICO prosecution drastically hurt the Crips and it slowed down gang activity in general,” he said. “Gang violence has slowed down in Wichita.”

The Wichita Police Department Gang Unit includes four gang officers and eight detectives. An additional two detectives are assigned to nighttime duty for the unit.

In addition, Wichita, like many other departments, works with school districts to place school resource officers in schools, which has reduced gang activity and violence in those venues.

Ojile said he was not aware of so-called hybrid gangs in Wichita, as have been reported in other communities. But he has seen a higher level of collaboration between members of different gangs.

“You can find Crips and Bloods hanging out together, and that would have never happened in the 1990s unless they were trying to kill each other,” he said.

Ojile said Wichita citizens have gotten quite involved in assisting the police department to suppress gang activity.

“The people are helping out a lot more than in the early 90s because they’re aware the problem is real,” he said. “We do a lot of presentations to citizen groups and to businesses on how to spot gang graffiti and activity and what to do about it.”

Like Garden City, Wichita also has a program to obliterate gang graffiti as quickly as possible.

Ojile said the law enforcement community, in an effort to enhance collaboration between agencies in Kansas, in 2006 formed the Kansas Gang Investigators Association.

“Gang members travel like anyone else, and this is a way to help departments trade intelligence and other gang-related information,” he said.

Olathe

In suburban Olathe, gang activity is common, and police regularly work to suppress it, said Sgt. Grant Allen, a member of the department’s gang unit.

“We don’t have the kind of gang-related violent shootings and homicides that you see in Wichita or Kansas City, but we do have problems with gangs, particularly with petty crimes and graffiti.”

Allen said, as in Garden City, many of the gangs present in Olathe are hybrids that can include youths from various ethnic groups. But, he said an influx of Hispanics in Olathe has led to an increase in the number of Hispanic gangs.

“We have seen some Hispanic gangs, some of which have had undocumented people as members,” he said.

Olathe has been aggressive about educating the community and school administrators about gang activity. He spoke to KansasLiberty.com just minutes before making a gang awareness presentation to school administrators.

“Do we have big gang problems in our schools? No, but we’ve taken a zero tolerance policy toward gang activity in schools, and we work with administrators to make sure they can recognize gang hand signals and clothing,” Allen said.

The city also is aggressive in eradicating gang graffiti.

“The city passed an ordinance that requires business people to remove gang graffiti, and if they don’t comply within a certain amount of time, the city sends a crew to take care of it and then bills the property owner,” he said.

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