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Young, violent, organized: the trouble with gangs

 
Deputy Pia Vasconi of the Hillsborough County sheriff’s street crimes unit searches the pockets of a Dumbway gang member in North Tampa on Aug. 14.
Deputy Pia Vasconi of the Hillsborough County sheriff’s street crimes unit searches the pockets of a Dumbway gang member in North Tampa on Aug. 14.
Published Sept. 20, 2015

TAMPA

They start as young as 13.

Their crimes range from vandalism to drug dealing to murder.

They pose on Facebook, flashing guns, cash and hand signs — a middle finger raised on one hand and five fingers splayed on the other.

One, five — 15. A symbol for N 15th Street.

It's a stretch of asphalt in the heart of the turf they claim as their own: the depressed neighborhoods north of the city limits known — pejoratively — as "Suitcase City."

They call themselves Dumbway.

What do the cops call them?

That's complicated.

• • •

The top law enforcement agencies in Hillsborough County both agree: Groups like Dumbway are, in fact, gangs.

The Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office has no problem calling them what they are. The Tampa Police Department, though, shies away from the word "gangs" — at least in public.

"They're loosely organized. They frequently change groups and names," Tampa police Maj. Marc Hamlin said. "We're apprehensive to call them a gang if they're not really a gang."

Regardless of what they're called, gangs are a problem in Tampa, which is suffering through a remarkably violent year. There have been 25 homicides so far in 2015, compared with 28 all of last year. Shootings and other crimes also have risen sharply, particularly in the inner city.

In addressing the city's homicides, Tampa police have been hesitant to use the g-word. Instead, the department speaks of "neighborhood groups" and "turf disputes."

Law enforcement records are more specific. Arrest paperwork and investigative reports regularly detail whether a suspect is thought to be in a gang.

Those records identified several gangs operating in the city and county during this violent year: Comanche Boys, Drak Boys, Dumbway, Savage Gits, Wildside and 700 Boys.

One accused gang member was charged with two July homicides. Keith Gaillard, 18, was accused of shooting India Clarke, 25, and Tyrone Davis, 46, in separate incidents.

Gaillard's arrest report in the first slaying said he was a member of the Drak Boys, based in Sulphur Springs.

But his older brother, Kendrick Gaillard, 19, said the gang label was overblown.

Anyone, he said, can form their own gang.

"I could go to school and I could get a tattoo that says, 'I'm with Drak,' he said. "I could make up a gang right now and get arrested tomorrow."

• • •

On a moonlit night in July, Hillsborough sheriff's Cpl. James Jackson sat in the driver's seat of a blue sedan in a parking lot off Fletcher Avenue, surveilling a darkened first-floor apartment.

It was the home of a 14-year-old boy.

The boy's arrest record started at age 10. It includes drug and robbery charges. The boy was not enrolled in school.

The Sheriff's Office thinks he was storing guns and drugs in the apartment.

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The agency also thinks he was living with his girlfriend — and that she's in her 20s.

The boy is said to be a member of Dumbway.

"Everyone in the gang looks up to him," Jackson said. "For the majority of these kids, the gang becomes their family."

Jackson leads a "street crimes" squad of seven deputies. They focus on gangs, undercover drug buys and wanted suspects in the neighborhoods west of the University of South Florida.

The area — bordered by Bearss Avenue to the north, E Fowler Avenue to the south, N Nebraska Avenue to the west and Bruce B. Downs Boulevard to the east — is what deputies call "the box."

The Sheriff's Office has identified 14 gangs in its jurisdiction. Dumbway is one of its top targets inside the box. It is mostly teens, loosely organized but blamed for crimes against property and people. Deputies have officially declared 40 to 50 to be gang members. The actual number may be much higher.

Dumbway was formed by the remnants of another gang. For years the Cross-Fletcher Hot Boys dominated the drug trade in the University area. That was until 2010, when five members were indicted on racketeering charges and handed lengthy prison sentences.

Members who were left after the 2010 indictments, apparently wary of that brand, started calling themselves Dumbway.

Both gang names come from pop culture: "Hot boys" is from a 1998 song by rap artist Juvenile, and is also the name of a defunct rap group. "Dumbway" refers to the lyrics of the 2009 song No Mercy by rapper Lil Boosie.

Investigators know who many of the members are. They know where the gang hangs out. They know how it recruits.

One way is through social media. On YouTube, videos feature photo montages of members flashing gang signs and their jail mug shots. Red text appears in one video:

"Dumbway," it reads. "Be Da Team."

And later, white text between two biohazard symbols:

"Be Aware — We All Da Way — RETARDED."

• • •

When asked to explain the role of gangs in the city's criminal milieu, Tampa police defer to Florida law to define exactly what is a gang.

Statute defines a criminal gang as three or more people whose primary purpose is to commit crimes while using a common name, colors and symbols.

Defining gangs, though, is also complicated.

"The gang label is highly malleable and much disputed," said City University of New York School of Law professor K. Babe Howell, who studies gangs. "The law enforcement decision to label some groups as gangs or other has much to do with politics. … The definition is so capacious that it can apply to any group."

In 2012, tempers flared when a law enforcement list of alleged gang members circulated in a predominantly black neighborhood in Pinellas County. Residents complained that cops were unfairly labeling kids as criminals — especially those with no criminal records.

Critics complain about the ease with which law enforcement can label gang members and the difficulty of ever shedding that label.

Hillsborough sheriff's Maj. J.R. Burton, who oversees the agency's gang unit, said that's why they periodically review their lists of people believed to be gang members.

"There's gangs out there, let's face it," Burton said. "But not all of them commit crime."

He said deputies try to distinguish between groups of young "wanna-bes" and actual criminal organizations — nationally known groups like the Bloods and Crips, the Los Angeles-based rivals mythologized in pop culture.

Both kinds can be violent. But major gangs tend to have hierarchal structures that use violence in service of organized crime. That describes national gangs like the Latin Kings and the Outlaws Motorcycle Club, offshoots of which have operated in Hillsborough County.

The local variety of gangs are smaller, more casually organized around their neighborhoods. They're also more concerned with living up to the perceived image of gangs, often expressed through music and film.

That can lead to sudden violence, especially against rival neighborhoods — disputes blamed, in part, for the city's deadly year.

Those are the groups that the Tampa Police Department has hesitated to call gangs.

"By statute, these are not gangs," Tampa police Capt. Ronald McMullen said in July. "They're loose associations of cowards that go around marauding neighborhoods."

McMullen spoke at a news conference imploring the public to help solve the murder of Sharon Watkins, a 58-year-old grandmother found shot dead in her home.

She was caught in the crossfire between what police called "rival neighborhood groups."

• • •

Tampa police records are clear:

• They say that 16-year-old Aveon Yarbrough fatally shot James Bradford, 26, during a Jan. 14 drug deal. Yarbrough was charged as an adult with murder. His arrest report listed his gang name: "Wildside," and the nickname "S.K."

A Facebook page for someone named "Wild Side P" featured a video of young males smoking marijuana, flashing guns and shouting demands like: "Free S.K."

• Carlton Sapp, 28, was shot five times on March 28 outside the Rodeway Inn on E Fowler Avenue. One shot severed his spine. He helped lead Tampa police to Cornecia Smikle, 19, who was charged with attempted murder.

Smikle belongs to Dumbway, according to sheriff's records. A photo taken from her Facebook page was among the evidence against her in court. It showed Smikle wielding a handgun, with a wad of bills in her mouth.

As her case headed toward trial, prosecutors said they ran into problems. Sapp also gave conflicting statements.

The state offered Smikle a deal: plead guilty to attempted murder in exchange for two years of house arrest and three years of probation. She accepted.

Before she was released from jail, Smikle declined to speak to a Tampa Bay Times reporter.

• On May 2, Tampa police officers searched Sulphur Springs after two separate drive-by shootings took place just 30 minutes and five blocks apart.

They pulled over a black Infiniti. The floor was littered with 9 mm shell casings, according to a police report. There were five young men and one young woman inside the car.

A witness said the shootings were over a "beef" between the Cross-Fletcher Hot Boys and the 700 Boys of Sulphur Springs.

Ronald Swaby, 20, was charged with aggravated battery. Sheriff's records list him as a member of Hot Boys and Dumbway.

In July, Swaby agreed to meet with a Times reporter for a jailhouse interview. He smiled when the subject of Dumbway came up — and said he didn't want to talk after all.

"I don't want to incriminate myself," Swaby said.

• • •

Some scholars think there's an advantage to the Tampa Police Department's approach: It denies gangs the attention they crave.

"It's probably good that they're being cautious about that," said Cheryl Maxson, a professor of criminology at the University of California at Irvine. "Overreacting to an emerging gang problem can make it worse."

Howell, the CUNY gang researcher, said that identifying gang members also makes it hard for them to put the gang life behind them, to start new lives.

"The gang label tends to create a lot of bias and animosity and stress without solving any of the problems," she said. "All gang research suggests when you attach the label, that enhances gang ties."

Retired Tampa police Officer Rudy Garrett, a deacon at New Bethel Progressive Missionary Baptist Church in east Tampa, came to understand the dynamics of gangs while working in east and west Tampa. Curbing the problem means more than just making arrests, he said.

The real solutions lie in prevention. At New Bethel, he said, church leaders try to do that by dispelling the fantasies that kids harbor about gang life.

It is similar to what the department's school resource officers do in Tampa schools — talking to kids, listening to their concerns, taking an interest in their lives.

"We try to tell them," Garrett said, "what they see on TV is not real."

Calling them gangs, could make for more problems, he said.

"To me, it's more like a fantasy," Garrett said. "If you give them the title of gang, it's going to make them think they have power."

Times staff writer Emily McConville contributed to this report. Contact Dan Sullivan at dsullivan@tampabay.com or (813) 226-3386.