Five-O: children joining gangs to be cool
Posted on Sunday, January 28, 2007
ROGERS - Sgt. Kelley Cradduck remembers asking students why their peers would want to join a gang. They answered," To be loved and to be accepted."
"I don't believe that now," said Cradduck, who oversees the Rogers Police Department's Crime Suppression Unit, which will become a full-time force later this year.
Now, most children answer," To be cool."
While some students feel they need the protection of a gang, many teens join because they want to, especially in northwest Arkansas, Cradduck said.
Cradduck has collected gang symbols from elementary students' notebooks and folders, as well as from school art projects, homework assignments and even a school library book. He said he hates the term "wannabe" - what skeptics often call the kids they don't consider gang members - because those are the teens who have the most to prove, making them more dangerous.
Dean Durr, the school resource officer at the Rogers Sophomore Center, said officers have been talking to students about the consequences of criminal activity, including gangs, for five years through a state program called Smart Choices Better Chances.
"I think the response is really good. You see the kids getting involved and interacting," Durr said.
Sixth-graders at Kirksey and Lingle middle schools will attend the hour-long program that focuses on the legal punishment for robbery, bullying, theft and burglary. The program, created by the Arkansas Attorney General's Office in 1995, includes testimonials from prisoners in the Arkansas Department of Correction.
"Personally, do I think it works," Durr said. "If it touches at least one kid, it makes a difference."
Police departments throughout Arkansas have seen an influx of gang activities, starting in the 1990 s.
Cradduck said many of the hard-core gang members in northwest Arkansas moved here from a federal program that attempts to dissolve prison gangs by dispersing their members.
Others move here to escape the gangs and violence of cities such as Los Angeles, Miami and Chicago, said Sgt. Edward Smalley of the Fort Smith Police Department's Street Crimes Unit, except when they move here, their children have already been indoctrinated into the gang culture, Smalley said, plus they watch movies like "Boyz in the Hood"and "Blood In, Blood Out "that glamorize the life of gangsters.
Stephen Metheney, a former Benton County Sheriff's Office deputy and chairman of the Northwest Arkansas Anti-Gang and Violence Committee, said that when kids move here, their gangs are still a mere phone call away.
Cradduck has given dozens of presentations to teachers, school administrators, parent-teacher organizations and civic groups, and has refresher programs scheduled later this year for area schools.
"They're counting on their teachers, the police, the public being stupid," Cradduck said.
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