Awareness of gangs raised at conference

SANDY — If schoolteachers and other educators want to help fight the juvenile gang problem they need to be, well, educated.

Educators, parents and other adults need to understand what is happening with juveniles and gangs and not "put their heads in the sand," said Salt Lake County sheriff's detective Scott Hansen.

At the 18th annual Utah Gang Conference at the South Towne Expo Center on Friday, Hansen told a packed room of law enforcers, community leaders and educators that the worst thing a parent or any adult can do when talking about gangs and juveniles is to say, "Not my kid."

In 2007, the sheriff's office had 294 gang-related incidents; 99 of those cases involved juveniles. In 2006, Salt Lake police dealt with 287 gang-related incidents.

"And that's just two jurisdictions," Hansen said.

In 2006, there were more than 29,300 juvenile arrests statewide, according to the Utah Bureau of Criminal Identification. Those arrests included an increase in the number of juveniles arrested for homicide, robbery, burglary, weapons offenses and drugs, Hansen said.

"And that's just the cases we know about," he said. "We have a (gang) problem and we have a big problem with youth gangs."

Street gangs and youth gangs know no boundaries. The gang issue is not strictly a west-side problem, a Hispanic or Polynesian problem or a problem among poor people, Hansen said. It stretches through all classes and geographical locations of Utah.

One of the more disturbing areas of the gang culture for law enforcers is the young age at which new members become active. Investigators have talked to some gang members who were recruited when they were just 8 years old.

While there are no clear-cut answers on how to stop children from joining gangs or how to stop gang violence itself, there are "red flags," for which educators and parents can look that indicate possible intervention is needed, Hansen said. Those red flags won't do any good, however, if parents don't know what they're looking for, Hansen said. The first step for parents and educators is to simply log on to the Internet and search for key words "Crips" and "Bloods" or "gang culture."

While there has been a lot of attention on sexual predators on the Internet, Hansen said many parents are surprised to find out how much gang recruiting also is happening. Some gang members use their MySpace pages to recruit new members, he said.