Boys Should Be Boys

With huge hoopla, there was a massive gang task force joint exercise in my community more than a year ago, big enough that it made the national news and resulted in commendations for law enforcement. It is hard to imagine how many enforcement personnel were on the streets, along with vehicles and air support. The community leaders and the media crowed about getting the upper hand in the war against gangs, with several follow-up incursions here and there to keep the public awareness focused on the gang issue since the big event. Lots of gang leadership and gang members were sentenced to jail, as well as returned to Mexico, leading to a collective sigh of relief that maybe, just maybe, "we" could get "our" town back. Although the main police action actually only lasted about 18 hours, many politicians traded on the event for political cache in the recent election. Ironically, however, the DA whose plan it was failed in his bid for re-election in the primaries the first of June.

Two weeks ago, there was a huge gang fight in town that resulted in a young man's death: a 23-year-old father was stabbed to death during the melee at a home where an end-of-the-school-year party was in progress. What makes this event poignant is the release of the names and ages of the combatants:

Ruben Alexander Chavez, 14; Steven Ray Arellano, who just turned 14; Omar Hernandez, 16; Angel David Romero, 15; and David Larios, 17, are being prosecuted in adult court on a first-degree murder charge in the stabbing death of 23-year-old Jose Alvarez Villalobos. In addition, police announced that a sixth teen, a 17-year-old boy, was arrested for his alleged involvement in this case (mydesert.com)

The recent gang fight was the next tier of the future of gangs: the gangs don't go away just because the adult leadership is put away. The children of the gang leadership stepped into their father's, their brother's, their uncle's shoes, running the gangs in the streets and literally risking their own lives to keep alive the family business. These are young boys barely a year older than my grandson, children who have assumed the roles of their violent adult role models! Rather than learning how to read, to write, to compute math problems, these boys are plotting murder and mayhem!

Six young kids are now in jail, being tried as adults: they did the crime and they will do the time because a message has to be sent to the gangs that no matter how young the criminal, their actions will be judged by adult standards. It's hard to imagine that a child who is willing to put his life on the line in a gang fight to the death, at age 14-15, will be rehabilitated in prison to a more traditional lifestyle if he is ever paroled. Prisons teach prisoners how to be better criminals, and these kids are going to have a long time to learn those lessons.

Today, the judge ruled that their mothers can come to the jail and visit their boys, mothers who should have been tucking their sons in the night of the gang fight, but probably had no idea where the boys were, much less what they were doing. I don't see a future for these boys because there is nowhere for them to go but to another gang, in prison or back home, but I am certain that other local boys will see an opportunity to step in and fill the void created by these arrests.