Features

ORLAND – The parish hall at St. Dominic Catholic Church is packed on a Thursday night — some 70 parents want to learn about the gangs on their streets. 

Many in the audience wear headphones to hear a Spanish translation of the talk by Glenn County Sheriff’s Deputy Jason Dahl. After exhibiting an arsenal of gang paraphernalia, Dahl addresses an unspoken question. 

“People say we’re picking on Hispanic kids,” Dahl says. “Unfortunately, at this time, 95 percent of our gangs are Hispanic.” 

The number is more like 75 percent, according to research funded by a federal anti-gang grant. That research concludes area gangs also attract white, black and Asian teens. 

“This is not a Hispanic issue. This is a community issue,” says Linda Shelton, Glenn County’s chief of probation. 

Glenn County’s gang statistics come from “field interview” reports filed by sheriff’s deputies. A deputy marks a teen-ager as a gang member if he fits any three of 12 characteristics — ranging from “admits gang membership” to “observed associating with known gang members.” 

This method quantifies the gang problem. But it does have critics. 

“The police tend to perceive minority kids hanging out on the corner as all gangsters,” says Lewis Yablonsky, a professor of criminology at Cal State-Northridge and an expert witness in dozens of gang trials. “The sheer fact of association doesn’t prove membership.” 

Like many other parts of rural America, Glenn County is changing. In the 1990s, whites dropped from 74 percent to 68 percent of the population, according to the U.S. Census. Meanwhile, the Hispanic population increased from 20 percent to 26 percent. 

But since a majority of gang members are Hispanic, shouldn’t members of the Hispanic community be among the chief organizers of the anti-gang effort? 

That question bugs Richard Judkins, a pastoral assistant at St. Dominic, and member of the anti-gang grant oversight committee. He says Hispanics are underrepresented on the panel. 

“The first or second meeting I sat there and looked around and asked, ’Shouldn’t we have some Latinos here?”’ Judkins said. “It’s just one more bureaucracy in the county echelons, and consequently it has no legitimacy in the Hispanic community.” 

Shelton disagrees, saying that Hispanics participate actively in the project. 

“It’s not like we sit here in a lily-white office and point our fingers and say ’it’s their problem,”’ Shelton says.