November 15, 1992

BROWARD GANGS MOVING INTO SUBURBS

PAMELA FERDINAND Herald Staff Writer

The scene: An autumn evening in suburban Sunrise, St. Bernard's Church fair. Cotton candy, kids squealing on the carnival rides.

In a parking lot, four teenage males confront a 17-year-old high school student.

Someone stabs him in the back. Then they run.

"Unknown gang members," Sunrise police officer Edward Sanetti writes in his Nov. 5 report.

"Victim will be permanently scarred for life even after plastic surgery, according to the physician on scene," the officer notes.

The chaos of gang violence -- stabbings, beatings, shootings -- seems an anomaly in Broward County. Few people have taken youth gangs in the suburbs seriously.

Until now.

* Until they shot and paralyzed 16-year-old Andre Gollett at a community center teen dance in Hollywood in April.

* Until they killed 18-year-old Ernesto Tapenes in a drive- by shooting on Hallandale Beach Boulevard in unincorporated Broward in July.

* And until they crashed an August party at Sawgrass Mills Residences in Sunrise and shattered the host's windows with baseball bats, throwing a mailbox through the living room plate glass.

"All the juveniles are convinced that they can murder someone and walk away," says Fort Lauderdale Det. David Nickerson.

Broward youth gangs aren't the crack-dealing soldiers of Los Angeles. Nor are they the West Side Story turf punks of New York. But they are armed, dangerous -- and increasingly violent.

"When the Davie Boys first started out, they were a bunch of guys who liked to drink beer and fight fist-to-fist," says Det. Renae Griggs, a Davie juvenile crime officer. "Now they don't use their fists. Half of the gang kids are packing weapons and the other half are starting to, because they're scared."

Gang kids are different from suburban kids who like to hang around malls. They possess identifying traits -- colors, haircuts, clothing -- and an exclusivity, performing rituals and crimes together.

To put it simply: When teenagers tattoo gang names and symbols on their ankles and knuckles and stow 9mm handguns under car seats, it is time to pay attention.

Especially when gangs make the headlines, as they did last week, here and elsewhere:

* Sheriff's deputies arrested two teenage gang members for attempted murder in the July shooting of an Interstate 295 motorist in Jacksonville. A third teenager was arrested for stealing the car involved in the shooting.

* Fort Lauderdale police noted that an unlicensed underground nightclub, where a 19-year-old Pompano Beach woman was shot to death, is frequented by gangs and spray-painted with gang graffiti.

Says Dr. Ronald Huff, author of the book Gangs in America: "People should take gangs seriously. There isn't any place that's immune."

Huff, consultant for the L.A. gang film Colors and a research director at Ohio State University, recently received a federal grant to study emerging gang problems.

He selected two sites: Denver and Broward County.

Broward's western suburbs -- the pristine bedroom landscapes of retirees and families -- provide fertile territory for gang expansion:

Rapid urbanization and population growth. Substantial pockets of poverty. A rich racial and ethnic mix. And easy access to highways, like interstates 595 and 95.

Add to that the longings of male adolescence -- recognition, protection and identity -- and the concoction is explosive.

If crime statistics are accurate, the problem is getting worse. In December 1986, Broward police departments documented 45 members in two gangs.

Now, according to photographs and field interrogations, police document up to 3,500 members in 60 gangs.

Last year Fort Lauderdale investigators traced 100 specific individuals, so-called gangbangers. They counted 315 arrests -- among them, 20 percent for violence; 11 percent for possession of weapons; 10 percent for narcotics and 18 percent for burglary.

"Some gangs get into drug dealing, but mostly their crime of choice is burglaries, purse-snatchings and strong arm robberies," says Coral Springs Police Det. Scott Heysler. In a drive-by shooting, one gang hit the police chief's conference room in 1989, Heysler says.

Take the youth gang, Most Powerful Nation that Doctor Tac belongs to. He is an 18-year-old Anglo from New York. He attends high school in Plantation and lives in a middle-class Davie townhouse with his mother and stepfather. The gang's leader is Fear-1, a 16-year-old born in Puerto Rico. He works as a telephone salesman by day and takes high school classes at night.

The harmony within gangs is warped by the violence toward others.

When it comes to drawing a gun, says Dave Cortes, a retired detective, "a kid that is brought up in downtown Fort Lauderdale who has to fight every day of his life is no different than a mama's boy with a $100 allowance."

Cortes, a former Miami police officer, is known as South Florida's police "gang guru." He points out that more established gangs in Dade deal primarily in narcotics.

Most Broward police departments designate gang unit officers, such as Sunrise Police Det. Donald Cannon. He looks for gang symbols: A pitchfork. Six-pointed star. Colors: Green and black. Blue and white. And kids using hand signs: Right-hand "D's" and "B's." Thumbs and forefingers splayed like "L's."

Gang members contend they have no choice but to resort to violence.

They fight with knives, AK-47s, nail-studded baseball bats, and the ultimate suburban armament -- sawed-off golf clubs.

"We've been shot at many a time," says Fear-1, lifting his shirt to expose the silver handle of a 9mm handgun tucked in his trousers. "But it's a way of life. They roll on you or you roll on them."

Gangs affect teenagers who want nothing to do with them.

Says a 17-year-old North Lauderdale youth whose friend quit a gang: "We left a club and a gang called LaFamilia kept driving by (U.S.) 441 and Atlantic (Avenue). They threw their sign out the window and started shooting. They turned around and came back, and I ran underneath a car. Nobody got hit."

But sometimes someone does get hit.

On April 18, Andre Gollett attended a teen dance at the Northeast Community Center in Hollywood. At 1 a.m., a gunman
from a gang fired a bullet into his back.

Now Gollett, a South Broward High School student, is paralyzed. Reliant on a wheelchair for the rest of his life, he doesn't want to talk about that night.

Police charged Robert Ramon "Tico" Brush, 16, with attempted murder.

But fear of arrest does little to deter gang violence.

At age 16, Craig Bonaventura of Lauderhill plotted a drive-by shooting after a rival gang crashed his birthday party and started hitting people with baseball bats.

Bonaventura's gang fired 13 bullets into the Sunrise home of Hans Mullings. He belonged to a rival gang, the O.C. Express.

This occurred Oct. 15, 1989, and Broward Circuit Court Judge Robert Carney sentenced Bonaventura to eight years in a Gainesville correctional facility.

At sentencing, the judge said he wanted to send a message: "The court is well aware of the gang violence . . . and that juveniles look to see what the courts do when these types of offenses occur . . . "

From jail, Bonaventura wrote the judge: "When I get out of the Department of Corrections, I'm going to put my life back together in a whole new way!"

Fresh out of prison after two years, Bonaventura formed a new gang called La Vida, or Life. Broward Sheriff's deputies arrested him Nov. 5 for disorderly conduct, his fifth arrest this year.

"Everyone in my gang is ruthless," says Bonaventura, coral red and black beads dangling from his bare chest. At 19, he is the gang's "godfather." "We don't just fight. Whatever it takes, shooting, stabbing, whatever."

Other gangs, too, possess established hierarchies with first, second and third officers. Most Powerful Nation's "godfather" supervises a "fight department" and an "initiation department."

Some gangs rely on little kids called "footies" or "pee- wees" for money.

"We're down with them," says an 11-year-old boy named Alex, sitting astride a bicycle in a Davie shopping center parking lot.

His friend, Patrick, a 12-year-old holding a cigarette, adds: "If they need tokens or money, we let them borrow it. We trust them. They take us places and give us rides and stuff."

While some gangs split into local chapters, police say the high mobility of Broward gangs makes turf -- a traditional gang trait -- rare.

"We ride out all night, go to malls looking for trouble, recruit other people and find other gangs and fight," says Bonaventura.

Typically, gangs meet at places like McSugar's video arcade in Davie, Subway on Riverside Drive in Coral Springs, and Don Carter's bowling alleys in Tamarac and Sunrise late at night.

"They get different factions that come in and the next thing you know, there's a big fight," says Stephen Anthony, manager of McSugar's. "When they come here, they don't come to play the games. I'm tired of playing nursemaid to these kids."

Broward gangs conduct their own rituals. Initiation often involves fighting up to six gang members for two minutes or more.

If you're conscious afterward, you're in.

Loyalty is constantly tested, as it was at McSugar's one recent Friday night.

Away from the din of arcade games, six members of Most Powerful Nation retreat to the restroom to talk strategy. They've heard at least two other gangs -- Insane Crips from Hollywood, Davie Boys from Davie -- are on their way.

"I don't care, dog," says J-Dog, a black-haired 16-year- old. "We gotta get somethin'. They gonna come shootin' and we ain't got nothin'."

Doctor Tac leans against the porcelain sink. He bows his head so that the rim of his backward black-and-white Raiders cap sticks straight up in the air.

J-Dog wants him to steal one of his father's guns.

"I gotta think," Doctor Tac says, crossing his arms on his chest and staring at the floor. "I don't want to make the wrong decision."

Minutes later, he is on his way home to get the gun.