SPRINGDALE -- A fatal shooting of a teenage boy March 13 and a retribution-style, drive-by shooting that night in Springdale are drawing attention to youth street gangs in Northwest Arkansas, police and others said.
Springdale police are investigating connections between Northwest Arkansas gangs and the March 13 and 14 shootings, said Lt. Derek Hudson, spokesman. A Springdale Public Schools spokesman said Thursday the School District had no gang problem -- the same day the school announced plans to beef up security after a gang-related threat was posted online.
Gangs have put down roots in Northwest Arkansas, said Kelley Cradduck, Benton County sheriff. In the past few years, law enforcement has counted at least 50 gangs in the area, he said.
"The chance to keep them out has passed -- it's gone," Cradduck said. "Now, we have to deal with them."
Cradduck has been a longtime proponent of preventing and fighting gang activity in Northwest Arkansas. He teaches a course on gangs at Northwest Arkansas Community College in Bentonville. He worked on a gang task force unit at the Rogers Police Department on and off for about 10 years. When he was elected sheriff, Cradduck started the Benton County gang suppression unit in 2013.
Cradduck saw gang activity in Benton and Washington counties a decade ago and tried to warn people, he said. Many gangs left Rogers because of policing efforts, he said.
Other law enforcement agencies don't see a lot of gang activity, spokesmen said.
The Washington County Detention Center has inmates who say they belong to gangs, but gangs seem confined mostly to the cities, said Kelly Cantrell, Washington County Sheriff's Office spokeswoman.
Bentonville hasn't seen a drive-by shooting since the 1990s, said Capt. John Hubbard, Police Department spokesman. Fayetteville also doesn't see a lot of gang-related crimes or graffiti, said police spokesman Craig Stout.
In Rogers, gangs aren't as violent as urban city gangs seen elsewhere, said Keith Foster, Rogers Police Department spokesman. The gangs here are locally grown -- not connected to international gangs, he said.
"We do not see the types of violent crime or other activities that one normally associates with gangs," Foster said.
In February, eight teens were arrested after fighting with Rogers police, police said. Several of those teens said they are part of "Brown Pride Midgets," a locally known gang that may be linked to a Mexican-American gang. A gang called Brown Pride has been linked to the Sinaloa Cartel, a Mexican drug-trafficking organization, according to a 2013 FBI report.
Law enforcement agencies have turned a blind eye to gang activity growing in Northwest Arkansas, Cradduck said. Gangs have been connected to drug crimes, commercial burglaries and fights, he said.
"We've had plenty of crimes that have happened in our communities that law enforcement will refuse to say or admit is gang related," Cradduck said. "The facts speak for themselves: the graffiti, the violence, the gang admissions, the tattoos, the information from gang informants. You don't even need more evidence. It's here. [Gangs] don't try to hide it."
Death in Springdale
Northwest Arkansas' gang members are young -- typically between 15 and 18 years old -- and Hispanic, Hudson and others said.
Young people linked to gangs have been going through juvenile court for about 10 years, said Thomas Smith, a juvenile judge at the Benton County Circuit Court, Division 3.
Street gangs with younger members are the most violent ones and older gang members work behind the scenes, said Meena Harris, director of the National Gang Center and executive vice president of Gang Programs with the Institute for Intergovernmental Research.
"When you have an escalation of violence, it's youth violence -- youth gangs," Harris said.
Neighbors in the Applegate low-income housing complex in Springdale where the fatal shooting occurred had seen a group of teens hanging around 32 Applegate Drive for months, they said. At least one neighbor, Bailey Johnson, worried about gang activity, she said.
Johnson saw graffiti at Applegate, teens loitering on Jones Elementary School property just behind her home and boys who all stared at her when she went outside. Johnson, who rents a unit next door to the fatal shooting, had been afraid since she moved in July, she said.
Directly across Applegate Drive, another neighbor had been frightened by gunshots weeks before the shooting. Loretta Stafford said she heard four gunshots and was afraid to look out the window. She and her husband, Bill, didn't report the gunshot sounds to police, they said.
Then, on March 13, police found Fabian Rodriguez, 18, of Springdale with a gunshot wound at 3:21 a.m. in the yard of 32 Applegate Drive, Hudson said. Rodriguez was pronounced dead at Northwest Medical Center-Springdale.
Three days later, Washington County prosecutors charged Hector Saul Ramos, 17, of Springdale, with first-degree murder, two counts of first-degree battery and misdemeanor possession of marijuana. He remains at the Washington County Detention Center with a $250,000 bond.
Police said Ramos shot at Rodriguez from inside his Applegate apartment, then chased him and two other young people while still shooting. A 14-year-old boy and Savannah Smith, 21, were treated at the hospital for gunshot wounds, police said. They later were released from the hospital, Hudson said.
The same day Rodriguez died and Ramos was arrested, police said two teenage boys were caught after shooting at a home at 105 Pierce Ave., a few blocks from Applegate.
The shooting may have been gang-related and linked to the fatal shooting, police said.
Rodriguez had posted a cover photograph of "Brown Pride Midgets," on an online social media networking website.
More gunshot sounds were reported last Monday at 35 Applegate Drive.
Hudson wouldn't release the names of gangs suspected to be involved or the number of gangs operating in Springdale, but Police Chief Kathy O'Kelley acknowledged the growing gang problem in a March 14 news release.
"Unfortunately, over the past several years we have seen youth members arming themselves more frequently and being used by adult members to commit crime, as the youth members are treated far differently than adult members during the judicial process when arrested," O'Kelley said. "Our youth are often attracted to gang-like membership as it provides them with a sense of family and acceptance otherwise lacking in their lives."
Retribution
Since the shootings, the amount of graffiti in nearby neighborhoods has increased, police dispatch records show. Graffiti is often used among rival gangs to communicate, Harris said.
"They are talking to each other," she said. "All that graffiti means something."
Between Monday and Wednesday, 10 graffiti reports were filed with Springdale police when typically the city has only a handful per month, according to dispatch logs. Hudson said graffiti is likely up in the wake of the shooting, but those reports fluctuate and depend on how officers categorize reports, he said.
Some of the graffiti is within 10 minutes of Ramos' home. In Applegate, several buildings show signs where old graffiti has been painted over. Graffiti was reported Feb. 12, about a month before Rodriguez was shot, police said.
Meanwhile, police are hearing rumors of gang threats, police said.
The gang activity in Benton County has been enough that Rogers Public Schools has programs to prevent kids from joining gangs, Smith said. Brig Caldwell, involved in student and community relations at Rogers Heritage High School, didn't return a call Thursday.
Springdale schools also work with kids to keep them out of trouble, but there is no gang problem "because we absolutely will not tolerate that," said Rick Schaeffer, school district spokesman. Despite a gang-related threat, school went on Friday as normal, he wrote in an email.
Any gang activity, association or affiliation is punished, Schaeffer said. That can include expulsion, according to an online document on a Springdale district website.
'Bigger than you think'
Springdale police have been working against gang activity for at least three years, Hudson said.
The department uses community outreach, education for parents and others, positive programs for children, media messages, data collection and enforcement to fight gang activity, he said. Outreach programs include working with at-risk youth in week-long summer camps and reaching out to Hispanic community leaders and parents, Hudson said.
The department has police officers who know a lot about Springdale gangs, Hudson said. Police track gang members and youth "fringe" members, O'Kelley said in her news release.
The department also collaborates with other law enforcement agencies, O'Kelley said.
"I don't think there is any magic theory that is going to completely solve the problem," Hudson said.
There is a gap in services for preventing or getting young people out of gangs, said Rey Hernandez, executive director of the Northwest Arkansas Workers' Justice Center in Springdale in a message.
"We need a Hispanic version of neighborhood watch, we need parent education, we need inclusion of at-risk youth in the schools," Hernandez said.
In the wake of the shootings, Springdale police plan to revive a crime suppression unit, which started around 2008 but was dissolved, Hudson said. The unit stopped operations previously because of lack of manpower, Hudson said.
No time frame is set for when the unit might restart, O'Kelley wrote in an email from Betty McKee, secretary. The department doesn't need more money, according to the email.
Springdale Mayor Doug Sprouse said in a previous news release he supports the Police Department.
Cradduck said one city fighting a gang problem isn't enough. Northwest Arkansas law enforcement needs a regional approach, he said. Police must collaborate and create a regional plan, he said.
Gang task forces that cross law enforcement jurisdictions and share information help fight gang activity, Harris said.
Gangs are more organized than 10 years ago, Cradduck said. The groups are already learning about local police and evolving to commit different crimes, he said. Gangs are also using more technology, according to the 2013 National Gang Report.
The FBI report, the most recent available, is from the National Youth Gang Survey of the National Alliance of Gang Investigators' Associations.
"It's bigger than you think -- that's the problem," Cradduck said. "If we don't come together, it will never fix itself."
NW News on 03/22/2015