Why do kids join gangs?

"They wanna be loved," a 17-year-old McCaskey East High School student, who said he's a gang member, wrote. "They want a real family."

"To feel wanted," a 17-year-old girl, who also said she's in a gang, wrote.

Their responses were among the most common in a survey of students done as part of a McCaskey class project on gang awareness and school safety.

As Lancaster continues to craft a gang strategy — something that takes on new importance in the wake of the death of 9-year-old Ciara Savage in a gang shootout in York — those answers suggest that part of an effective community response has to address kids' need for connections.

And, law enforcers say, they also need more legal tools to combat gang-related crime. But proposals for such tools have languished in the state Legislature for more than a decade.

Early intervention and prevention are key, said Carol Lee Pyfer, a McCaskey teacher whose classes' work on gang awareness was displayed to parents earlier this month.

"This will offer a sense of belonging, a focus, a challenge, and a reason to make better choices," she said.

"If the community and parents can attack the root causes of why kids join gangs in the first place," said city Detective Mike Winters, "we can start making gangs less appealing and keep good kids away from them."

Leading the way
Getting to the root of the gang problem was one the reasons Pyfer's Leadership and Advanced Citizenship classes in ninth and 11th grades were exhibiting gang awareness projects on Thursday, May 14.

About 200 students in elective classes taught by Pyfer and Susan Miller through the Public Leadership and Service small learning community were assigned to research gangs and school safety.

Projects included Christina Torres' work identifying the symbols, hand gestures and weapons used by Lancaster's most common gangs and Victorsha Thomas' exploration of graffiti and how people view it. Both are ninth graders.

Pyfer said the leadership and service program has been working with Housing Development Corp. of Lancaster and State Farm Insurance for four years to include service learning in the curriculum. Funding from State Farm through HDC helps to pay for class materials and teacher training, and Pyfer works with both companies to decide on topics of study.

Last year's focus on youth violence led to the current academic year's theme of gang awareness.

"I knew it would be an engaging topic of study," Pyfer said. "I also knew it would give the students a chance to be the experts."

She estimates that of her 140 students, about 10 "have directly experienced gang activity in their homes and neighborhoods." Some students' families are involved in gangs.

One project was a survey of 36 randomly selected students — 29 male and seven female. Four respondents identified themselves as gang members. The most common gangs in Lancaster, according to the survey, are the Bloods, Crips and Latin Kings. Students said most gang activity happens on East King, Ann, Beaver, Green, Manor, Farnum, Prince, Dauphin, Juniata, Locust and South Lime streets and East End Avenue.

The most common answers as to why kids join gangs were "protection and acceptance."

As one 17-year-old gang member said, it's for "protection, to be cool, it's a way of life."

Pyfer said she has learned from her students that "a lot of the gangs are formed by 10- and 11-year-olds who have nothing better to do."

Giving them something to do is one of the strategies proposed by Pyfer's students. Christina suggested that more activities for teenagers would reduce the temptation to join gangs. Victorsha said getting kids involved in community work would help.

Gilberto Cruz said students should be able to participate in a trip to the county prison to hear cautionary tales from inmates who wound up in jail because of gangs. Zinnia Antes' trifold brochure suggests afterschool programs for underachieving students and anti-gang pep rallies.

Pyfer said prevention has to be part of the solution: to "give individuals a sense of purpose that is not dependent on group membership."

The McCaskey East students and Pyfer agree gang activity isn't as prevalent in Lancaster now as it was a year or two ago.

"A few years ago, kids would flaunt their affiliation," Pyfer said. "That's not the case anymore. Some of this is due to the progression of maturity, some because of getting caught. Mostly I think it is because the glamour is wearing off."

Challenges ahead
But the Mother's Day death of Ciara Savage, a Ross Elementary School student, in the crossfire of rival gangs in York shows that law enforcement still has a hard job ahead.

That job would be easier, local gang investigators said, if state lawmakers would toughen existing laws and enact a gang statute that would, for the first time, make it a crime to be part of a criminal gang in Pennsylvania.

Since at least 1996, said county Detective Bill Chalfant, president of the Pennsylvania chapter of the East Coast Gang Investigators Association, bills dealing with gang activity have been introduced — and have died — in Harrisburg.

The legislation with the best chance now is House Bill 296, cosponsored by Reps. Mike Sturla, D-96th District, and Scott Boyd, R-43rd District, which is in the House Judiciary Committee. The bill would create a criminal gang offense and would provide for forfeiture of any proceeds from such gangs.

Rep. Katie True, R-41st District, a minority Judiciary member, said she understands that conversations about the bill are ongoing.

"It surely is an issue that should make its way to the front burner," she said.

Sturla, who had been prime sponsor of an earlier bill on gangs, couldn't be reached for comment last week.

Investigators are hoping for a law that would assign a Uniform Crime Reporting, or UCR, number to any criminal gang offense, giving them a more accurate way to determine the number of gangs in the state. A gang statute also would define what constitutes a criminal gang.

Such a law would help local law enforcement to deal with gangs that don't fall under existing state or federal laws, Chalfant said, and would hold accountable those who recruit or solicit —sometimes by force — people to join or stay in a gang.

Winters, the city detective, said gang investigators have pushed without success for passage of mandatory minimum sentences for convicted felons who possess illegal guns – not a new law but a tougher penalty under existing law.

Gun crimes sometimes can be prosecuted in federal court, where penalties are stiffer, but not all local cases can be referred to federal court through Project Safe Neighborhoods. And federal court means more time and money spent traveling to Philadelphia, which is why police are hoping for a satellite federal courthouse in Lancaster in the near future.

Federal funding through the 222 Corridor Anti-Gang Initiative, which aims to stop gang activity around Route 222, helps, but there's no guarantee that funding will continue indefinitely. "We have to find a way to sustain the programs and initiatives that were started when the funding was available," Winters said.

That's where community support — like the May 2 Stop the Madness march against gang violence sponsored by the city's United Ministerium — becomes critical.

"Historically, the police have been relied upon to solve the gang problem, but there are social issues that lead to kids joining gangs that we cannot control," Winters said.

The social issues are still there. Pyfer's house was spray-painted recently. Zana Mateo, one of the McCaskey students, said she used to see gang members "every time I walked home from school."

"We may never eradicate gangs completely," Winters said, "but we can certainly work to keep them in check."