Santa Rosa police and nonprofits work together to reduce gang violence

Graffiti scrawled on buildings, billboards and other structures are signatures of street gangs, making it known who claims turf and which member is “putting in work” for their crew, a Santa Rosa detective said in a talk to youth workers Wednesday.

The presentation was part of Gang Prevention Awareness Week, which featured seven events across the city, including a car show, boxing matches and a parent awareness training held in Spanish. The final event, the South Park Day and Night Festival, takes place today at Martin Luther King Jr. Park. Festivities kick off at 2 p.m. and close with a screening of the animated film “Moana” at sunset.

One goal of the week is to connect children and parents with services for youth most at risk of being pulled into gangs. Another is to educate parents and teachers on the signs that can indicate a child or teen is involved with a gang.

“We constantly had an issue with parents not knowing if their kids were part of gangs,” said Sgt. Tommy Isachsen, head of the Santa Rosa police gang unit. “A lot of the effort is to educate parents on the signs and providing them resources when they spot them.”

The week’s events are organized though the Santa Rosa Violence Prevention Partnership. The group is funded by a quarter-cent sales tax approved by voters in 2004 after a spike in gang violence in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

In the mid-2000s, when the city began funding community groups to help combat gang violence, there were roughly ?3,000 gang members in Santa Rosa, Isachsen said. There is no current estimate of gang participation. While violence is down, it’s still an issue the city grapples with, he said.

At the presentation on gang identification and trends, detectives Barrett Klein and James Vickers told the audience that gang violence is down since a 2013 truce between the prison gangs Nuestra Familia and the Mexican Mafia.

Nuestra Familia controls the norteño street gangs and the Mexico Mafia is affiliated with sureño gangs. While post-truce violence might be down in Santa Rosa, the gangs are still armed and involved in criminal activity, including drug trafficking, prostitution and robbery, the detectives said.

The detectives presented photos and videos of reported gang members, including one video showing a schoolyard fight between rivals flashing their colors - red for norteños, blue for sureños. Many schools don’t allow students to wear those colors, but teens often hide them with covered belts and undershirts.

They also showed a map of Santa Rosa that marked territory held by the rival gangs.

Anthony “Tony” Ortiz Jr, spokesman for California Youth Outreach, said in his presentation that understanding who is at risk of gang membership can help dissuade kids from joining gangs and reducing violence after they do.

California Youth Outreach has worked in Santa Rosa since 2008. Its specialists intervene in times of crisis and work with teens who are at risk of joining gangs or have become members.

This spring an outreach worker was dispatched to a Santa Rosa high school after hearing talk of a violent gang retaliation planned at the school, said Jason Carter, program manager for the Santa Rosa Violence Prevention Partnership. The outreach worker spoke with the teen and was able to diffuse the situation, Carter said.

The partnership’s five-year strategic plan will come before the Santa Rosa City Council Tuesday. If the city continues its funding, the partnership would receive roughly $1.4 million annually for gang and violence prevention programs, Carter said.

“It’s a lot quieter now,” Carter said of gang activity in Santa Rosa. “(Isachsen) is constantly giving us updates on trends so we know how to focus our outreach workers and resources.”

You can reach Staff Writer Nick Rahaim at 707-521-5203 or nick.rahaim@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @nrahaim.