Gang activity on the rise in Santa Rosa schools, officials fear

Anonymous interactions and comments on an encrypted social media platform called Telegram are fueling concerns that gang activity among Santa Rosa middle and high school students is on the rise.

Longtime Santa Rosa Police Department gang detective Travis Menke called these social media interactions “net-banging.”

“We’ve seen gangs become much more nomadic,” Menke said. “With the presence of social media, they’ll be online net-banging … (where) they get on these social media groups and talk trash there. It’s a little bit different.”

“It’s something I never quite understood — how you could want to go shoot somebody over an internet post.”

Last month, a Press Democrat investigation revealed that students regularly upload videos showing peers of all ages, races and genders fighting. Those comments in those videos show fights of a different kind are also taking place.

Name calling is frequent, and “Norte” and “Surs” are thrown around liberally on the Telegram channel. Both refer to established gangs.

In the comments section beneath a video posted Nov. 4, multiple Telegram users identified themselves as “Nortes.” One even posted a video of them shooting what appears to be a semi-automatic weapon at an indoor shooting range with the caption: “For all u Nortes.”

Police said gang involvement was clear when a 16-year-old Santa Rosa High School student stabbed a 14-year-old student last Wednesday on the campus’s baseball field.

The older student brought a 13-inch kitchen knife to school, approached the younger student and started an altercation. Santa Rosa Police Department’s investigation found gang terminology was used during the altercation, and said the students appeared to be from rivaling gangs.

No clear statistics

But while anecdotal evidence points to a rise, there is no concrete data to confirm whether teens are more involved in gangs this year than in previous years.

Menke said one major reason is that the SRPD Gang Crimes Unit was dissolved in 2019 because of staffing issues. Since then, the surveillance and prevention efforts have come to a halt.

“I would kind of look at gangs as being a kind of sickness in the community,” Menke said. “And when you stop treating it, it grows and expands. So we, especially with the dissolving of the gang unit in 2019, essentially stopped treating the problem. It (grew) unchecked.”

Other statistics, however, are alarming.

SRPD crime data involving juveniles collected this year shows a major increase in juvenile arrests involving firearms. Last year, there were only two arrests. This year, there have been 19.

Menke said that while it is likely these arrests are linked to gang involvement, SRPD is unable to confirm with certainty without the gang crimes unit.

“You’ll see the older (gang) members utilize the younger members to carry firearms … because they’re not at risk of the same severity for punishment as an adult would be,” Menke said. “The considerable increase in (these arrests) is very concerning.”

He said these kinds of arrests are often predated by low-level crimes like tagging, petty thefts, or misdemeanor fights akin to the ones being documented at schools in the Telegram app.

“They’re basically ‘putting in work’ for the gang to kind of validate themselves; that they can be a trusted gang member,” Menke said.

What teachers are seeing

The concerns extend beyond law enforcement. Teachers interviewed by The Press Democrat said they frequently see students present themselves as gang-affiliated by the way they dress and the accessories they wear.

Administrators at Slater Middle School and at Montgomery High School have banned students from wearing bandannas to school, but there are other identifiable accessories.

A Montgomery teacher who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation said many of her students also wear red or blue rosaries as identifiers to other students.

“We have been taking those away if they’ll give them to (us),” she said. “They throw up gang signs … it’s just a bit out of control.”

The red and blue colors could be a call to the rival Norteño and Sureño gangs, as well as the California Crips gang, all of which have active local ties to Sonoma County, said Danielle Garduño, who leads Santa Rosa’s Violence Prevention Program, formerly the Mayor’s Gang Prevention Taskforce.

The Norteño Gang stems from the Nuestra Familia prison gang, and the Sureño Gang stems from the Mexican Mafia prison gang. Both are prevalent throughout California. The Crips typically align with the Norteño gangs, Garduño said.

“Gang violence and gang activity has been on the rise and is an issue here in our community, and is making its way or flowing back into our school systems,” she said. “A lot of the fights that we're hearing about really come down to these kids having no other choice but to participate in this type of behavior, basically, in order to be credible.”

Garduño said the Violence Prevention Program has been contacted about youth as young as 10 showing signs of gang involvement in recent months, paired with an overall rise in teens involved in gangs since December 2022.

Following older siblings

These younger kids involved with gangs likely have older siblings or family ties to local gangs, she said.

Joining gangs to connect with other students and feel a sense of belonging is not uncommon, Garduño said.

But that is not the only reason.

“We have quite a few young people that we currently work with that are gang impacted, and one of their primary reasons for joining a gang aside from a sense of belonging is they want to be able to contribute to their family's financial success,” Garduño said.

“They feel the only way to do that is to go out and join a gang and make money in ways that probably involve themselves in criminal activity.”

Santa Rosa City Schools Superintendent Anna Trunnell said she is aware that there may be a direct connection to the local gang activity. The district has hired a Coordinator of Wellness and Engagement who is “well versed and practiced” around gang affiliation, violence and history.

“We have started the process of some gang awareness training with all of our administrators, and we've started taking that down to the school site level working staff so that we can begin the process of understanding what history is and how we can support our youth,” Trunnell said.

Staff Writer Alana Minkler contributed to this article. You can reach her at 707-526-8531 or alana.minkler@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @alana_minkler.

Report For America corps member Adriana Gutierrez covers education and child welfare issues for The Press Democrat. Reach her at Adriana.Gutierrez@PressDemocrat.com