Asian gangs focus less on violence, more on lucrative crime
Monday, July 09, 2007
ANGIE CHUANG
The Oregonian Staff

Asian gangs have faded from Portland’s spotlight since the 1990s, when beatings and shootings routinely highlighted violent rivalries of a generation whose refugee parents were scarred by war.

Now run by a younger crop of savvier youths, the underground organizations are stronger than ever, gang-prevention experts at the Asian Family Center say — less violent, smarter, more high-tech but just as destructive to young people.

Ly Duong, 18, knows this firsthand. He’s seen the friends and acquaintances who suddenly got respect, invitations to parties and money — lots of money — when they joined.

But he’s seen the dark side, his peers ruined by drug addiction, with multiple arrest warrants and no future. So the Franklin High School senior has made up his mind.

“They watch ‘Godfather’ and ‘Scarface’ and think they’re going to get rich or die trying,” Duong says. “Get a job, man.”

Duong has become a spokesman of sorts for the Asian Family Center’s youth programs, particularly its gang-prevention efforts. He understands the local gang scene but is also a gang-prevention success story.

Colleen Kim, who heads the center’s Youth Gang Prevention Services Program, says Duong is unusual because he sought out and embraced help. She recalls that he approached her a couple of years ago and said, “Hey, keep me out. Check in on me.”

For him and the approximately 100 other youths each year who get case managers through the program, the goal is to forge a relationship with someone who is neither a parent nor a gang recruiter. Kim says they get young men and women involved in sports, tutoring, jobs, community activities — whatever it takes.

“It’s something to use their time and energy,” she says. “And to gain their trust.”

The Asian Family Center, run by the Northeast Portland-based Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization, has offered programs for gang-involved youth since the 1980s. Back then, officials of the immigrant community organization say, the problem was highly visible.

A wave of disaffected youth who had been out of place in schools — alienated by post-Vietnam hostility, and a system unprepared for the large numbers of refugees who came in the late 1970s — formed gangs for a sense of belonging and protection. Often, Vietnamese American children had fathers who were in re-education camps or were killed during the war.

As that generation passed through the school system, many dropping out, ending up incarcerated or even killed, the Asian gang problem seemed to fade. High-profile beatings, fights and shootings became less frequent.

Lt. Mike Leeloff of the Portland Police Bureau says the gang enforcement team has focused its limited resources on growing Latino and African American gang activities over time.

“Asian gangs were more street-level and showing their colors throughout the ’90s,” he says. “They’re there now; they’ve become a nonfocused group.”

But Kim says subsequent generations of gang members just changed tactics.

Better adjusted to U.S. culture than their predecessors, these youths, mostly Southeast Asian, organized to form crime rings. They used technology to stay low-profile, making money from identity theft and dealing marijuana or ecstasy. Some gang members have gotten involved in underage human sex trafficking and larger-scale drug deals, she says.

“You don’t necessarily see a high percentage of API (Asian Pacific Islander) kids in the prison system, and street crime appears to have gone down,” Kim says.

“But I think gangs have gotten progressively worse. The networks have become more sophisticated, more difficult to detect.”

Leeloff says the gang team focuses on what he calls “street-corner livability” crimes such as shootings, robbery and assaults. It’s difficult to quantify with police statistics what Asian Family Center staff members have observed.

However, he agrees that it’s a mistake to view Asian gangs as a problem of the past. “They are still around. You just don’t hear about them.”

“In it for the money”

In Duong’s eyes, the shift is simple. In the past, Asian American youths didn’t fit in at school, got beat up and wanted to feel protected. Now, “a lot of these gang members are actually really popular at school. They’re in it for the money.”

County and city grants pay for 21/2 staff positions at the Asian Family Center; the prevention program is in the second of a three-year cycle. It focuses on at-risk youth with no criminal records. A separate program helps gang-affected youth who are in the court system, Kim says. She acknowledges the programs can’t reach hardened gang members or compete with the sway of gangs: “We can’t coerce anyone.” But young people such as Duong are their best outreach tools, and the center has a respected reputation in the community after more than two decades of anti-gang work.

Duong says he stuck with the program because of the staff.

“They are the realest people in the world,” he says. “You can tell them anything. They have also experienced the things that we’re going through. They’ve been through rough times themselves.”

Angie Chuang: 503-221-8219; angiechuang@news.oregonian.com

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