WENATCHEE — The Seattle blogger who operates the website NWGangs.com first began probing Northwest gang culture around 2003, curious about gang issues in his native Yakima after a double murder in which the local police seemed reluctant to divulge the gangs involved.
"It seemed like the police did not want to go into specifics about what gangs were involved," said the blogger, who asked only to be referred to by his first name, Brad. "They were just keeping it pretty quiet. But I, myself, I just wanted to know more info."
The 30-year-old blogger started with the Yakima gangs. Gang crime is deep-rooted in Yakima, dating back to the 1970s, according to the National Center for Drug Control Policy. "They’re just on a level that most of the other Hispanic gangs aren’t quite at yet in our area," Brad said.
After publishing his early findings online, he was contacted by other gang scholars — and even gang members — from Seattle, Portland, Tacoma and elsewhere who offered their own intelligence.
"A lot of gang members have Facebook and Myspace pages, and they’ll email me and tell me information. ... They’ll say, ’Hey, Brick City’s affiliated with BST or Colonia Chiques.’ "
He sometimes receives jpeg images of gang graffiti, sent by concerned residents who’ve found tags near their homes and want to identify them. After the Aug. 4 arson that killed 6-year-old Ricardo Alejandre-Garcia and his 4-year-old brother Mariano in Wenatchee, Brad visited the fire site at 620 Palouse St. and photographed the gang tags he found in nearby alleys.
"Arson fires are common. It doesn’t happen a lot, probably not as often as drive-by shootings, but I have heard several times, not only here but during my research of other cities in the country, that it’s a way for gangs to retaliate against rivals. I’m sure their intentions weren’t to kill two children. ... But they could have easily fired some gunshots into the house and shot some innocent victims."
Brad identifies the Wenatchee gangs as "Sureno," all tracing their roots to the gang cultures that originated in Southern California’s prison system. The Rifamos Matamos Controlamos alliance — South Side Locos, Columbus Street 13 and Barrio Los Padrinos 13 — appears to oppose another alliance with the Barrio Sureno Trece at its core. The BST gang is affiliated with the Brick City 13 (also called Varrio Ciudad Ladrillo), South Side 18th Street, Colonia Chiques 13 and the Tiny Locos. The color blue and the letter S figure heavily into Sureno modes of dress and iconography.
The gangs’ names and points of origin can become obscure once they’ve expanded beyond their original territory, Brad said. "For example, the Colonia (Colonia Chiques 13) gang, they’re from Onyx, Calif., and they claim ’East Side Onyx.’ So I’ve seen in their tags occasionally, ’Eastside’ — not referring to East Wenatchee, but to the east side of Onyx, Calif. So there is that geographic connection with where they originated from, even though it has nothing to do with the cities they’re in up here now."
If indeed the Palouse Street arson proves gang-related, it may be the work of the South Side Locos or affiliated gangmembers, striking out against Brick City members known to live at the duplex.
After the fire that killed Ricardo and Mariano, Brad said, "Someone related to those kids, from Brick City, actually emailed me and told me that the South Side Locos are ’babykillers.’ ... And he said, basically, they’ve got retaliation coming to them for what they did. It kind of confirmed my suspicions."
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