Grant County gang unit documented members

Gang unit since disbanded

GRANT COUNTY - When the Grant County Sheriff's Office gang unit was active last spring, law enforcement gathered gang related intelligence in an effort to control gang activity.

The purpose of the gang unit was to identify gang members, document graffiti, gain gang intelligence and make contacts with gang affiliates, and they did, Grant County Sheriff's Office Chief Deputy John Turley said.

A couple months into the gang unit program it was canceled due to budget cuts. He said the program cost thousands of dollars in overtime to pay deputies.

Turley said he hopes the gang unit will be funded again due to its success, until then some gang related information gathering is done on their own time, including educating the public about gangs.

Two teams of two sheriff's deputies in the gang unit patrolled the Columbia Basin's gang activity hot spots nightly and on weekends when it was active.

"We made numerous contacts, recovered a couple of stolen motorcycles, some weapons," Grant County Sheriff's Office Deputy Greg Hutchison said.

Turley said contact was made with an undocumented white supremacist gang in Moses Lake.

"Every time that they were out there, they assisted (other law enforcement agencies), one time they had to go down to Royal City to assist down there, when there was an attempted shooting," he said.

Grant County Sheriff's Office Deputy Joe Harris said a gang was holding people hostage in Royal City approximately six months ago demanding the production of a rival gang member.

He said the South Side Locos were looking for a Florencia 13 gang member. The contact resulted in four arrests.

Hutchison said the gang unit handled street level crimes that otherwise went untouched.

Turley said street crimes include gang graffiti, vandalism, vehicle prowls, home invasions, any theft and burglary.

Hutchison said in the past, a lot of street crimes were related to methamphetamine.

The Interagency Narcotics Enforcement Team (INET) receives state and federal grants to investigate upper level dealers. Street level dealers and crimes are not investigated by INET. He said it's not INET's fault they are restricted from handling street level issues. They are governed through their funding by mandates.

"In the meantime all that stuff kind of goes untouched. It gets left alone," Hutchison said. "The deputy who's working a regular patrol, he's going from this call to that call. He's doing follow-up when he gets a few minutes on the calls that he had previously. He's not actively out there seeking the street level dealer or the individuals who are out committing crimes on a regular basis."

He said the gang unit tracked specific people known to regularly commit street crimes. Deputies became familiar with gang members and other criminals associated with the crimes. They knew where to locate the gang members.

Turley recalled an incident when deputies pulled a vehicle over for a traffic violation.

The driver was known to have committed an armed robbery and deputies knew his criminal history, he said. The passenger was identified as an 18-year-old gang member belonging to the Sureno 13 gang and was drinking alcohol, Turley said.

"Who knows, just on that contact at that particular time, maybe someone's car didn't get stolen that night and there's nothing that says we can't stop and contact people. We can be proactive that way," he said.

Typically the patrol deputies are reacting, the crime already happened and deputies contact the victim, Turley said. The gang unit was proactive and possibly reduced crime.

When asked if less crime was committed while the gang unit was on patrol, Harris said it depends how the data is viewed.

It appears there could have been more crime because more crimes were documented that people didn't want to report, he said.

"We were proactive enough to recognize it as it was happening," Harris said.

The gang unit responded to suspicious situations and actively sought witnesses and victims.

"I don't think we did it long enough to discover any trends," Hutchison said. "We might see more crime because a lot of people probably wouldn't report these crimes. There's a lot of crimes out there that go unreported."

Turley said until the gang unit is revived, the sheriff's office will continue to make every effort to combat against gang activity. He said the first step is informing the public about the issue so they can protect themselves and report suspicious activity.