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Even gang members in Tracy commute, according to law enforcement and counselors, who say gang-bangers travel to the Bay Area to raise hell. But more and more, the troubles follow them home.
 Traffic streams over the Altamont Pass as commuters make their way home from a day of work in the Bay Area. But law enforcement officers are increasingly finding gang-bangers are also traveling to cause trouble and visit allies. Press file photo
Martinez was one of them — even served 38 years in prison for them. But like California’s gangs, he’s moved to the suburbs.
In Tracy, through a program called Point Break, the 61-year-old counsels gangsters who, for the most part, are no older than 18, dress in department-store streetwear and live in upper-middle-class homes, with lenient — and often absent — parents. And like their parents, many of these suburban gangsters commute. They suffer an hours-long drive to raise hell in Oakland, Fremont or San Leandro with more established Bay Area street gangs.
Authorities unofficially dub them commuter gang-bangers or rush-hour gangsters.
The back-and-forth trip from east to west connects suburban to urban and, as Martinez sees it, exposes young Tracy residents to realities once reserved for inner-city teens.
One such reality: Colors can kill.
It used to be just an urban truism. But that rule piggybacked on families with troubled kids who settled into safe, cookie-cutter neighborhoods in the far-East Bay and Central Valley.
Reformed gang-bangers with kids of their own tried to escape that reality, too — away from the notoriously gang-ridden turf in major Bay Area cities. Today, the only safe colors for Latino youth are green and white, say local counselors, many of whom, like Martinez, are former gang members themselves.
Colors, letters and numbers denote loyalties, loyalties that gang members stake their lives on. It’s one of the gang-related lessons big-city youngsters learn by the time they hit grade school.
Today, those lessons are planted through experience in neighborhoods known for their manicured lawns and weekend garage sales. They’ve seen loyalties develop not just to the neighborhood, the city or the "209" turf, but to an entire network of gangsters spanning cities and counties — and, in the case of prison gangs, states.
Mass migration
Many of Tracy’s teenagers who already boast a rap sheet for gang-related rackets moved out here with their families before the subprime meltdown, Tracy police said.
When they’re old enough to drive, they go back.
"One of the first things they do when they get their driver’s license is drive back to the bay to party and make mischief with friends," said Lt. Tom Overton, an investigator for the San Leandro Police Department.
Conversely, Bay Area gangs come to Tracy and surrounding cities to meet up with old friends and pick fights with rival gangs.
As a result, Tracy police frequently work with other agencies to fight out-of-town gang problems, Tracy police Chief David Krauss said.
"We are not only increasing the amount of time we work with other cities and task forces," Krauss said, "but we just approved the expansion of our gang unit."
By June, a new sergeant will oversee Tracy’s gang unit, and the department will add two new officers to the two-man unit. Also, instead of traveling to other cities to meet with gang officers, Tracy will host its own sessions.
"The problem is not just in Tracy and not just in the county," Krauss said. "Several times, we’ve run into gang members from cities over the hill. Because of the mobility of gang members, we’re going to start convening the meetings here."
The gang problem in Tracy is not exaggerated, he added. Compared with other cities, it might seem less serious. "But Tracy has a definite gang presence," he said.
Citywide, the Mayor’s Community Youth Support Network pushed the council to approve $1 million annually in part to help with gang prevention. That includes counseling, city and police outreach and probably some more after-school mentoring for the under-18 crowd, city officials said. Jack Martinez looks at graffiti painted on a sound wall at Tracy Press Park off Weeping Willow Lane. A former Mexican Mafia gang member and Pelican Bay prison inmate, Martinez now tries to help kids steer clear of gangs and their violence. Glenn Moore/Tracy Press
Family matters
For the northerners and southerners, the Norteños and Sureños, loyalty is more about family feuds than regional turf wars. But those feuds increasingly lead to violent crime and lately have involved a younger crowd of gang-bangers, a San Jose-based task force said in a recently issued warning.
Prison gangs oversee the street gangs, sometimes funding them and supplying leadership to the typically younger Sureños and Norteños. Hardened gang members promote, demote and assign street-gang affiliates in a type of martial hierarchy — street soldiers do the bidding of generals with prison-earned street cred.
Their uniforms are colorful and full of meaning. Aside from the telephone area codes that gangs use to identify turf, symbols like the Roman numerals "XIV" and "XIII" correlate to letters of the alphabet — "N" for Norteño and "M" for Mexican Mafia, the Sureños’ parent prison gang.
Nuestra Familia, one of the nation’s most notorious prison gangs and one with historically strong ties to Bay Area crime lords, was founded at Deuel Vocational Institution, just outside Tracy.
Tracy teens’ temptation to return to the bay has a lot to do with media that glamorize Bay Area gangsterdom, said local gang counselors and police officers. Artists such as Mac Dre rapped about group loyalty and violence among Bay Area gangs. Local, lesser-known rappers like Tracy’s Sir Dyno, Filthy 209 or Raul G advocate Norteño unity in violent anthems to life on the streets.
Rival northerners outnumber Sureños in San Joaquin County, police said. But for both gangs, rap songs’ references to Oakland and surrounding cities appeal to young people relegated to a mundane suburbia.
That sentiment comes from 19-year-old Raul Dominguez, a West High graduate, San Joaquin Delta College liberal arts student and a former Norteño.
"We’re lucky to live near the Bay Area," he said, "and I think a lot of young gang members here feel that way. The appeal of going back to Oakland and those places was because it’s famous for that lifestyle, like Compton or other places you hear about in rap songs. For kids in gangs, that’s attractive."
It’s easy to see why, he pointed out. A lot of kids think life on this side of the Altamont is boring.
Drive through almost any local housing tract, and one thing is evident: Tracy’s dead in the daytime. Business hours find neighborhoods populated, albeit sparsely, by stay-at-home parents and, after school, their children. Commuting defines life in the town of 80,000.
Tag-team networks
Commuting gangsters prompt police from cities throughout the state to stay in touch. Some agencies have founded inter-city task forces to help. And like their blue-uniformed counterparts, commuter gang bangers share a knack for networking.
It’s one of the main reasons they drive to the bay. Being in a gang is largely about knowing the right people from the right places, said Martinez, the counselor and former member of the Mexican Mafia.
For many Tracy teens who claim gang affiliation, the people they’re proud to know are part of well-connected crime rings in the Bay Area, said Martinez.
Retaliation also drives teens to make the trip westward.
"Bay Area kids will come out here and cause trouble, like start a fight or something," he said. "And then the Stockton kids will drive out there to get revenge."
The inter-county trips have worsened crime on school campuses both east and west, San Leandro investigator Overton said.
"If someone knows a fight is coming up, they can call for allies from out in Oakland or San Leandro or Hayward," he said. Out-of-town mercenaries make campus brawls "more heated and harder to break up."
Changing face of Tracy
Tracy used to be known as a quiet, valley farm town, even though it’s been home to a minimum-security prison and has always been at the crossroads of Stockton and Oakland.
Some worry that the gang problem is changing the face of Tracy. Gang brawls involving crowbars, baseball bats and old-fashioned fisticuffs keep school campus police officers frenetically playing peacekeeper. Norteños and Sureños duke it out on high school campuses, in city parks and behind seedy liquor stores.
In December 2007, 19-year-old Mario Perrales and two other teenagers hopped out of a van and pummeled a 15-year-old with an iron bar in front of Tracy High School. The victim’s older brother was attacked later that day in Gillett Alley downtown, according to police reports.
Since January, Perrales has bided his time in San Joaquin County Jail in French Camp. He pleaded guilty, though he denied having gang ties.
Deputy District Attorney Ron Indran insisted the assault was gang-related, and Tracy’s gang task force confirmed the gang connection. Based on that charge, Perrales faces an extended sentence. He’ll spend a year in jail and five years on probation for felony assault.
Defense attorney Jonathan Fattarsi argued that there was no proof Perrales was a gang member. But gang affiliation, not just membership, is enough to merit a longer sentence, the judge countered. Perrales learned that Norteño pride makes one’s offense more serious in the eyes of the law.
What that says, Overton pointed out, is that you’ve got an entire network, an entire Norteño nation to back you. Not just in the county, but in this half of the state.
"For law enforcement, that makes a charge that much more serious," Overton said. "You know people who know people who can perpetuate a crime or retaliate."
Hit and run home
Tracy’s old-timers deride young East Bay expatriates as the cause of the town’s growing crime, blaming it on the allegedly mischief-making Bay Area transplants, namely, the Norteños and Sureños. There are others, but they’re vastly outnumbered by the color-coded Latino familias.
Clad in red and blue, respectively, the Latino gangs claim thousands of members in and around Stockton. In Tracy, there might be a few hundred gang members, police said.
Most of the reported troublemakers are teens, police say. Other gangs claiming ties in the Central Valley include the San Leandro-based Davis Street Locals and the mixed-race Border Brothers.
Many came to Tracy because their parents sought affordable homes and a way to pull them out of an environment plagued by the very problems their kids now create.
Families vowed to start fresh to give their kids a second chance. Still, they kept ties back by the bay — friends, jobs, relatives or a busier nightlife that made it worth the trip west.
More than ever, Bay Area cops get tied up with violence and trouble involving Central Valley gangs, Overton said.
"You’d be amazed at how many are from out of town," he said. "That’s why we communicate so extensively with police departments in different cities."
Two months ago, out-of-town gang members shot someone at a family wedding in Hayward. Area police suspect the gunmen drove over from San Joaquin County.
"We get a lot of guys out from Stockton, from Tracy, from that area," Overton said. "The kids, once they’re able to drive, still want to come up here and hang out with their old friends, and it makes them easy to do a crime here and then go. They know it’s hard to trace."
To target gangs, arrests many times depend on insiders to rat out other gang members, he said. It gets tough, he added, because of members’ fierce loyalty or fear of revenge. Many times, victims of stabbings, shootings or beatings by a separate gang will keep mum to avoid being labeled a snitch by rivals.
"And if the perpetrator came from out of town, it complicates it further," Overton said. "In that case, it’s really tough to track anyone down. We really struggle with trying to get witnesses to come forward when we’re dealing with out-of-town gang members."
• Contact Tracy Press reporter Jennifer Wadsworth, call 830-4225 or e-mail
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