MEXICAN YOUTHS TURN TO GANG VIOLENCERIVAL GROUPS CLASH AND KILL; TROUBLE SPREADS INTO NABES
Monday, October 12th 1998, 2:05AM
Mexican gangsters are terrorizing pockets of New York with violent turf wars that have claimed innocent lives.
From Jackson Heights, Queens, to Sunset Park, Brooklyn, and in upper Manhattan, gangs like The Mexican Boys, Los Vatos Locos and El Esquadron are fighting for turf and their notions of respect, law enforcement officials said.
Most of the violence has involved rival gang members, but it also is having a growing impact on the city's burgeoning Mexican communities.
One Sunset Park business owner said he no longer stays open late at night because of gang clashes on his street, including one shootout that had him ducking for cover.
"I pushed my 15-year-old daughter to the floor," he said. "I was scared for her."
The man no longer allows his daughter to come to his shop, refused to give his name and begged that details of his story be kept vague for fear of retribution. "They'll burn down my store," he said.
A teen in Sunset Park said she came from Mexico City three years ago for a better life, but she's returning home.
"There're too many gangs here," she said. "That's why I am leaving."
The emergence of gangs is a well-worn tale in the city's immigrant story one more group, low on the economic totem pole, whose youth join together for criminal acts ranging from theft to extortion and murder.
But law enforcement authorities say they are particularly wary of the emergence of the Mexican gangs because of the high level of violence in other cities where they have flourished, like Los Angeles and Chicago.
"It's not every day that you have shootings, but it is simmering," said Mariela Palomino Stanton, chief of the Queens district attorney's anti-bias/youth gang bureau. "And if it is ignored, it is only going to get worse."
"We need to be concerned," said a high-ranking Brooklyn law enforcement official. "It should scare us all."
Just two weeks ago, a Brooklyn man and his uncle were shot and stabbed to death outside a Brooklyn christening party, allegedly by members of Los Nios Malos, or The Bad Boys, police said.
In Corona, Queens, suspected Mexican gang members Antonio Torres, 18, and Roberto Mendoza, 22, blasted 24-year-old Enedino Cruz in the chest with a shotgun on Roosevelt Ave., believing he was in Los Vatos Locos.
According to prosecutors, Mendoza boasted after the September 1996 murder: "I shot him in the stomach and saw him fall down. He died like a dog. One less Vato Loco to worry about."
Cruz, however, was no gangster; he toiled as a cook in Manhattan and sent most of his money to relatives in Mexico. Both Mendoza and Torres are in prison.
Jesuit Brother Joel Magallan, who counsels gang members in East Harlem, said he fears New York will become another Chicago a place he's familiar with, having been stationed there previously. One summer there, he said, 30 Mexicans were killed in gang warfare.
"These people [in New York] are just beginning," Magallan said. "But I am afraid that if we don't do anything, we will have a situation like Chicago."
Some, though, say the pandilleros the Mexican word for gang members are small in number and harmless to outsiders.
"If they fight, it is usually just each other," said a 24-year-old immigrant who lives in Fordham, the Bronx.
The city has an estimated 200,000 legal and illegal Mexicans, a growing immigrant group that primarily has settled in East Harlem and Sunset Park, as well as Jackson Heights and Corona in Queens, and Mott Haven in the Bronx.
A 1996 police report estimated there were 590 members belonging to 11 Mexican gangs in Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens and the Bronx.
The NYPD gang intelligence unit has identified some 400 Mexican gang members, said Capt. James McCool, commanding officer of the city-wide criminal intelligence section.
But the Brooklyn official said those estimates are too low, claiming there are at least 400 members of just three gangs active in Brooklyn and other boroughs: The Mexican Boys, El Esquadron (The Squadron) and Los Nios Malos.
Law enforcement officials say gang members are almost uniformly young immigrants, here alone in the city without family. It's common for members to work menial jobs and hang out in gangs at night and on weekends, they said.
Those who have parents or guardians in the city are almost as independent, Magallan said. "Their parents work long days, many hours, and don't know what their boys are doing on the street."
Magallan said the gangs were born out of a wish for protection from other, more established ethnic gangs and neighborhood toughs. Now, however, it is "Mexicans killing Mexicans," he said.
Many of the young men are driven by a "need to belong," Stanton said. For some, it's also a way to get extra money through street robberies or other crimes, she said.
But key to the group is the desire for respect. Law enforcement officials and community leaders described how gang members boldly saunter through neighborhoods, intimidating honest citizens. Investigators said they crash christenings, birthday parties and other events.
"They walk in. They don't pay. Nobody stops them. Everyone knows what they are capable of, and everyone knows they are carrying weapons," the Brooklyn law enforcement official said.
Deejays are forced to do what's called "shout outs" introductions of gang members by name.
"The audience has to cheer for them. It's almost devastating. These are hardworking people who put a little party together, and these guys do what they want. If they ask a girl to dance, she has to dance, or she will get hurt or her boyfriend will get hurt."
One recent afternoon, a group of baby-faced youths and older, tougher-looking teens sat around a table in Sunset Park, playing Connect Four (a board game) and sketching elaborate gang drawings in a notebook.
Showing off their gang tattoos, members of Los Nios Malos and Los Primos said they are not the violent thugs that cops and prosecutors make them out to be.
But challenge their turf, they said, and they'll fight you.
"All we want to do is protect our neighborhood so that other gangs don't come here," said one member, about 16 years old, in the Brooklyn park, which shares the neighborhood's name.
Members of Los Nios Malos and Los Primos (The Cousins) said they are part of La Gran Familia Mexicana a federation of gangs who consider members of La Raza gangs their rivals.
Asked what would happen if La Raza came to the park, one gang member said it would be seen as a sign of disrespect.
"There would be a fight," he said. "They know this is our neighborhood."
Intimidation is a successful tactic, authorities said. Witnesses to crimes often are reluctant to aid police. In the tight-knit Mexican communities, "everybody knows everybody," the Brooklyn official said.
"The witnesses know the gang members, and the gang members know the witnesses. A lot are undocumented aliens, and they are very leery. And they have to go back to the same neighborhoods."
Meanwhile, law enforcement officials said gang members appear to be branching out to new criminal enterprises as lookouts or guards for brothels. Queens prosecutors also said there have been reports that gangsters are attempting to extort money from Mexican shopkeepers in Queens, and are making bogus documents, such as green cards.
A number of Mexican gangsters have been arrested this year for drug sales, too a fledgling enterprise, the Brooklyn law enforcement official believes, but a warning sign to heed.
Police and prosecutors have responded to the gang violence with task forces to identify and prosecute members, officials said.
"Hopefully, the efforts being taken now will nip it in the bud . . . and keep it from escalating to the level seen on the West Coast," said Peter McCormack, deputy of the Queens district attorney's gang unit.
