Purging Spokane of gangs is a long-term task

When I read two weeks ago that a task force from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives had arrested 77 violent gang members in Spokane during a three-day sting, I was impressed.

That sounded like a large number of people to me.

It also sounded like the ATF swooped in, came down hard on our gang problem and helped coordinate an effort to scrub Spokane’s streets clean.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t true. About 35 people were arrested and of those, only 10 remain in jail and not even all of them on gang-related charges.

Everybody got it wrong because someone in the ATF’s office writing press releases couldn’t count or somehow received “miscommunication.”

Don’t you just love that word? In politics, “miscommunication” usually means someone omitted a substantial part of the truth or got caught trying to manipulate a matter.

Anyway.

I know Spokane has a gang problem – just like so many other cities in this country – but I am growing leery of how we are dealing with it, and I’m beginning to believe our gang problem isn’t quite as big as it’s frequently made out to be.

Some years ago, when I realized that the Spokane area had become part of a designated “high-impact drug trafficking area,” it sent shivers down my spine.

It sounded to me like that’s pretty much the opposite of being “near nature, near perfect.”

But wait, I was told by politicians and law enforcement at the time, there is an upside to that label, and it’s called federal funding.

It’s the same thing that’s going on with the gang problem: If we can document that we have it, we can apply for funds to fight it.

There’s nothing wrong with a little pork coming our way. I just worry that all the gang talk is demonizing a segment of our population that doesn’t have a lot going for it in the first place.

When someone says “gang member,” what type of person comes to mind?

I’m willing to bet it is not a white guy in a baseball cap and cowboy boots.

Now, I believe it’s the gang wannabes that cause most of the problems we have with graffiti.

Yes, there’s gang-related graffiti out there. But most of it is stupidity related, and it’s done by homegrown kids who think misspelling their way down neighborhood fences and garage doors makes them big-time gangbangers.

If federal gang-fighting funding makes it possible to bust these spray-painting thugs and put them to work cleaning up the damage they did, right there on the street in front of all their friends, then I’m all for it. I happen to think that would be an excellent preventive measure, even if it only deals with graffiti.

Then we can look at the real gang problem as we figure out why young people join gangs in the first place.

Just like you can’t give people a flu shot until you know what strain of flu you are dealing with, we can’t do anything to prevent gang activity until we accept where it’s coming from. And I don’t mean blame it on California.

Gang activity is a symptom of much bigger problems such as discrimination, disenfranchisement and poverty. The fact that they can’t be solved by a three-day sting operation doesn’t mean we don’t have to face them.