Area looks for solution to shootings

NAMPA, Idaho – City officials looked for solutions to the spike in gun violence Monday night, but gang members and those who know them offered little in the way of help.

“We’re trying to make a difference,” said Dominic Chavez, 30. “But I don’t have the answers.”

Chavez, who has been a gang member since he was 18, said drugs, turf battles and a lack of respect underlie the gang-related violence that has escalated in Canyon County this summer and fall.

Nampa Mayor Tom Dale listened to their concerns and those of parents during a closed meeting at the Hispanic Cultural Center.

There was some distrust initially after police officers appeared outside the center, apparently to take photographs of those attending.

“As soon as I heard that, I asked them to leave,” Dale said. “That’s not what this is about.”

Idaho Migrant Council Director Albert Pacheco said there was a frank exchange of views during the two-hour meeting.

“There was the beginning of a willingness to work together to find a common cause,” Pacheco said. “It will take a long time, but people are committed to make it work.”

The session came against the backdrop of two exchanges of gunfire on city streets in the three previous days — one outside a theater Friday night that left one man wounded, and the other earlier Sunday, apparently over drugs.

They were the latest incidents that continued pushing the number of shooting reports in the county since July toward 200. Well over half of them and most of the injuries have occurred in Caldwell, a heavily agricultural community in the county of about 150,000 just west of the state capital.

Two Caldwell men have been killed and others wounded in the past five months.

Dale said he wanted to open doors for a solution to the violence, but rejected the view of gang members and others that the situation has reached crisis proportions.

“We have been dealing with these challenges for the last five years,” he said. “We know we’ve had these problems, and we are making some progress.”

Dale said the Nampa police have had highly trained officers specializing in gang identification and intervention since the 1990s, and combined with a wide-ranging community education initiative and a zero-tolerance policy for gangs they have had a positive effect.

But county officials and Caldwell leaders acknowledged at a community meeting last month that gun violence is on the rise and much of it is gang-related.

Prosecutor Dave Young set up a Public Safety League to merge community and police initiatives on finding those behind the violence and getting them off the street, and the city of Caldwell is seeking federal funds to increase resources to fight street violence and provide young people with alternatives to gang involvement.

“It is a lack of response by the school system; many of our kids are not getting their needs met,” said Magdalina Soto, a drug counselor for the Idaho Migrant Council.

“It’s poverty, it’s so many issues,” she said. “The gang is only the symptom. We can put 100 or 200 kids away, but what about the kids at the bottom who are coming up?”

Adam Barela, a 13-year-old junior high student who said he knows gang members, said the violence has gotten worse in recent months.

“Everybody’s getting so used to what’s going that they keep doing it,” Barela said. “It’s just going to keep going on until there’s nothing left.”