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SPC considers gang studies

By JOSE CARDENAS
Published December 31, 2006

Central American gangs that have spread to Miami and other American cities have not reached the Tampa Bay area in big numbers.

But St. Petersburg College does not plan to wait passively for their arrival.

The college wants to be an ally of international law enforcement authorities and their American counterparts in helping to fight the MS-13 and 18th Street gangs.

SPC is developing an educational program focused on investigating and prosecuting gangs, as well as intervening before they take hold. As soon as next year, the college could offer two- or four-year degrees, certification or seminars.

Based on conversations with law enforcement officials, SPC administrators think the program will be unique.

"We hope to have the first four-year degree in America," said SPC president Carl M. Kuttler Jr.

"We are helping Central America to solve their problem, but we are doing it in preparing American law enforcement to fight better, too."

The college's focus on Central American gangs comes in part from a humanitarian trip Kuttler took to Guatemala in the wake of Hurricane Stan in 2005.

Kuttler learned that the gangs that terrorize Guatemalan businesses - as well as businesses in El Salvador and Honduras - have spread to places such as northern Virginia, Miami and, to a lesser degree, the Tampa Bay area.

The Central American gangs are following notorious American-bred groups such as the Mafia and Hell's Angels, carving out their own chunk of the drug, guns and racketeering trades.

They have become a pre-eminent threat, officials said.

"When you talk about violent gangs today, they seem to be the Central American gangs," said J.C. Brock, the administrator of the college's Allstate campus, home to the law enforcement programs.

Summits on gangs

Last month, the college hosted the Western Hemisphere International Gang Summit, which attracted participants ranging from Justice Department officials to the chief of the Guatemala National Police.

A similar summit was held at FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., in September 2005 to plot a national roundup of MS-13 gang members, said Florida Department of Law Enforcement agent Ed de Velasco, an expert on Central American gangs.

The college curriculum aims to target the gangs in both the United States and Central America because gang members travel back and forth.

"The guy who did the massacre in Honduras was arrested in Texas," said de Velasco, referring to Ebner Anibal Rivera-Paz, the MS-13 gang member who is suspected of leading an attack last year on a public bus that killed 28 people.

MS-13 and 18th Street formed in the 1980s when young men fleeing armed conflict in Central America settled in inner-city Los Angeles. Many of the gang members who had criminal records were deported in the 1990s. Some have come back.

In 2005, the FBI established the MS-13 National Gang Task Force. The Pentagon's Southern Command in Miami also identified Central American gangs as one of the main threats to national security.

"MS-13 is something that basically the whole country is on alert for," said Douglas Bieniek, a Hillsborough State Attorney's Office investigator and chairman of a multiagency gang task force that covers several surrounding counties. "The more we can learn about them, their methodology, the better we are prepared to handle them."

Efforts to recruit

In general, gangs in Tampa Bay are a significant enough problem that the U.S. Attorney's Office recently gave local law enforcement agencies a $2.5-million grant, one of only six given to cities across the country.

So far, law enforcement has identified only a few known MS-13 gang members in the Tampa Bay area, officials said. Most notably, three members were arrested in August 2005 in a northwest Hillsborough neighborhood after threatening a man with death if he did not join.

"We do know there has been some recruiting with some other gangs," said Maj. Paul Davis, who supervises the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office gang task force. "I would support any effort on what to look for and how to stop it before it gets started."

The two gangs have a much bigger profile in South Florida. As far back as 2001, MS-13 gang members were spotted in Homestead, officials said.

The proliferation of the gangs in the United States has become a top concern for law enforcement because of their extreme violence.

"Here in the United States, they love the machete," de Velasco said. "They have told us, 'It takes a man to kill someone with a machete.' "

Courses of action

SPC is still working out the details of the curriculum, Brock said. Administrators are exploring options for funding the program, including grants and charging for seminars. Instructors will include law enforcement officers and academics with expertise on gangs.

College administrators also must figure out how to share the information with Galileo University in Guatemala. To start, the college is sending 1,000 used computers to the university.

De Velasco said one of the aims is to educate fellow investigators about the structure of the gangs.

He has taught courses on how to dismantle the gang by prosecuting members through the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.

"That's why the courses that St. Petersburg wants to be involved with are so important," de Velasco said. "The students will learn the culture, how the organization works."

Times staff writer Jose Cardenas can be reached at jcardenas@sptimes.com or (727) 445-4224.

Central American gangs

Names: MS-13 and 18th Street.

Origins: Formed in inner-city Los Angeles in the 1980s by Central American immigrants.

Membership: An estimated 100,000 in Central America and 25,000 dispersed across 33 states in the U.S.

Activities: Ultra-violent. Officials say some of their activities, such as extortion of businesses, amount to organized crime.

[Last modified December 31, 2006, 01:02:17]