Under the Radar

I've been seeing a lot of red recently, an observation hardly surprising given the holidays and all. What is surprising though is that the color red has taken on a whole new twist following a meeting this afternoon on a problem I never thought we would have to deal with in Grand Ronde: gangs.
Several weeks ago there was a shooting over in Keizer, one in which a young man lost his life. He was a man connected to the Grand Ronde community. I won't get into details like his name or the circumstances of the shooting, those can be found on the internet anyway.
Two years ago we offered a lunch-time presentation to our employees. A police officer with expertise in gangs provided a Powerpoint presentation that featured photos of hand signs, graffiti, tattoos, you-name-it. There is a culture amongst gangs. He explained to us what IPO was, among others. And he told us that it will be a problem in a few years. He was right.
I think everybody knows about the tagging that has been going on for a while. The presentation given us today made me wince and shake my head. Because we got into details that the police didn't want made public that meeting was held in executive session, but I must say what we were shown was stunning. Most of the photos were gathered from the world wide web, MySpace is very popular. A number of the photos were young men in red, with bandanas, some with facial tattoos. They were flashing the numerous gang signs, hands made into W's for Westside, or CK for Cryp-Killer. Every time the portions of the faces were whited out so you couldn't completely identify who they were. Sadly, that didn't stop me from recognizing a few of my fellow Tribal members.
What is worse, I slowly recognized the backgrounds in many of the shots, including our Tribal gymnasium, Community Center, Housing, and even at our Pow wow. In other words, under our noses.
Indian communities have been dealing with gangs probably before I even knew they existed, that is certain. But until now, there had always been a distance between them and the world I know. I knew gangs from television and media, and the wannabe's who infested my North Salem High School in the early 1990's because the gangster "look" was considered cool. But to see people I actually know doing this, and even taking it seriously, was very sobering. There is just something grotesque and disturbing about it all.
We're starting a gang awareness program in Grand Ronde. It will be a new challenge for our community.