Q&A | Lt. Ron Wilson on youth violence and the city's gang problems

Lt. Ron Wilson, head of the Seattle Police Department's Gang Unit, recently fielded questions about youth violence and the city's gang problems. Wilson's answers are excerpted below, edited for brevity.

Q: What are the different street gangs fighting over?

Lt. Ron Wilson: What we're experiencing in Seattle that's different perhaps than what you see down in L.A. or on the East Coast, is the dynamics of the gangs we're dealing with. We're dealing with a lot of youth now, as opposed to the 1990s and 1980s, when we had a lot of older individuals and the drive at that time was the drug market, crack cocaine. There was a lot of tension there and a lot of conflict between gangs in the '80s and '90s over marketing of crack cocaine.

Most of the time, when we've had shootings involving young people, it's usually a matter of disrespect. It's not about turf. It's not necessarily about marketing drugs or any type of other illegal crime. It's a matter of disrespect where they handle the conflicts between them with firearms.

Q: How many of last year's 28 homicides in Seattle were gang-related?

RW: Last year we've linked 12 of those homicides to being gang-related or some sort of gang connection in there.

Q: What's spurring the increase in youth involvement in gangs?

RW: The difference again from the '80s and '90s is the communications level that kids have today. Every kid has a cellphone. There's texting, Internet, MySpace. It's easier to get the message out. It's easier to get the image out, and try to make it look like it's cool thing to do.

We find kids who are at risk are looking for something to latch onto, something that will give them some sense of belonging and worth, and when they have that dynamic they'll latch on and it will fuel and drive their participation [in gangs].

Q: How are gangs organized in Seattle?

RW: In the '80s we had a proliferation of Crips and Bloods from L.A., and BGDs [Black Gangster Disciples] from Chicago.

As we've progressed in our fledgling gang activities, they're still affiliated to national names, but we have our own homegrown gangs here, gangs truly named out of Seattle, and they'll claim affiliation to a particular set, Bloods, Crips, BGDs.

Q: How many organized gangs are there in the greater Seattle area?

RW: If we had to put a number in this area, we certainly think we're looking at about 60 active gangs in the region, and they go from motorcycle outlaw gangs to Sopranos-type of gangs to Bloods, Crips, BGDs ...

Q: Are you expecting violence to heat up this summer?

RW: I don't know what the summer is going to do, but we're going to be prepared for whatever happens.

Q: How many of last year's suspected gang killings were retaliatory?

RW: I don't know that we have an exact number ... In L.A., if one gang fires shots at another you can expect retaliation could be in minutes if not hours. In Seattle, our experience is that if there is going to be retaliation it could come in hours, weeks or months. That makes it difficult for us to figure out who is involved and where we should concentrate.

Q: What are the hot rivalries?

RW: It's hard for us to keep track of what those rivalries are. And they bounce around and change from day to day. I think what we're looking at is who are the people involved that may be having problems. That's what we're looking at because it's not so much what the gangs are, as who are the individuals creating problems.

Q: How has the no-snitch policy hindered your investigations?

RW: The no-snitch campaign is a very real thing. It's an experience we're not just dealing with in Seattle. It's national.

It came into play about 2004 with a well-known rap artist who publicly stated 'don't snitch' and went on to do interviews and said that if he had a serial killer living next door and knew about it he wouldn't tell anyone. He later recanted that.

The problem is we see a lot of kids clamor onto that ... 'No snitching' was meant to be that if you get busted for selling drugs and you tell who your supplier is, that's snitching. But kids today take that literally to mean you can't talk to the police ... We have to get the public educated ... that there's a difference between what that no-snitch campaign [meant] versus doing the right thing when you see somebody get hurt — that's not snitching.

Q: Is Nate Thomas' unsolved murder an example of the no-snitch policy? (Thomas was shot in a restaurant in front of witnesses.) Or Quincy Coleman's? (Coleman was killed near Garfield High School and his friend, wounded by the same shooters, told police he wasn't going to snitch.)

RW: Those are examples where we could see it's often times difficult. I'll use Allen Joplin, who was killed in January 2008. There were a lot of people there and no one saw anything, no one has come forward.

We don't get cooperation, right. This no-snitch is a hindrance. I'll give you that. It makes it much more difficult. But we do get cases solved.

I think there's going to be a change. I don't know if that's going to be in the next year or two. I have to believe in our community and our people because there's enough awareness coming about the problem, there's enough of our community members, churches and such that are starting to step up and bring this up. Somewhere we're going to see a change.

Bob Young: 206-464-2174 or byoung@seattletimes.com