When trying to solve a gang-related crime, Rogers and Springdale police can tap into information on hundreds of suspected local gang members or their associates.
Smaller police departments in Northwest Arkansas, however, don’t have such databases — photos, tattoos and addresses linked to gangs such as Sureno, MS-13, Nortenos, Brown Pride and Aryan Brotherhood.
The closest thing to a regional gang clearinghouse is the Arkansas Crime Information Center. While the center shows felony convictions nationwide, it lists only 21 gang members in Arkansas. In Rogers, police have more than 200 in their gang database.
“If my city gets hit with graffiti by someone called ‘Snoop Dog,’ I can’t call up ACIC and say, ‘Is there a Snoop Dog in your system ?’” Centerton Police Chief Lance Johnson said.
“With ACIC, you need a name, a date of birth or a driver’s license number, something to start with,” he said. “A lot of times, we don’t have that kind of information at the front end.” In Centerton, a fast-growing bedroom community west of Bentonville, the Latin Kings gang painted graffiti in January, and no one has been arrested for it. Johnson wants a plan to create a Northwest Arkansas gang-intelligence network.
Such a database would let law enforcement officers add information as they get it. They would check whether a suspect — who only may be known by a nickname, a tattoo or who he runs with — is on the radar of another department.
“If another department arrests a gang member, and it turns out he lives in Centerton, I might not ever know until one of us picks up the phone and calls the other,” Johnson said. CALIFORNIA USES DATABASE Twelve agencies in North- west Arkansas meeting under the federal Project Safe Neighborhoods’ Anti-Gang Initiative talked about starting a gang-intelligence database last year, but logistics and cost concerns put the plan on hold.
Bob Balfe, U. S. attorney for the Western District of Arkansas based in Fort Smith, said for a regional database to work, every agency wo uld need to use the same criteria for entering information, and someone would have to maintain the system.
“On top of that, there’s a huge funding issue with equipment and manpower,” Balfe said. “As stretched as many of the departments are just trying to get officers on the streets, it’s just not a top priority right now.” Although there’s no central database, the agencies from Washington, Benton and Sebastian counties meet every seven weeks or so and share gang intelligence and leads on cases.
“Gang members don’t respect county lines, and that’s especially relevant in Northwest Arkansas where it’s not one large metropolitan area, but in fact a region with more than one county,” Balfe said.
“Everyone involved here knows how important it is that we all continue to communicate and collaborate on this issue,” he said.
In considering a regional database, the agencies looked at CalGang, the California Department of Justice’s gang database.
Wes McBride, executive director of the California Gang Investigator’s Association, helped design CalGang, an automated information-sharing system.
“It’s an electronic gang file built on a network that allows sharing between departments,” McBride said. “It may sound sophisticated, but a gang file is a gang file. If you know your suspect drives a red Chevy, you enter that in, and you get a list of gang members who drive red Chevys.” McBride, who is retired from the Los Angeles County sheriff’s office, said police can work to control and reduce gangs by banding together for training.
“Gang members in today’s world are very mobile, moving from one town to the next,” Mc-Bride said. “To stay on top of it, police need to form a task force and start training their officers to recognize gangs. Put on statewide training, and roll it across the state.” The federal Justice Department dedicated $ 10 million to Project Safe Neighborhoods in 2006, with an additional $ 30 million to fund an “Anti-Gang Initiative.” The U. S. attorney’s office in Fort Smith has been allocated $ 694, 000 for Project Safe Neighborhoods. Project Safe Neighborhoods pays for police agencies in Northwest Arkansas to get gang resistance and education training. Agencies in Washington, Sebastian and Benton counties — where officials in Balfe’s office said gang activity is most prevalent — have had the training over the last year. Some also are providing gang intervention and prevention in English and in Spanish in schools.
‘GANG OVERTONES’ From March to July 2007, some Springdale police officers worked on a part-time crimesuppression team that identified, photographed and documented gang members in the city.
The officers also ran saturation patrols that focused primarily on curbing graffiti and property crime.
Sgt. Shane Pegram, who supervised the team, said officers identified about 150 people with ties to several major gangs: Sureno 13, Nortenos, Folk Nation, 18 th Street, Aryan Brotherhood, Peckerwoods, Crips, Bloods, MS 13, Gangster Disciples and Latin Kings. To identify gang members, the team used a combination of criteria, including self-admitted membership, association with known gang members, frequenting known gang areas, “throwing” hand signs, and having gang tattoos, Pegram said.
“The overall goal of the team was to identify crime trends in the city, and unfortunately, a lot of what we found had gang overtones,” said Pegram.
“About every gang there is in the country right now, we’ve had contact with in Springdale,” he said. “And other cities in Northwest Arkansas are seeing the same thing, too.” A full-time crime-suppression team starts next month, he said.
While Springdale isn’t using its data as an investigative tool, the Rogers Police Department uses gang data it has been compiling since 2005.
Cpl. Craig Renfrow, a gang investigator for Rogers, helped build a database of more than 200 entries of active and inactive gang members and their associates living in the city.
About 40 percent of those in the database fall under the category of Sureno or Mexican Mafia gangs, Renfrow said. The second largest category — about 14 percent — consists of prison gangs and hate groups.
“We’ve got a solid knowledge now of what’s going on in the city, but the next step is to do something collectively as a region,” Renfrow said.
The Rogers, Springdale and Fayetteville police departments have met independently of the federal group to share gang data, he said.
The Benton County sheriff’s office is another agency that uses it own system to track gang members.
Jail commander Capt. Hunter Petray said about 90 gang members have been identified using the system, but that doesn’t necessarily mean those gangs are operating in the county. Many members already are doing prison time or were extradited from some other part of the country, Petray said.
The county forwards its gang information to the FBI but isn’t actively sharing the data with other agencies in Northwest Arkansas, he said.
“There’s nothing set as far as regional sharing, but we’re always willing to share our gang file with any other law-enforcement agency that wants to see it or benefit from it,” Petray said.
Kelly Cradduck, a candidate for Benton County sheriff, is one of the people spearheading the effort to implement a regional gang database in Northwest Arkansas.
While campaigning, Cradduck is on leave from the Rogers Police Department, where he is a sergeant supervising the gang unit.
He teaches gang awareness to police and at area schools.
“We need a database where all the agencies can enter into it and take information from it,” he said. “That’s one of the biggest roadblocks right now.
“ Even if everyone is collecting the data, it’s not compatible,” Cradduck said. “Not everyone is sharing information. When all you do is shove gang members two miles out of your city, you’re not fixing anything.”
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