MOSES LAKE — Gang activity is occurring in schools and communities around the Columbia Basin, Grant County sheriff’s deputies say.
The sheriff’s chief deputy, John Turley, told the Columbia Basin Herald all schools have problems with gangs, which target young people for recruitment, and that the problems and the most gang activity is in Moses Lake, the largest population center in the region.
Moses Lake School Superintendent Steven L. Chestnut disagreed, saying gang activity was not that big of an issue.
Wearing gang-associated colors and displaying gang symbols in schools is prohibited, and only 3 percent of the 171 suspensions and expulsions in the first quarter of the school year were gang-related, Chestnut said.
The school system has two student resource officers who deal with gang activity and whose work has led to some gang-related arrests, he added.
School resource officers are of limited use, especially in gathering information, Turley said.
“They probably do a good job in trying to minimize, I’m wanting to say, assaults. It still happens,” he said. “They’re there basically as window dressing. They’re not there for any kind of investigative purpose.”
Turley noted that grade schools as well as homes, businesses and other public and private property can be gang targets. In Moses Lake, damage to two grade schools from gang-related graffiti and other vandalism this year exceeds $60,000.
Warden Police Chief Ken Krebs said recent cleanup of graffiti from seven gangs in the small town has cost nearly $100,000, including use of national Guard members from the Moses Lake area to paint over the scribblings and scrawlings.
Police Chiefs Dean Mitchell of Moses Lake and Darin Smith of Royal City also reported growing graffiti problems.
The sheriff’s office formed a gang unit last spring to identify gang members, document graffiti, gather gang intelligence and make contacts with gang affiliates, but it was canceled after a couple of months because of budget cuts, Turley said.
Deputy Joe Harris said he was able to document 200 gang members and “I don’t even think that’s half of it.” He added that the groups range from racially and ethnically based to white supremacists and bikers and that some began as prison gangs.
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