Gang-like signs by kids are troubling

Here’s something I wish I were making up, but I’m not. It was – literally – a disconcerting sign of the times.

Two weeks ago, my boy was in a group of children being photographed at church after celebrating their first Holy Communion. To loosen up the kids, the photographer asked them to make funny faces.

What did a bunch of the boys do? Cross their eyes or stick out tongues? Nope, they flashed goofy hand signals in imitation of gang signs.

They’re little kids, most of them 8-year-olds, many of them students at a private Catholic school. They don’t know the first thing about gangs – except what they’ve picked up through a popular culture that crosses all boundaries.

What I saw little boys do in church resonated with me. It came on the heels of a Kamiak High School freshman being beaten up near the school May 15. Mukilteo police investigated the possibility of gang ties.

Two other Kamiak students were arrested in the assault, and Mukilteo police have said they turned up no evidence the attack was gang-related.

Whether the fight involved gang members, wannabe gang members or nonaffiliated troublemakers, the facts are that a 15-year-old boy was left with a broken bone in his face and that at least 100 students stood by and watched.

That’s troubling. Troubling, too, are comments by Mukilteo Police Chief Mike Murphy distancing his community from the existence of gang activity.

In a front-page article in Tuesday’s Herald, Murphy was quoted as saying there have been no gang-related incidents in Mukilteo. He said it’s significant that the beating victim had an Everett address and wasn’t a product of Mukilteo schools.

Whatever your address, Murphy’s comments are naive and insulting. Since when do perpetrators of crimes check their Snohomish County maps for the dotted lines between cities?

For teens at every school – public or private, affluent or economically challenged – real trouble can be brewed up at lightning speed.

It’s only a text message, cell call or MySpace comment away. That’s our world today, whether you live in a Mukilteo mansion or a crowded apartment complex in nearby south Everett.

It’s an illusion to think that the city on your address label will keep your kids safe.

Ron Woldeit has seen geographic stereotypes for years. At 61, he’s the proud father of four sons who graduated from Mariner High School between 1993 and 2000. Retired and living in southwest Washington, Woldeit until recently had a Lynnwood address – not that it matters.

Woldeit has two sons with master’s degrees in electrical engineering, one with a bachelor’s degree in math and one studying engineering at the University of Washington.

Calling Mariner High School “a great place,” he said he now misses the school’s diversity. Older and less grand than Kamiak, Mariner is the Mukilteo School District’s other high school.

It’s located in unincorporated Snohomish County near 128th Street SW. Because of criminal activity in the area, Sheriff Rick Bart boosted law enforcement presence there more than a year ago.

“When they originally drew the (school district) boundary line years ago, obviously the Mukilteo side had money and the Mariner side was stereotyped as the ghetto,” Woldeit said.

He never considered moving his son to Kamiak and agrees with me that the possibility of trouble exists everywhere. Parental involvement, he said, “is the key to the whole thing.”

“I tried to give them all the tools I could, and I had to trust them to make the right decisions. Sometimes they made decisions I wouldn’t have made,” he said.

Through the years, Woldeit has followed news of tragedies involving local teenagers.

“Whether it’s a car wreck or a shooting, it doesn’t matter how it happened,” he said. “People never get over the loss of a child.”

As far as gangs go in Snohomish County, if they’re in one place, they can quickly be every place. Isn’t it smarter to tackle a problem together than to smugly point fingers?

Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlsteinjulie@heraldnet.com.