Asian Gangs Rise Strikes a Paradox

Police describe them as exceptionally good students. And exceptionally violent.

Most of the 23 young men arrested for gang activity in a police sweep of the San Gabriel Valley last week do not fit the underclass theory of gang making.

Asian gangs in the suburbs are different. Unlike their African American or Latino counterparts, many Asian gang members come from middle-class homes and attend good schools, authorities say.

Their parents often are professionals with good jobs or business owners. What the parents want more than anything from their progeny is that they study hard and get good grades so they can go to a prestigious college, according to Asian American community specialists.

They believe that watching their children graduate from an Ivy League school would make their sacrifices worthwhile.

But sometimes that gratification is denied them because parents realize too late that it may be impossible to bring up “pure Asian” kids in America.

“A lot of parents don’t even know that their kids are involved in gangs,” said Do Kim, who has counseled many young Asian Americans in trouble with the law. “They think their kids are doing great because they’re getting a 3.5 grade-point,” said the Harvard-educated, Koreatown-bred staffer at the Korean Youth and Community Center.

Asian gangs used to operate primarily in inner-city ethnic enclaves such as Chinatown or Koreatown, but with the shift of the Asian population to the suburbs, gangs have cropped up everywhere, Kim said.

Authorities are finding that with Asian youngsters in the suburbs, good grades and good behavior do not necessarily go hand in hand.

“Some of them lead dual lives,” said San Marino High School Supt. Thomas Godley. “They go to class, study, get good grades. Then on weekends they run with gangs.”

“The kids are looking for excitement--and a sense of belonging,” said Christopher Kuk, a Chinese American probation officer in charge of the San Gabriel Valley for the Los Angeles County Probation Department.

Straddling two often clashing cultures--Eastern emphasis on the family and Western focus on the individual--young immigrants feel a lot of pressure and confusion too, Asians American community workers say.

Conflicting pulls engender intergenerational conflicts for which there are no easy solutions.

So wide apart are their differences that they stop talking about sensitive issues and communication ceases, said anthropologist Nonoy Alsaybar, who is doing a doctoral dissertation at UCLA on urban Asian gangs.

“So many of these kids are caught between cultures, and they are trying to construct their identity,” he said.

Meanwhile, the adults are so busy sacrificing for their children that they don’t have time to find out what’s happening.

“You lose your extended family when you arrive in America,” said Filipino American attorney Rodel Rodis, who has represented many Asian youngsters in trouble with the law. “Back home, there are aunts and uncles, grandparents and neighbors who all take part in raising the young,” he said.

But here, youngsters come to an empty house after school because their parents are working, he said.

For some, gangs have taken the place of an extended family, said Ernie Takemoto, a Los Angeles County probation officer who has worked with gangs for eight years.

“They find solace and comfort in the gangs,” he said.

Though Asian gangs come in all ethnicities, Japanese are noticeably absent.

Takemoto, who is a third-generation Japanese American, believes that it has to do with their assimilation. Because the Japanese American community has been here for five generations now, it has an infrastructure that newer communities do not.

Authorities say there are more than 100 gangs and 10,000 gang members in Los Angeles.

Unlike black and Latino gangs, Asian gangs are not territorial, officials say. They’re mobile and favor “home invasions” and extortion.

Older members--some in their 50s--use the young ones as “muscles and messengers,” Kuk said.

Some Asian gangs have ties to organized crime here and in Asia, he said, adding that the return of Hong Kong to China in 1997 is likely to exacerbate the local crime scene.

Unlike the old Chinatown and Koreatown gangs, the new suburban groups are not ethnically exclusive. “These days, Asian gangs take anybody,” Kuk said.

On Monday, concerned Asian American community leaders met in Koreatown to discuss the issue.

“It’s getting so bad that we really have to do something,” said Bong-Hwan Kim, executive director of the Korean Youth and Community Center.

Attending the first meeting of the as yet unnamed group were lawyers and community activists representing the Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese communities in Los Angeles and Orange counties.

One focus of the group is to make law enforcement agencies more sensitive to diversity within the Asian communities.

“We hear stories about Korean-speaking officers being in charge of Cambodian gangbangers,” Bong-Hwan Kim said, referring to vast cultural and linguistic differences between the two.

The latest law enforcement sweep does not reflect the extent of the gang activity in Southern California. For every reported gang-related crime in Los Angeles, seven go unreported, Kuk said.

Four gun-wielding Korean gang members recently terrorized a Korean American family in Los Angeles and made off with $30,000 worth of jewelry.

But the victims did not report the crime for a week.

“We were too terrified to call the police,” a victim said.

The fear of retribution makes it difficult to keep tabs on Asian gangs, officials say. But they also note that victims are reluctant to come forward because law enforcement officials cannot guarantee their safety.

Meanwhile, gangs are getting more violent and more sophisticated, Kuk said.

“They will pose a big problem for the law enforcement in the next decade.”