MOSES LAKE — Be alert — that was the message from educators and police at a parent night meeting held at the Moses Lake School District on Tuesday to discuss youth gangs.

“Do you know where your kid’s at?” said Shelby Jensen, school safety coordinator for Educational Service District 125, based in Tri-Cities. “Do you know who they're around? Do we make sure that we’ve got frequent bedroom checks? Are we getting up in their business?”

About 40 people turned out for the event, which included a discussion of how to spot signs of gang involvement, the reasons youths join gangs and what the gangs are doing behind the scenes.

Hunter McLeod, threat assessment coordinator for the North Central Educational Service District, recounted a training she had attended when she was a police officer.

“An individual spoke — he was an ex-gang member — he said ‘It’s like it's a parallel universe. The hardest thing for anyone to realize is that when you are thinking this way, and your brain has shifted to this, it's hard to think through what a quote-unquote normal day might look like, for someone who's not involved in this life.' He compared it to being addicted to something. It’s really easy for someone who’s not addicted to something to say 'Hey, stop using that.’ But for someone who’s addicted, that’s not going to happen.”

There are two major gangs in the Moses Lake area, said Moses Lake Police Department Cpl. Ray Lopez, a school resource officer for the Moses Lake School District. The Sureños started as a prison gang affiliated with the Mexican Mafia, he said, and their trademarks are blue clothing and the number 13. The Norteños, who also originated in prison out of self-protection from the Sureños, wear red and use the number 14 as a symbol. But the colors and symbols are less of a uniform and more like a stealth identification, Lopez said.

“In most cases, one of these kids will have something that represents the Sureños’ colors, the blue colors, whether it's a do-rag, whether it's a bracelet, something. They have something on, and they're trying to be sneaky, or they're trying to hide the stuff.”

Often gang members — or kids who look up to the gangs — will draw or scratch or burn the gang symbols into their skin, in ways that can be easily covered up when authority figures are around.

The Sureños are the primary gang in this area, Lopez said, but the Norteños are more aggressive and probably the more dangerous of the two, particularly when it comes to gun violence.

It can be difficult to pin down gangs, Lopez said, because they don’t necessarily stick to particular neighborhoods. 

“We have kids that are red and blue, and they live in the same apartment complex right across from one another, and they get along during the day, but when it comes night time, that's when the stuff hits the fan,” he said.

Both gangs and their various offshoots are recruiting children younger and younger, McLeod said, starting in elementary school. 

The trend is for 11-14-year-old children to commit some of the harsher crimes because the sentencing is less than it might be for adults in their 20s, she said. 

People tend to think of gangs as primarily male, but girls play important roles, Jensen said. Because they’re less intimidating, many female gang members help with the recruitment side of sex trafficking. And because police are reluctant to search them too thoroughly, girls are used for carrying drugs, money and weapons.

“They are not treated well,” Jensen said. “It doesn’t matter how high up they are, they’re not treated well … They’ll get passed around.”

Parents need to check their children’s bedrooms frequently, all three speakers emphasized. 

“Some of these kids, honestly, the parents don't know,” Lopez said. “We walked into one house — it was a female — we walked in her bedroom, and it was like, ‘Wow!’ It was all blue. She had a toy AK-47 on her wall with the blue right underneath it. Her parents had no clue what that meant.”

“Where are they? What’s the accountability?” Jensen said. “I can tell you, as a mom of six kids, it would irritate them when I would say ‘Oh, you're going to so-and-so's house? What's their parents’ phone number? I'm gonna give them a call-up.’ ‘Are you kidding me?’ ‘No, I'm not, actually. Your older sister taught me better than that.’”

Part of what makes the battle against gang influence, or indeed many other influences, an uphill one is that teenagers are much more conversant with social media than the adults who are supposed to be keeping an eye on them. Social media can be used to set up crimes like drug deals, communicating through emojis that they know the meanings of and parents frequently don’t. Even innocent-looking gaming sites can have hidden communication features, which makes them a natural breeding ground for predators.

“They're the masters of technology,” McLeod said. “We are keeping up with them, but this is their bread and butter. So it's really important that we're making sure that we know what's going on and who they're talking to and why.”

“Your kids are two, three clicks away from pornography,” Jensen said. “We would not take your kids downtown Seattle or Spokane and say and drop them off and say, ‘Hey, we'll be back in a couple hours. Best of luck to you, I hope you do OK.’ But when we give them social media, or we give them access to internet … That's essentially what you're doing is (saying), ‘Here's the world. Good luck on navigating it.’”

Joel Martin may be reached via email at [email protected].

Editor's Note: Gangs are present in most cities in the Columbia Basin and regularly change their recruitment methods and other aspects of their organization. Parents are encouraged to speak with their children regularly and reach out to law enforcement with any concerns they may have.