Escondido police refocus on teens in gangs

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Kayden Romo was just days away from graduating from middle school when he was fatally stabbed in a fight on an Escondido street last month. He was 14 years old. The two suspects police arrested and accused of involvement in the fight were only two or three years older than him.

And Nearly two months after Jose Manuel Ramirez, 37, was stabbed to death in Escondido in April, six people were arrested on suspicion of murder. Four were under 18 years.

Authorities believe both killings were gang-related. Police say the number of juveniles arrested for violent crimes has increased this year and that many of these crimes appear to be related to gang violence.

The police responded to youth violence and a general lack of usable intelligence about gangs byA special response team was set up, two officers were taken off patrol duty but kept on the streets to focus on gangs and at-risk youth.

Officers Jesus Vea and Chandler Hoppal spend the summer driving around Escondido, remembering names and learning who hangs out with whom. They drive through parks, street corners and places where youth might congregate.

“We need officers who are not only doing enforcement, but who are meeting these kids on a daily basis,” said Lt. Ryan Hicks, who oversaw the team’s recovery effort. “You see the same kids over and over again and say ‘hi’ every day.”

The two most recent murders have “revealed a certain gap in the police’s knowledge of what was happening on the ground,” Hicks said.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, officers were supposed to minimize contact as much as possible, but now there is a push to get them out of their cars and get them interacting with the public.

The idea is to build relationships, the lieutenant said.

Escondido used to have special response teams, but they were eliminated several years ago when staffing levels dropped. Staffing levels have increased in the last year, but are not yet back to where the administration wants them to be, but the recent increase in juvenile crime is a priority.

Escondido police said they arrested 59 juveniles for violent crimes two years ago and 57 last year.

But this year, almost six months later, 41 young people have already been arrested for violent crimes, This means that more than 80 such arrests are likely to take place this year.

Hicks points out that these numbers only take into account arrests and that there are other incidents that likely involved teenagers. “We see a lot of descriptions of suspects as teenagers,” he said. Also, he said, more teens seem to be carrying guns and turning fistfights into stabbings and shootings.

When the police intervened, have discovered mOre tagger crews. They’re also observing a strange phenomenon – the revival of the name of an essentially defunct Escondido gang. There appears to be no connection to the few remaining members of the decades-old gang, and police don’t know what led to the name’s use.

Maybe it’s a fragment of information that Vea and Hoppal could dig up.

On Wednesday afternoon, there weren’t many teenagers out and about under the scorching sun as Hoppal and Vea toured the city from top to bottom. For example, although they may be on the lookout for a particular vehicle linked to recent robberies, they are not on patrol in the traditional way and are not called from one incident to the next.

They are proactive, not reactive. And they are present. “We try to prevent crime. When we drive around, we show our flag. We try to act as a deterrent,” said Hoppal.

you are not so interested in handing out tickets or making arrests – even though they recently tracked and caught a repeat DUI suspect. They are interested in talking to people. They pay attention to who is together, in what car, in what neighborhood. This type of information helps Create a database to verify encounters and connections. This can be gold for gang investigators. Sometimes the information can help document people as gang members or associates, although such documentation requires much more than one encounter.

Shortly after starting work on Wednesday, they stopped a young man in the middle of town after he made a questionable right turn, parked quickly, and tried to get out of the car. But they stopped too quickly for him to get out. His fake window tint was reason enough to stop and talk to him. It turns out they had stopped him before. This time they had a few minor reasons to give him a ticket. They didn’t. Honey, not vinegar.

“I know you guys are cool,” he said.

“We try to be cool,” Hoppal replied.

Later, they stopped a gang member who was on parole and searched his car. They also stopped someone whose registration was expired and who had had several recent run-ins with police, mostly for methamphetamine. They found nothing illegal and made no arrests.

The pair soon pulled over a Latino man in a pickup truck. The driver protested his traffic stop for violating traffic laws and accused them of ethnic discrimination. Officers told him the stop was lawful. One of the officers said the driver also noticed the SUV they were driving – a clearly marked police vehicle, but without a light bar on the roof – and told them that people in town know them and their behavior.

Patty Huerta is the director of Escondido Education COMPACT, which has a long history of working with youth. She has seen an increasing number of children joining or joining gangs, and she supports the renewed focus by the police.

“We think it’s great that they have the team and will be the eyes and ears on the street again. We had really good success with that back then,” she said.

Agner Medrano is the pastor of Victory Outreach Escondido and a community activist who has a long history of working with gangs and families. He supports Efforts to build relationships, but worries that approach could be intimidating and said some in the community have noticed. He would like to see it as a partnership.

Hicks said it was fair to criticize. “I’m open to new ways we can do things,” he said, “but doing nothing is not going to solve a problem.”

Will drive around and stop and talk to people?Please help? Hicks knows that “some of these guys will lie to you every time they see you.” The idea is to know names and faces and maybe build relationships.

As Vea and Hoppal drove through town on Wednesday, their journey took them down Wanek Road, where they stopped next to a makeshift memorial for Kayden, in the area where the eighth-grader was fatally stabbed.