Gang graffiti spray-painted on town building

By Doug Thompson

Gang graffiti, also known as "tags" that mark territory, is appearing in Floyd County, but area law enforcement officials and national gang experts disagree on the origin of spray-painted signs.
Floyd County Sheriff’s Department Chief Investigator Jeff Dalton says a State Police investigator that works on gangs believes graffiti that reads “MM. Blood 4 Ever” on the sidewall of The Village Green on Main Street in Floyd is a tag for a Bloods African American gang.
Dalton says gang activity is not overly active in the county but that members of the Bloods and Crips gangs from Roanoke have operated in the area. An outlaw motorcycle gang, The Pagans, also has a presence in Floyd and surrounding counties. A fight between The Pagans and a Mexican motorcycle gang, the Ching A Lings, disrupted the annual “Blessing of the Bikes” in Dublin last year. Dalton says the Ching A Lings have all but disbanded but Pagans still operate in the area.
A Floyd County man who belonged to The Pagans was arrested near Pilot for possession of C4 plastic explosives. Other gang tags have appeared on bridges and overpasses in other parts of Floyd County and throughout Southwestern Virginia.
Graffiti tags identified from MS-13, a Latin gang, has been reported in other parts of the county. Reports of graffiti, both gang and non-gang related, have increased in recent months. The public restroom in Floyd has been vandalized several times, and restroom walls were painted with graffiti recently.
Jeff Artis, a Roanoke-based community activist and expert on gangs, says gang presence is increasing throughout Southwestern Virginia.
"Does Virginia have a gang problem? Yes, even in the mountains of Southwest Virginia," Artis says on his web site. "Most of the communities have admitted that gangs are a problem and are aggressively fighting back. Unfortunately, some communities in Southwestern Virginia have decided to ignore the problem."
Sgt. Richard Valdemar, a retired Los Angeles Police Department detective who worked with the LAPD gang unit, says Latin-based gangs like MS-13 fall under an umbrella crime syndicate called "Surenos," which he says controls more than 500 street gangs and answer to Le Eme, a powerful gang that grew out of the California prison system and soon spread nationwide.
"The Sureños serve their masters—the Mexican Mafia prison gang," Valdemar says. "This alliance is the most dangerous prison gang and disruptive group combination."
The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), a Washington, DC-based think tank, says the increase in gang activity in Virginia is tied directly to the increase in illegal immigration.
In a 2007 report, "Illegal Immigration and Gangs in Virginia," CIS said "rural jurisdictions are experiencing increasing illegal settlement and gang activity with little exposure to immigration law enforcement." The report also said rural law enforcement has been slow to react to the growing problem of gangs and that members of gangs often operate under the radar.
Gang members, the report says, "are typically employed by day in construction, farming and other unskilled jobs."
The Latin gangs first moved into Northern Virginia with MS-13 establishing a foothold in Fairfax County in 1993. The gangs then spread east to the Virginia Beach-Norfolk area and West to the rural communities of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
From January 2004 through March 2007 police in Virginia made 274 arrests, CIS reports, including nine gang leaders, 228 gang members and 37 "gang associates."
In February of this year, agents for the U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested 36 gang members who were also illegal aliens in a sweep through Northern Virginia and as far south as Harrisonburg.
Harrisonburg has responded with a special gang unit within the Harrisonburg police department and Rockingham County Sheriff's Department. Called CHARGE (Combined Harrisonburg and Rockingham Gang Enforcement), a press release from the unit states:
"Since 2003, there have been over 100 reported incidents of gang related graffiti throughout the City of Harrisonburg and the County of Rockingham. The graffiti has been linked to the gangs Surenos or SUR 13, Mara Salvatrucha or MS 13, Latin Kings, Bloods, Crips, Gangster Disciples and La Sombra. These gangs have also been responsible for and/or related to a number of other criminal incidents over the past two years to include but not limited to; robbery, abduction, assault, malicious wounding, theft, gang participation, gang recruitment of juveniles and drug related charges."
Gang experts say the appearance of gang-related graffiti is often the first evidence of gang activity in a region.
"The calling card of gang members, regardless of affiliation, is graffiti," says retired New York City gang investigator Don Hamilton. "Graffiti means a gang has staked out their turf and if you have gang tags in your area that means a gang has claimed it as their own."
The Floyd County Sheriff's Department, like most Southwestern Virginia law enforcement agencies, does not have a specific gang-related unit. The department does participate with a regional drug enforcement unit that deals with gangs because drug manufacturing and distribution are often gang-related activities.