Local police take issue with state gang report

From the Fond du Lac Reporter

November 12, 2008

Local law enforcement officials say they are perplexed by a state Department of Justice report that indicates Fond du Lac and Ripon may have "a significant gang problem." "I talked this morning with (Fond du Lac Police Chief) Tony Barthuly and (Ripon Police Chief) Dave Lukoski, and we're all very surprised about the findings," Fond du Lac County Sheriff Mick Fink said Tuesday. The report says law enforcement agencies in Fond du Lac County report a significant problem with street gangs, and a moderate problem with both Hispanic and motorcycle gangs. The Fond du Lac and Ripon police departments reported more gang activity and gang-related problems than did the Fond du Lac County Sheriff's Department, according to the report. "To date, 10 known gangs are believed to be operating in Fond du Lac County," the Northeast Wisconsin Gang Assessment reports. Ripon reports 10 to 12 active members in the Warriors street gang. Ripon has had a very minimal gang problem, counters Lukoski. "We've had little pockets of gang activity that have cropped up, but we've pretty much taken care of them as they've developed," he said. He was surprised when he heard the findings in the assessment and said he is trying to track down when the survey was conducted and who supplied the Ripon data.

Subjective reporting
The state did not define gang activity when collecting data, said Craig Klyve, director of the Investigative Services Bureau, the agency that coordinated the report. "It was more of a subjective reporting from the agencies as to what their experiences have been." That means police or school officials who saw graffiti or vandalism could have reported it as gang activity, and many did. The report linked other crimes such as disorderly conduct and drunken driving to gang members. The report relied on data from 20 of 58 police agencies in the seven-county area, and information from 35 schools and community groups in Brown, Calumet, Fond du Lac, Manitowoc, Outagamie, Sheboygan and Winnebago counties. A list of the police agencies that reported was not included. The Ripon School District reported street gangs as a significant problem and the Fond du Lac School District reported them as a moderate problem, according to the report. Fond du Lac and Ripon law enforcement also reported moderate problems with various motorcycle gangs, including the Outlaws in Fond du Lac and the Zodiacs in Ripon, according to the report. Five known gangs are operating in the city of Fond du Lac and Ripon has six, according to the report. Fond du Lac's gang problems have all but disappeared since a flare-up in the mid- to late-1990s, said Major Dennis Fortunato, who said it appears answering "yes" to a survey question may have moved a community into the "significant problem" category. Periodically, Fond du Lac police officers receive a report of a crime committed by someone with gang affiliations elsewhere, he said. Graffiti tied to gangs with a presence in Wisconsin also shows up. "But do we have people walking down the street that are known gang-bangers? No," he said. It's the same with drug activity. Police will arrest an individual who espouses gang affiliation, Fortunato said.

'Big stretch'
"But it's a big stretch to say we have organized gangs running crime in Fond du Lac," he said. Fink said he received a survey from the DOJ in July and forwarded it to a jail officer who tracks gang information on inmates. County dispatch records, he said, show two calls since January 2004 that were prioritized as gang-related. Both were in the city of Fond du Lac in 2007.
"If gangs are here," Fink said, "they are staying under our radar. Usually you see gang indications by graffiti or wearing of colors. I drive through areas of town some might describe as the rougher areas and I'm not seeing it." He said a possible explanation for the local results could be data supplied to the state from school districts and agencies that work with kids.
Other findings from the report:
* The Sheriff's Department reports that gangs were tracked extensively in the late 1990s, but gang activity has been relatively quiet over the past 10 years.
* Gangs move to Fond du Lac from the Milwaukee and Chicago area and use Highway 41 as a major route of travel.
* Gangs in Fond du Lac and Ripon are associated with the crimes of battery, criminal damage to property, harboring runaways, drug trafficking, sexual assaults, stabbings and theft.
The Department of Justice drafted the report after the local district of the U.S. Attorney General's Office offered grant money to an agency that would study gangs in northeastern Wisconsin. The state does not plan to conduct similar studies across the state. The report, the first of its kind, should not cause panic, Klyve said. "It shouldn't be anything that alarms people, and it's not like there's a gang problem in the Fox Valley region that is anywhere near as severe as Milwaukee or Chicago or some of the large, urban areas."