A new type of gang — quick to violence and difficult to track — is ensnaring Denver’s young people and driving the number of teens killed in the city to a level not seen here in recent years.
Some groups consist of a handful of teens, who only band together for a few months. Others gain staying power and, led by men in their early 20s, are some of the fastest growing gangs in Denver, according to those tasked with ending gang violence in Denver. Younger and younger kids are becoming involved in such groups, called hybrid gangs by law enforcement.
The violence is spilling across city borders as well. In Aurora, four teens have been shot and killed so far this year, tying the city’s previous five-year record set in 2017, police data shows.
The FBI first identified hybrid gangs as a rising trend in its 2011 National Gang Threat Assessment. The federal agency said the groups’ organization, size and loyalties are fluid and that the groups should be particularly concerning to law enforcement because “members often escalate their criminal activity in order to gain attention and respect.” In Denver, the groups have become more prominent and violent in the past two or three years, experts said.
The groups form in schools or juvenile detention centers and are hard to track, said Paul Callanan, director of the Gang Reduction Initiative of Denver. The groups lack any of the formal structure or established norms of traditional gangs. Rivalries are fluid and the groups aren’t always tied to a neighborhood.
“These are groups we have to take seriously,” said Jason McBride, program assistant and education specialist at Gang Rescue and Support Project. “We’re right in the middle of a gang war. Two to three years from now, if nothing happens, we’re going to see 11- and 12-year-olds in the street.”
Nine people 19 and younger have been shot and killed in Denver so far this year — the highest number of teen gun homicide victims seen in the past five years. In the wake of the violence, city leaders have convened a seemingly endless number of task forces, projects, teams and summits to address the increasingly complex and shifting gang landscape here. The nature of the hybrid gangs has forced a rethinking among community and city leaders of the best way to intervene.
Gangs, and the organizations attempting to end them, struggle over the same three things, Callanan said.
“Turf, ego and dollars,” he said.
Rising tensions
The tension among the hybrid gangs is palpable, anti-gang activists said. And it’s been brewing for years. McBride said he predicted more than a year ago that there would be a violent outburst among the city’s youth.
“This is the summer I thought we were going to have last year,” he said about 2019.
Gang violence in Denver often moves through cycles, Callanan said. Long-held conflicts will simmer into violence before going dormant. But that’s not what’s happening in Denver now, he said.
Instead, individual conflicts are quickly escalating from an argument into a shooting or other violent act. The conflicts can start over girls, a diss on social media or a party, Callanan said. Unlike in traditional gangs, there’s often no fight or drawn out escalation.
“A lot of times it goes straight from social media to a shooting,” McBride said. “We have to evolve with the gangs. And we haven’t.”
Some of the members of hybrid groups are also members of the city’s long-seated gangs, like the Bloods and the Crips. But the new groups are not divided by ethnicity or neighborhood, Callanan said.
“It’s no longer, ‘Hey I’m from the east side or the west side’, but just part of a group,” he said. “The new hood is the school.”
The shift in gang makeup has caused Callanan to rewrite the informational training that GRID provides on Denver gang culture, structure and intervention. The reasons teens join gangs hasn’t changed much, however. They’re looking for safety, status, money, a sense of community and a feeling that they are respected — even if that respect is gained through fear.
All advocates and city leaders point to the accessibility of guns as a major factor in the escalating violence. When gang-involved teens arm themselves, other kids then feel like they have to carry a weapon as well.
“The more presence of guns, the more they’re going to get used,” Callanan said.
The age of teens involved in gangs and hybrid groups has also become younger, experts said. Pat Hedrick, who runs the city’s Juvenile Services Center, said he receives calls from parents of children as young as six asking for help in making sure their kids stay on the right path.
“And we’re not set up to handle that,” he said.
Enough resources?
In recent months, Joel Hodge has spent a lot of time driving around Montbello and other neighborhoods hoping to connect with the young people there. He’s interrupted fights and brought food to kids who need it.
Hodge, executive director of Struggle of Love Foundation, has been working for decades to mentor Denver’s youth, fight poverty and minimize violence and is part of the city’s plan to address gang violence. The city in July awarded his organization contracts to work with youth deemed at risk for gang involvement and to provide mediation for gang conflicts.
“We’ve got a lot of work and a lot, a lot, a lot of long days in front of us,” Hodge said.
Last month, more than 150 people representing 75 organizations gathered for a two-day summit on youth violence prevention. Organizers and city staff said there are enough resources to combat youth violence, but not enough communication and coordination among the various groups.
“These problems are not problems that one agency can take on themselves,” Callanan said. “There’s clearly enough resources to address the violence, the question is how do you coordinate that?”
In September, Mayor Michael Hancock brought together the city’s top public safety officials to discuss youth gun violence after 17-year-old Diego Marquez was shot and killed in a park in the mayor’s neighborhood. The mayor’s office said it is not ready to release its recommendations, but said the same group plans to meet again Nov. 4.
“We’re still trying to pull together some short-term actions while we develop long-term solutions,” city spokesman Mike Strott said.
Like many social issues, interrupting gang violence requires delving into the layers of inequality that makes gangs seem attractive. Anti-gang work must address poverty, education, family structure, employment and so many other issues, advocates said.
“How do we effect a culture change where the first response is not to go get a gun?” Hedrick said.
Key to success is real-time analysis of data, Callanan said. What crimes are gang-related? Where are they happening? Can advocates catch disputes boiling on social media and act before they erupt into violence?
The more difficult task — and the key to success — is giving teens hope, Hodge and McBride said. Hope that they can have a productive, fulfilling life, despite poverty and isolation they may be feeling now.
“A 15-year-old told me, ‘If I die today, all my worries will be off my shoulder,'” Hodge said. “How do you respond to that?”
