Getting To Grips With Gang Feuds

Crime Scenes

Bealefeld Wants Smarter Cops, Not Just More Of Them

Recognizing Baltimore's feuding gangs should be easy:

Red for Bloods.

Blue for Crips.

But it's no longer as simple as looking for different-colored bandannas hanging from the back pockets of jeans.

Gang identifiers, in addition to traditional signs and tattoos, can be almost anything, manifested in wardrobes of significant variety.

A blue belt. Red rosary beads. Pockets turned inside out. The 'C' in a Colorado Rockies baseball cap. The red in a Cincinnati Reds hat.

There's no set uniform, according to a law enforcement expert, but there are recognized symbols that gang members incorporate into their everyday attire. They can dress differently and still fit in.

Some of these symbols helped police label Saturday's shooting inside the Light Street Pavilion at Harborplace as gang-related - a group of Bloods passed the Crips, a sucker-punch thrown, words exchanged, gunfire ensued. Two Bloods were wounded, their names found in a police gang database, the suspects long gone.

Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III complained Tuesday that the victims, "to put it mildly, are uncooperative in assisting us with who may have shot them."

But the city's top cop lamented that perhaps police could have used some of these known-to-law-enforcement symbols as an invitation to approach the two groups before they went into the pavilion, before they saw each other, before the shooting started, before violence once again dominated talk of the city's downtown tourist attraction.

"Cops ought to know a gangbanger when they see one," Bealefeld said.

"Some of these guys fly very overt signs or signals and we see that, whether it's flashing gang signs or something that someone says or a bandanna or colored beads, we should respond to that and we should engage."

Mayor Sheila Dixon has already said she wants cops to be more aggressive at the harbor.

"It doesn't mean we're going to arrest everyone we see wearing a Cincinnati Reds baseball cap," Bealefeld said, adding that on July 4, when more than 100,000 visitors packed the harbor for fireworks, he saw many people wearing the baseball caps of the Reds and Rockies, which he said have become a new status symbol for gang members across the country.

The Bloods and Crips, the top cop told reporters, "give us clues and we should act on those clues before trouble starts. That's what I want my cops to do. I want them to go up and say, 'Welcome to the harbor. Don't act like a jerk here. We want you to have a good time, but leave all this gang stuff at home. Or if you can't, go back home and we'll deal with you there.'