The Bend Police Department is watching graffiti going up in Bend with a close eye. The names, symbols and colors could all be signs of potential gang activity.

The police want to make sure an increase in graffiti – which can be found in downtown and in parks, along the Bend Parkway and along the railroad tracks – doesn’t mean gang activity is on the rise.

But the department is bracing itself for that possibility. During the city of Bend’s budget hearings in May, Police Chief Andy Jordan requested funding for an additional officer for its criminal investigations team. Part of the new detective’s duties, Jordan said, would be to focus on investigating gang activity.

Jordan said when a prison opens in Madras, he fears a potential for a true gang problem.

He also said police have heard reports of people moving to Bend and wanting to establish a gang. Among those moving to Bend, police say they’ve seen more youths who have been connected to gangs in larger cities.

And people who work with troubled youths in the community say gang activity is here, but just isn’t visible yet.

”They are kind of invisible gangs, not hanging out on the street corners flashing colors,” said Joe Hayes, program manager for Cascade Youth and Family Center, which works with troubled, homeless and runaway youths. ”They are not here in the public eye due to the quality of the police department. They wouldn’t allow it. The gangs are trying to fly under the radar.”

Jordan wants to be ahead of the curve.

”We don’t want to blow it out of portion, but on the other hand, we don’t want to ignore it,” he said. ”Our experience with gangs is that agencies get behind the curve on this and wait until it becomes a huge issue. We are trying to prevent that.”

Gangs in Bend?

At this point the police department doesn’t believe there are organized gangs in Bend, Jordan said. They haven’t seen crime that is directed at other gangs, either. But he said there are ”groups of hoodlums” that act as ”wanna be” gang members.

”There are no organized gangs here that we can tell at this time,” Jordan said. ”But there are certainly a bunch of kids together who are pushing their weight around.”

A detective would have the chance to step back from day-to-day police work, Jordan said, and evaluate the potential of a gang problem in Bend. Jordan said he didn’t know how much of the new detective’s time would be focused on gang investigations.

While graffiti isn’t the only sign that gangs are being established in a city, an increase in it can be be an indicator, Jordan said.

”Really, graffiti is just the beginning,” he said.

Police Lt. Ken Stenkamp said the amount of graffiti found in Bend has gone up in the past six months.

The police have seen the same tags – which are like an artist’s signature of the person spraying the graffiti – repeated throughout Bend.

”A lot of this is just acts of vandalism, and the graffiti doesn’t have any meaning,” Jordan said. ”It’s kids making stuff up as they go along.”

Stenkamp said the police have seen graffiti markings that are used to identify gangs in larger cities.

”Just because it shows up doesn’t mean the gang is here,” he said. ”People imitate other people’s designs all the time.”

The police department has a volunteer program where groups go out and paint over the graffiti to try to discourage it.

”When you allow an area to decay, you are going to encourage more damage,” Stenkamp said. ”More decay allows for a lot of graffiti to show up and stay there.”

Hayes said there is no question that gang activity exists in Bend. He said many of the teenagers Cascade Youth and Family Center works with talk of gang activity they have encountered.

Between 60 percent and 70 percent of the teens the center works with have had some affiliation or contact with a gang, Hayes said. The center works with about 175 teens a year.

”Our clients have so much gang history. Not all of them, but many of them do,” Hayes said, noting that many of the teens come from pretty rough backgrounds.

From the tales Hayes has heard, the gangs in Bend are both organized criminal gangs and groups of youth acting as ”wanna be” gang members.

Unlike Portland or Seattle, gangs in Bend are not easily recognizable. But, Hayes said, there are about 25 groups of 10 or 12 people living together acting as a part of a gang in Bend – the ”invisible gangs.”

Hayes has seen gang members wearing yellow bandanas, heard names of gangs from larger cities linked to groups in Bend and has listened to stories of young women who have been involved in an organized crime group believed to be running drugs up and down U.S. Highway 97.

Hayes said last summer he heard stories of a boy from Oakland, Calif., who moved to Bend and was trying to start an extension of a gang in his previous town.

”It’s just like a franchise – you reach out and establish new markets,” Hayes said.

Hayes said the Oakland boy was arrested while in Bend and he is unsure if the gang ever got off the ground.

An ongoing concern

Gangs in Bend are not a new concept. The community has been talking about gangs for the past 20 years, Jordan said.

”I haven’t seen a city our size that doesn’t have gang problems,” he said.

Bob LaCombe, interim director of the Deschutes County Juvenile Community Justice Department Resource Center, said a few years ago a small group of juveniles was part of a gang and prosecuted as such.

Under Oregon law, gang members can have more time added on to their sentences if it is proven they are affiliated with a gang.

In the mid-1990s, several Bend juveniles were prosecuted under the law. The group mainly committed crimes of property damage and theft. The gang of 10 to 15 juveniles was homegrown, with its own colors, signs and nicknames. However, the gang acted more like a social clique and didn’t have the sophistication or organized crime component of big-city street gangs, LaCombe said.

Stenkamp also recalls a group of taggers – those who spray graffiti – that were active in the mid-’90s.

”I remember one summer they were all over the downtown area,” Stenkamp said.

Since that time, LaCombe said, the gang activity has gone down. But he predicts as the city continues to grow, so does the likelihood that gang members from other cities will come into Bend and instigate new groups here.

”Any time the population grows as fast as we grow, you get more people involved in gangs,” LaCombe said.