Area sees gang crime

I first started at the Bemidji (Minn.) Pioneer as an intern in the summer of 1996. That would begin six years as a news reporter, sports reporter and copy editor for a small, six-day-per-week daily newspaper in northern Minnesota. I wrote a large range of stories from multiple beats, to features to sports, my favorite being the coverage of the Red Lake Reservation High School basketball team named the Warriors. Here is a collection of my stories from my time at the Pioneer.

May 15, 1997

By Devlyn Brooks

Staff Writer

Contrary to what some people in Bemidji may want to believe, there is a problem with gang-related activity here, a Bemidji police officer told a crowd of mostly American Indian parents at the Middle School Wednesday night.

"The biggest battle is to get people to take (gang-related activity) seriously here," said Bemidji Police Officer Michael Haines at a "Parents for Non-Violence" session sponsored by the Bemidji Indian Education Program. "We need to take it seriously."

The 3 1/2 hour feast and session consisted of four panel discussions involving Minneapolis police officers, local county and city law enforcement officers, local Indian high school students and local Indian cultural leaders. It was funded by the Beltrami County Family Services Collaborative.

According to Haines, enforcement against gang activity in Bemidji is a recent movement, but it has to be taken more serious soon because the activity is escalating.

In the last year in Bemidji, there have been two car-jackings -- one at knifepoint and one at gunpoint -- shootings and even a discovery by the Police Department of a crack house operation, and all of these crimes are believed to be gang related, Haines said.

In addition, he said there have been two known gang members who have been arrested for various crimes in the Bemidji area, but both arrests were incidents of luck.

The first was put away on criminal sexual charges because he was having sex with local teen-age girls who were being initiated into a gang. It is known as being "loved" into the gang, Haines said. The second gang member was arrested for allegedly operating a "crack house" on Irvine Avenue, but the police were only able to arrest him after investigating the house after a freak shooting incident.

"That's here in Bemidji. It's here. ... It's here," he said. "We can't put the blinders on any more. We've got (gang activity). And there's a snowball effect in town."

Haines said in the last six months, the Police Department has begun to track youths involved in gang activity, but as for gang prevention activities, there are none yet.

Terri Gunsalus, the recently appointed school liaison officer for the Beltrami County Sheriff's Department, said her office has not been able to identify gang activity in the rural parts of the county as easy as in Bemidji. But she said she does believe it is happening.

"I'm happy with this area. We have a lot of criminal behavior (occurring), but it's not as bad as it is in the Twin Cities," she said. "But I'm still scared of it, and I don't want it here."

When Gunsalus begins her new position as school liaison officer this fall, she said the only way to curb gang activity is for students to tell authorities about gang behavior. Otherwise, the Sheriff's Office will not be able to do a thing about it.

After the presentation by the panels, the parents were also asked to sign an "absolutely no tolerance" petition toward gang behavior in the school district, and the session's facilitator, Jim Brown, announced he also will ask governing bodies at the county, city and school district level to ratify the petition.