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A new brand of gangster grows up in a killing culture

"I stabbed about three people," he says, his angular face betraying no particular emotion. He mentions it offhandedly, like a kid trying to be modest about something in which he takes great pride.

Now 18, Danger, has been a dedicated gang member for the past five years. It was his homies, his brothers in arms, who bestowed the street name.

"I been in it forever," said the narrow-eyed young man, fresh from a six-month stint at the juvenile lockup Maple Lane, where he served time for robbery and assault. "Grew up with it from like when I was a baby."

Gang membership - which has earned Danger a 49-page rap sheet loaded with weapons, burglary, robbery, car theft, harassment and assault charges - was a family tradition, he says, and he can't recall ever wanting anything else. His father, now dead, was involved, as are his older brothers. He is estranged from his mother, who lives in White Center.

As a boy, he did the bidding of his elders on a series of missions - "It was like 'Go here, rob somebody. Go there, do that' " - and then, after a sufficient number he was initiated, "jumped-in" the traditional way, by a crowd of gangsters who beat him until he could fight his way out.

After that it was official. Danger had become, at 13, part of the sprawling local network of Hispanic gangs that run under the Sureños umbrella.

There are as many as 100 such groups in and around Seattle - black, Latino, Asian and white gangs - some with carefully structured hierarchies that get their marching orders from prison inmates, others taking a more haphazard approach. During the first eight months of 2008, their gunplay has killed at least a half-dozen teenagers, injured scores more and left police scrambling to find new ways of addressing a problem that is decades old. Records show at least 43 youth victims of gun assaults in Seattle since the beginning of the year.

"The age of the kids is the difference now - and their access to firearms," said Lt. Ron Wilson, commander of the Seattle Police Department Gang Unit, who knows of initiates as young as 10. "We have more drive-by shootings than we had a decade ago. But the most alarming thing is the youth getting in, and the violence there. We have to address those issues."

Seattle's gangs are nothing compared with those in larger cities, such as Los Angeles, Detroit and Chicago. But from this fledgling quality springs much of the current chaos. Crime becomes a chest-beating signature, as well as a way of binding members to one another. Loyalty is proven both through tithing to the group, and wreaking bloody retribution for any perceived disrespect. Often, the youngest members carry out the bulk of the work. Elders reap the rewards.

"Are these hardened criminals? For the most part, no," Wilson said. "It's the environment that they're in that puts them at risk. I just think it's terrible that you've got 17-year-olds killing 17-year-olds. To me, they're just babies."

Though Seattle has gone through periodic bouts of gang activity before, police and gang members themselves say the pattern today is different. While groups that were active here during the 1980s and '90s derived their names, and to some degree their sense of mission, from Los Angeles' original Bloods and Crips, the city's gangland family tree is now far more fractured. Cliques have split off, recombined and turned to warring against each other. Some rivalries, like the longtime rift between Central District and South End gangs, stretch back generations. Others seem to spring up on a whim.

The Little Valley Lokotes, for example, are based in Yakima, but a Seattle chapter of the "crazies" has recently sprung up and initiated about 30 members in the past year - most of them teenagers and all ready to tear into any other crew should their "shot-caller" deem it necessary.

"We don't mess with anyone for no reason - just go up to someone and fight," said Scoop, 22, who gets the word, sets up planning meetings and organizes initiations for the LVL. "Our gang is not just about shooting people. We got morals - no mothers, no children. But you do what you got to do."
Gangland family

On a chilly Saturday afternoon last month, Scoop was at Lincoln Park in West Seattle, pacing and cursing as he waited for his daughter and her mother, an ex-girlfriend, to arrive. Many of Scoop's recent recruits were there as well, preparing marinated chicken for a barbecue celebrating the child's sixth birthday.