Officials address gangs in Lynchburg area

There are more than 40 identified gangs in Lynchburg, and MS-13, a criminal gang made up mostly of Salvadoran nationals or first-generation Salvadoran-Americans, as well as other Central and South American immigrants, was not one of them until last week, Sgt. Gary Fink, with the Lynchburg Police Department, said Tuesday.

Fink said there's never been an incident involving MS-13, the gang suspected to be involved in the homicide of 17-year-old Raymond Wood, in Lynchburg before now.

"This is the first time that we've had any kind of members of MS-13 inside the city," Fink said. "? I've been here 18 years in Lynchburg, and there is not one documented incident of an MS-13 crime being committed here until the other day."

On Friday, the Bedford County Sheriff's Office announced Victor Arnoldo Rodas, 19; Jose Coreas-Ventura, 21; and Lisandro Posada-Vazquez, 24, had been charged with second-degree murder in connection to Wood's death, and Sheriff Mike Brown stated all were "known MS-13 gang members."

All three are undocumented immigrants from El Salvador and were arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs EnforcementMarch 28 after initially being detained by the Bedford County Sheriff's Office, according to Carissa Cutrell, an ICE public affairs officer.

Rodas and Posada-Vazquez both are being held at the Farmville Detention Center after their arrest by ICE on March 28.

At the Blue Ridge Regional Jail, where Coreas-Ventura is being held, Tim Trent, with the Blue Ridge Regional Jail Authority, said gangs are becoming more nondescript, encouraging members to forego tattoos, colors and symbols traditionally associated with their gang.

"They try to keep it low-key, low profile and we do what we can to be proactive," he said. "If they don't say anything or don't have any markings, it's just like processing any individual that comes into the jail. We can't really assume that everybody is a gang member."

Coreas-Ventura also has been charged with first-degree murder in Montgomery, Maryland, in connection with the June 2016 slaying of 18-year-old Cristian Antonio Villagran-Morales that occurred in the city of Gaithersburg.

Capt. Paul Liquorie, director of the Montgomery Police Department's special investigations division, said gang violence recently has been on the rise in his area.

"Since June of 2015, we started to see a spike in gang-related violence in Montgomery County and ? in speaking with our regional partners throughout the national capital region, I believe they've seen similar spikes," he said.

He said Montgomery has seen 15 gang-related homicides since that time, seven of them tied to MS-13. The spike in gang violence seems to coincide with a crackdown on gangs in El Salvador, he said.

The homicides can be a "requirement to further one's status in the gang" or the result of orders from higher-up individuals in the gang, Liquorie said.

Although Rodas, Coreas-Ventura and Posada-Vazquez lived in Lynchburg for a period of time, Fink said they never were identified previously as gang members because they weren't doing anything illegal and weren't drawing attention to themselves.

In a news release Tuesday, U.S Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-6th District, said he is asking John Kelly, Department of Homeland Security secretary, to provide more information on Rodas, Coreas-Ventura and Posada-Vazquez, including their immigration and criminal histories.

Goodlatte requests info on suspects in Lynchburg teen's slayingU.S Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-6th, said Tuesday he is asking Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly to provide information on three men accused of killing a Lynchburg teenager.

The letter dated Tuesday requests "the complete alien file" of all three suspects be provided to the House Judiciary Committee. The letter requests any of the suspect's criminal history, notices that they appear in court, records of their encounters with law enforcement, and information about when and why they may have been released from custody.

The letter also asks whether they applied for deferred action, a reference to Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. DACA - an initiative by President Barack Obama's administration in 2012 - allows certain immigrants who came to the United States as children, often referred to as "Dreamers," to request a period of deferment from deportation and authorization to work.

"We are going to find out more information from their files, exactly how they got there, their status," Goodlatte said in a brief interview Saturday before the Amherst County Republican Committee gubernatorial candidates forum.

Today there are 43 identified gangs in Lynchburg, and Fink said the only qualifications to be considered a gang are: three or more members, some type of shared symbol such as a color or hand sign and they must commit a criminal act either in the name of the group or that benefits the group as a whole. Fink said 98 percent of the 586 gang members identified in Lynchburg are adults, while the other 2 percent are juveniles.

"Based on the number of [permanent residents] and the number of gang members, it's a .007 percent involvement in gangs as far as gang members identified, which is really low as far as Lynchburg goes," Fink said, stating the levels of gang activity have decreased in Lynchburg since the early 2000s. " ? .007 percent [of the population] out of 80,000 people is very low."

According to the National Gang Intelligence Center's 2015 national gang report, half of federal, state, local and tribal law enforcement agencies reported an increase in street gang membership and gang-related crime during the past two years.

According to the FBI, MS-13 is a criminal gang that recruits by glorifying the "gang lifestyle" online and by absorbing smaller gangs.

According to the National Crime Prevention Council, gangs recruit heavily from public schools, and members often join to feel accepted, protected or because they feel their "economic future are bleak."

LPD currently works with the Boys & Girls Club of Greater Lynchburg, the Blue Ridge Regional Jail Authority, local school systems and citizens to proactively fight gang activity through identification of members, symbols, signs and more.

Fink said LPD works to prevent younger adults and children from joining gangs by partnering with the Boys & Girls Club to provide programs such as Badges for Basketball, Badges for Baseball and the StreetSMART Program, which seeks to counsel young people on how to effectively resist gangs and violence.

LPD Officer A. Khaja, a member of the LPD Community Action Team, which acts as a liaison between the police, the community and local agencies, said the StreetSMART Program works to educate attendees on how to handle their emotions, talk down aggressive individuals, recognize gang-related rituals or imitations, but most importantly, it teaches attendees to ask for help.

"We have ages 10 to 14, hopefully in the future we increase that age limit and go forward, but that is usually the age range where kids are like a black board," Khaja said. " ? you can be recruited at any age, but I think at this age, like I said, they're like a blackboard: they don't know. So whatever you create on that blackboard, that becomes who they are."

Fink said children in that age range are extremely open to outside influences.

On Tuesday, Richard Burge, director of personnel with Campbell County Schools, confirmed Rodas enrolled in Campbell County's Cornerstone Learning Center in November 2015 and stopped attending in May 2016.

Maj. L. T. Guthrie, of the Campbell County Sheriff's Office, said the schools have strict policies against graffiti and other gang-related behaviors, which he said helps law enforcement by not allowing such behavior to manifest.

"I don't consider us to have a gang issue at all," he said.

Infrequently, he said officials are led to believe suspects in crimes committed in Campbell County are involved in gangs. Sometimes those connections are disproved, he said.

"What issues we see ? typically bleed over from larger areas," he said.

According to The National Gang Report, increases in gang membership and violence stem from how fluidly gangs adapt to shifting circumstances so as to protect their interests, which the report lists as generating revenue and gaining control of the territories they inhabit.

Brown confirmed Tuesday he'd be holding a confidential briefing with Bedford County Administrator Carl Boggess, county supervisors and other officials about gang involvement in the area.

"Bedford County has gangs. Bedford County does not have a gang problem - yet!" he said. "But if we're not proactive - which we are; the Sheriff's Office has always been proactive - if we're not proactive, then it's going to get ahead of us like it has other jurisdictions around us."

He said that after the briefing, officials likely would come forward with a generic overview of what could be done.

"I feel confident that they will agree with me that certain measures need to be considered," he said.

Staff writers Christopher Cole and Alex Rohr contributed to this report.