YOUTH GANGS RISE IN OCEAN FLATS
By JUDITH CUMMINGS, Special to the San Fierro Times Published: September 20, 2017
OCEAN FLATS, Sep. 13— Officials in San Fierro say gang membership is increasing among white, middle-class suburban youths, and the officials say these gangs are engaging in such criminal acts as gang fights and robbery.
The activity by white gangs is most apparent in the Ocean Flats area, but law-enforcement agencies have reported similar behavior in other San Fierro areas. At least one killing, that of a 15-year-old Ocean Flats boy last year, has been linked to gang violence.
''The white gangs use dope, commit drive-by shootings, robberies,'' said Detective Sgt. Robert K. Jackson of the San Fierro Police Department, an expert on gangs.
The authorities say they are baffled by the rise of gangs among middle-class whites. Many cite such factors as decreasing parental supervision over children and the breakdown of traditional family units because of divorce.
Others look to reasons similar to those given for the rise of the punk-rock subculture in Britain: alienation from parents' values, a perception of a dimming economic future and even growing anxiety over nuclear war. ''For the most part parents don't recognize what they're seeing,'' said Lt. Al Chancellor of the San Fierro Police Department. ''If they do there's such an absence of discipline in the home that there's no restriction.''
Some of the white gangs adhere to a white supremacist philosophy and employ Nazi symbols, according to the police and social workers.
One gang in San Fierro that has gained attention is Fight for Freedom, or F.F.F. Natalie Salazar, an official of Community Youth Gang Services in Ocean Flats and a member of a state commission Gov. George Deukmejian set up last year to study gang violence, said the F.F.F. gang was a white racist group affecting Nazi trappings. Other officials have speculated that F, the sixth letter of the alphabet, is intended to denote the Satanic ''666,'' an anti-Christ symbol.
Sergeant Jackson said the police believed the F.F.F. gang had ''committed some murders but we haven't been able to monitor it because they haven't been considered a gang,'' as distinct from random criminals.
Suburban teenagers call them ''white-boy gangs.'' They are described in such overlapping variations as heavy metal, punk-rock and stoner gangs. Some are distinguished by enthusiasm for certain rock music, others by their use or sale of drugs. Some emulate the style and mannerisms of Hispanic youth gangs, adopting their dress and mannerisms. Officials stress that not all who affect such looks engage in criminal behavior.