Associated Press
GARLAND - In a modern-day version of West Side Story, rival gang members exchanged harsh words and set a time for a rumble.
Nearly three dozen people, including 27 high school students, were arrested this week after a grand jury issued indictments in a March 3 street fight. What makes this case unusual, experts say, is how the clash was arranged: via a profanity-laced Internet chat room.
"It's the first time that we have seen it," said Officer Joe Harn, police spokesman in the Dallas suburb of Garland. "They didn't have to come together to down each other (with profanity). They simply could do it by typing on a computer. Finally, it escalated enough where they decided to get together and fight."
While the cyber warfare was fought with keyboards, gang members relied on more old-fashioned weapons -- fists, baseball bats, shovels -- in the physical skirmish, Harn said.
Several people were injured, including one person who suffered a broken arm.
"Most gangs, when they do the disrespect thing, it's either face to face or through graffiti," said Steve Nawojczyk, an Arkansas gang researcher who tracks trends on his Web site, www.gangwar.com.
But it's not a surprise that a generation raised on computers would offer a new wrinkle, he and other experts agreed.
"Let's face it: Gangs already have their own alphabet, their own language, their own hand signals, so why not use the Internet?" said Tod Burke, a criminal justice professor at Radford University in Virginia. "Is this case unusual? Yes. But what I'm afraid is going to happen, this is probably just the beginning of it."
In fact, gangs threatening rivals and issuing challenges on the Internet has become relatively common, said Jared Lewis, director of Know Gangs, a Wisconsin-based organization that educates police and the public about gangs. It's fueled in part, he said, by chat rooms and bulletin boards on gangster rap artists' Web sites, he said.
"This is the first time I've heard where you've had a fight result, where the gangs actually met," Lewis said. "It doesn't surprise me at all that it's happened. It's just the scale that does surprise me."
In keeping with the rumble's high-tech origins, one participant videotaped the Garland skirmish. The tape helped police identify students and others involved in the off-campus fight.
A grand jury indicted 34 people, ages 14 to 21, for riot participation/aggravated assault/serious bodily injury, a second-degree felony punishable by two to 20 years in prison.
All but one has been arrested, Harn said Wednesday. The other person is believed to have fled to Mexico. Five of those indicted were female, and 18 were juveniles.
Most of the suspects attended Garland High School and South Garland High School, but school officials say the Internet exchanges occurred on home computers. Harn said detectives discovered the chat room during their investigation.
"It's a site where anybody could go in and sign in and start talking," he said. "For the most part, it's nothing but cursing on it. ... Some of them actually signed in with their true names, so that helped us identify people."
The city's gang intelligence officers plan to pay more attention to such sites given this case, he said. But gang experts say there's no way police can keep track of all the communications on millions of Internet sites.
Parents, not police, must take ultimate responsibility, said Lewis, a former police officer in Modesto, Calif.
"I'm just wondering why the parents aren't monitoring what's going on back and forth on the Internet," he said.
GARLAND - In a modern-day version of West Side Story, rival gang members exchanged harsh words and set a time for a rumble.
Nearly three dozen people, including 27 high school students, were arrested this week after a grand jury issued indictments in a March 3 street fight. What makes this case unusual, experts say, is how the clash was arranged: via a profanity-laced Internet chat room.
"It's the first time that we have seen it," said Officer Joe Harn, police spokesman in the Dallas suburb of Garland. "They didn't have to come together to down each other (with profanity). They simply could do it by typing on a computer. Finally, it escalated enough where they decided to get together and fight."
While the cyber warfare was fought with keyboards, gang members relied on more old-fashioned weapons -- fists, baseball bats, shovels -- in the physical skirmish, Harn said.
Several people were injured, including one person who suffered a broken arm.
"Most gangs, when they do the disrespect thing, it's either face to face or through graffiti," said Steve Nawojczyk, an Arkansas gang researcher who tracks trends on his Web site, www.gangwar.com.
But it's not a surprise that a generation raised on computers would offer a new wrinkle, he and other experts agreed.
"Let's face it: Gangs already have their own alphabet, their own language, their own hand signals, so why not use the Internet?" said Tod Burke, a criminal justice professor at Radford University in Virginia. "Is this case unusual? Yes. But what I'm afraid is going to happen, this is probably just the beginning of it."
In fact, gangs threatening rivals and issuing challenges on the Internet has become relatively common, said Jared Lewis, director of Know Gangs, a Wisconsin-based organization that educates police and the public about gangs. It's fueled in part, he said, by chat rooms and bulletin boards on gangster rap artists' Web sites, he said.
"This is the first time I've heard where you've had a fight result, where the gangs actually met," Lewis said. "It doesn't surprise me at all that it's happened. It's just the scale that does surprise me."
In keeping with the rumble's high-tech origins, one participant videotaped the Garland skirmish. The tape helped police identify students and others involved in the off-campus fight.
A grand jury indicted 34 people, ages 14 to 21, for riot participation/aggravated assault/serious bodily injury, a second-degree felony punishable by two to 20 years in prison.
All but one has been arrested, Harn said Wednesday. The other person is believed to have fled to Mexico. Five of those indicted were female, and 18 were juveniles.
Most of the suspects attended Garland High School and South Garland High School, but school officials say the Internet exchanges occurred on home computers. Harn said detectives discovered the chat room during their investigation.
"It's a site where anybody could go in and sign in and start talking," he said. "For the most part, it's nothing but cursing on it. ... Some of them actually signed in with their true names, so that helped us identify people."
The city's gang intelligence officers plan to pay more attention to such sites given this case, he said. But gang experts say there's no way police can keep track of all the communications on millions of Internet sites.
Parents, not police, must take ultimate responsibility, said Lewis, a former police officer in Modesto, Calif.
"I'm just wondering why the parents aren't monitoring what's going on back and forth on the Internet," he said.
