Graffiti War Rages On
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A war underway between Denver graffiti tagging crews has sparked the type of murders, knife fights and drive-by shootings usually associated with more established violent gangs.
Police say a clash between competing tagging crews has caused at least two homicides, one of them in Jefferson County. An innocent bystander also was shot in the leg. Members of one southwest Denver family targeted in a drive-by shooting say they are so fed up they’ve put their home on the market.
The violence even spilled into last summer’s downtown Taste of Colorado gala, when a stabbing there nearly killed one tagger.
As little as six years ago, the city’s graffiti problem was considered minor, but it is surging now, and police recently began viewing it as a gateway crime that can funnel offenders to gang activity and serious felonies, including homicide.
“I think that as a whole, the tagging crews are starting to become more violent,” said Denver police Officer Gerard Alarcon, who tracks the crews in southwest Denver.
At first, tagging involves just property damage, putting paint on a wall, but then it leads to break-ins to steal the paint, he said.
“Then they get into cliques, and they end up having beefs,” Alarcon said. “It starts off small, but then it reaches the felony level, and now they’re getting violent with each other.”
Denver police say the recent spike in tagging violence, primarily by juveniles, has caught them by surprise, and they are struggling to gather intelligence on key tagging crews and their ties to older, violent gangs.
“It went out of control almost instantaneously,” said Denver gang- unit officer Adam Lucero.
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The war between two Latino graffiti groups based in southwest Denver is the most extreme manifestation of the problem, according to police. In the clash between WK, which stands for World Klass or Wreckin Krew, and EMS, short for Envy My Style or Evil Minded Soldiers, just crossing out a rival’s tag on a wall can warrant a stabbing or drive-by shooting, members of the gang confirm.
“They shoot up my crib, it ain’t nothing for me,” said Max Ramirez, 16, a self-professed WK member whose family’s home has been the target of drive-by shootings, according to police. “I shoot up their crib. WK, that’s my family. I’ve got my brother’s back.”
The two crews have ties to more established gangs in Denver, and police are concerned because they fear the taggers are neophytes in the gang subculture, unaware of the rules governing Denver’s gangs. Police also view the taggers as impressionable, meaning they are easy fodder for more- established gangs to recruit them to do their dirty work.
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Javier Flores, 37, said the violence is forcing him and his mother and father, both in their 60s, to put their home on Galapago Street up for sale.
Court documents state that EMS taggers, in search of retaliation against Flores’ nephew, did a drive-by shooting of the family’s house Oct. 26.
One of the bullets came through the living room, destroying the family’s television. Flores’ niece and nephews were sleeping on couches in the living room at the time.
“We just don’t want this drama anymore,” Flores said. “If I want the drama, I turn on the soap opera.”
“It’s all stupidity”
Sammy Gomez, 17, said he knows the violence that the crews can cause because he once was involved.
He said he was one of the original 11 founding members of WK, but now, facing an attempted-murder charge and being the victim of a stabbing that nearly claimed his life, he’s renounced the tagging-crew lifestyle and his tagger nickname, Malice.
“If you sit down and really think about it and realize what you’re doing, it’s all stupidity,” he said. “It’s going to leave you either dead or in jail.”
Gomez was charged with stabbing a rival EMS tagger in Garfield Park during a melee the night of Nov. 29, 2005, but the charges were dismissed.
“A lot of people I know have been shot and stabbed,” he said. “I got stabbed in my lung. If I would have waited for an ambulance to pick me up, I would have died.”
He’s got plenty of time to sit and think these days. He’s on house arrest for a violation of probation after he was charged with attempted murder—his second such charge in two years—for allegedly stabbing a rival EMS tagger during the Taste of Colorado festival last summer.
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(Posted on February 13, 2007)