Friday, April 03, 2009
A Salt Lake City police officer shot and killed Al-Rekabi, who had ignored a command to stop and injured two bystanders near Club Bliss at 404 S. West Temple around 1:15 a.m. on Jan. 24.
Al-Rekabi's family includes documented members of an Iraqi gang, Detective Nate Clark of the Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office Metro Gang Unit said Thursday.
At the shooting, "It was 'You guys are dead.' But also, 'Get out of our country and leave our oil alone,'" Clark said Thursday at the Utah Gang Conference, during a session about gangs that formed after refugee groups arrived in Utah.
The trend began in Utah in the 1970s and 1980s when refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Thailand arrived in Utah, Clark said.
Gangs such as the Tiny Oriental Posse and Oriental Laotian Gangsters established themselves and are still active; TOP gang members were arrested last week for vandalism of an OLG member's home in West Valley City.
Metro Gang Unit investigators say they're now seeing newer refugees, such as young men from Somali and Sudan, latching onto American gang culture. From listening to hip hop to mimicking gang dress, some are forming their own gangs and others are assimilating into existing gangs, Clark said.
Most seek the same things that attract
members from other ethnic groups and races: a sense of acceptance from a gang "family" and the chance to make money through crime, from selling drugs to robberies or car thefts, he said.
Metro Gang Unit investigators are trying to determine how many people from new refugee populations are part of gangs. Clark said Somali and Sudanese gang members have formed an allegiance to Bloods gangs, a pattern police believe is possibly happening because popular rappers such as Lil' Wayne and The Game claim Blood ties.
Law enforcement faces several challenges in combating refugee gangs, Clark said. First generation refugees sometimes don't speak English well and have a mistrust of police after witnessing genocide by the government in their home countries. That leaves many in the refugee community reluctant to talk with police about gang issues, he said.
While refugee gangs with African members are becoming more active, gangs with ties to Bosnian refugees have decreased, said West Valley City police Officer Dever Halulic.
Halulic said a Bosnian gang affiliated with Crips was active on Salt Lake City's west side in the mid-1990s, but has since faded out.
Source: The Salt Lake Tribune, April 3, 2009