Authorities Bar ‘Gangbangers’ From County Fair

About two dozen “hard-core gangbangers” in Ventura County are getting notes from probation officers this week saying they are not welcome at the county’s annual fair, scheduled to start Wednesday.

Short on endearments, the notes let the young men know that they will violate their terms of probation if they show up at the fair.

The notes are part of a coordinated effort by police and probation officers from Ventura and Santa Barbara counties to head off potential gang violence at the 10-day event.

It’s the sixth year in a row that probation officers have restricted gang members on probation for serious offenses from attending the fair, said Ventura County Probation Officer Michele Konkle.

“We give people on probation notices to report--on the report we include a note that says, ‘You may not be at the Ventura County Fairgrounds between August 13 and August 24, 1997,’ ” Konkle said. “I deliver it personally. They read it and have to sign it. They get a copy and I keep one on file.”

Although there has been no significant gang violence at the fair in recent memory, law enforcement officials say that because many Ventura gang members consider the fairgrounds their home turf and the event attracts gang members from other areas, confrontations are possible.

“Really this is for their own good,” Konkle said. “The Ventura Avenue gang members think of the fairgrounds as their land, and when we have Santa Barbara and Oxnard people come, things tend to happen. There’ll be a standoff or they start ‘mad-dogging’ each other and get into a fight because they say somebody looked at them funny.”

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Police setting up security for the fair also plan to pay special attention to known gang members, said Lt. Carl Handy of the Ventura Police Department.

Along with officers from Ventura and the Sheriff’s Department, there will be officers from Oxnard, Santa Paula and Santa Barbara county as part of a coordinated security effort, Handy said. Probation officers from the two counties will also be on hand.

“If we have gangbangers from out of town, we’ll have officers on duty that will recognize them who might know their terms of probation,” he said.

Police will also be at the gate as people enter the fairgrounds. They will be assigned to confiscate any weapons brought into the area and ask anyone wearing “gang attire” to remove it, Handy said.

“If we see someone on probation, we might shake them down, check out the terms and conditions of their probation to make sure they are not violating that,” he said.

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Officers will also break up groups of three or more people deemed by officers to possibly be gang members, Handy said.

“If we see Ma and Pa Kettle and their 15 kids, we won’t bother them. That’s meant for gang members,” he said.

“We’ll also be breaking up groups of three or more, and if they get more than one warning, we’ll throw them out.”

Fifteen to 20 officers will patrol the fairgrounds each night, with about half a dozen on patrol outside the area. The Sheriff’s Department will also have two officers on horses each night.

Because of a series of violent confrontations involving Ventura County gang members in Santa Barbara, police agencies from the two counties have been coordinating enforcement.

Officers from Ventura County assist with patrols at annual Santa Barbara events, including Fiesta Days last week and the Summer Solstice Parade in June. Five years ago, a Ventura gang member mobbed a young man from Lompoc during the city’s Fiesta celebration, beating and stabbing him to death.

That crime led to joint patrols during big city celebrations in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, officials said.

More than two years ago, Santa Barbara received a three-year, $1.5-million grant from the state Department of Justice earmarked for fighting gangs. Part of that money--about $43,000--was used to buy computers for the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department and the Ventura, Santa Paula and Oxnard police departments.

The computers hook all the departments into the Gang Reporting Evaluation And Tracking system, part of a statewide gang tracking system.

Using the computer system, officers can search for profiles of known gang members throughout Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, searching by name, distinguishing tattoos or a gang moniker, among other categories.

The system holds about 8,000 Ventura County gang members and their associates and about 2,000 Santa Barbara County gang members, officials said. A terminal to hook into they system may be set up at the fairgrounds police command center.