RUTLAND, Vt. - In a city of fewer than 17,000 residents that counts skiing as a major industry, many Rutlanders were incredulous when local police and city officials held forums to warn them of the existence of youth gangs, a problem most identified with major cities like Boston and New York.
"There was a lot of skepticism," said Rutland Police Det. Ray Lamoria, who said Vermonters had trouble picturing armed members of major gangs like the Bloods or the Surenos strutting their bucolic streets in search of recruits or markets for their illicit drugs.
"Some people felt that if we hadn't done anything, nothing would have happened," he said.
But a violent rumble 12 years ago led police to the discovery that members of the East Coast Los Solidos were operating a marijuana selling scheme and recruiting among local youngsters.
Rutland and its city government, headed by the board of aldermen, drew a line in the snow. The tiny city hired extra police, formed its own gang unit and, with help from federal anti-gang authorities, made life thoroughly miserable for Los Solidos.
"We took the position of having a zero tolerance," said Lamoria, who worked on the gang unit, as well as a regional anti-gang task force to combat gangs throughout Vermont. "We consulted the experts, we identified the gang members and we got in their faces."
Rural emergence
Although youth gangs have long been associated with major cities, it's becoming more common for groups like the Crips and Los Solidos or groups appropriating their names to emerge in the suburbs or even rural areas, said Reggie Redfern, a long-time Easthampton, Mass., police chief whose private security training firm, SRR, provides seminars to law enforcement groups on dealing with gangs.
"We've become a mobile society," Redfern said. "Gangs can operate in the Poconos, just as they do in New York City or New Jersey."
In Massachusetts, suburban towns where gangs previously were seen mainly in hip-hop music videos are also beginning to concede the presence of gang violence and increased street crime.
In Dartmouth, there has been an upsurge in drive-by shootings and stabbings over the past 12 months, Police Chief Marc Pacheco said. Located close to the urban centers of New Bedford and Fall River, Pacheco said it was inevitable there would be a "spillover" into his town.
"No community is an island," said Pacheco, whose department is working closely with urban police to share intelligence against street criminals.
With many major cities leveraging state and federal grants and concentrating resources to stiffen anti-gang enforcement, Pacheco and others suspect that street criminals may be shifting some of their activities to smaller communities.
And that could make keeping gangs out of cities like Attleboro more complicated.
Suburbs in the Northeast offer gangs potential advantages: less intense competition from urban rivals and fewer local police "gang units" focused solely on frustrating their efforts. The gangs still benefit from relatively easy interstate highway access to major drug routes and population centers.
Rutland provides a case in point.
Despite its relative isolation, Lamoria said Los Solidos found Rutland a promising area after an officer of the gang emerged from prison to settle down in the Vermont community. Before long, property crimes like burglary spiked and gang members found willing followers among naive local teens.
But enlistees paid a heavy price. It was common for new recruits to receive a beating from other members as part of their initiation, the detective said.
Young female members were "sexed-in" - required to have sex with male gangsters.
Despite the seemingly unlikely prospect of a youth gang incursion into a small Vermont town, local police were convinced something had to be done.
"We had a choice," Lamoria said. "We could bury our heads in the sand, or we could take them on."
Rutland's gang problem was compounded by the fact that Los Solidos was not just a loosely organized group of local toughs or posers infatuated with an outlaw image.
Tracing the origins
Investigators traced its origin to a hardened gang member who had relocated to Vermont after completing his prison sentence. It wasn't long before the former gang chieftain's "homies" came to visit - and help cultivate new members.
Los Solidos found Vermont accommodating because of the lack of competition from other gangs and scant public awareness. Just to make sure they remained below the radar, the gang eschewed more potent drugs like heroin and crack cocaine and stuck to distributing marijuana as its business plan, Lamoria said.
The gang's cover was blown, however, after a major disturbance in 1995 that forced Rutland to call in mutual aid from several other communities. During the investigation, police discovered the presence of Los Solidos, which had originated in the Hartford, Conn., area in the early 90s.
The resolve of Rutland police and community members to fight the group was reinforced after consulting with officials in Holyoke and Springfield, Mass., communities already fighting hard to keep established gangs in check.
By going after Los Solidos while they were still vulnerable, authorities figured, they could maximize resources and keep members on the defensive.
Police made it a point of making themselves visible to known participants. Often suspected gangbangers would emerge from their homes to be startled by a greeting from a Rutland cop, Lamoria said.
"They basically knew they weren't going to do anything without one of us getting in their face," Lamoria said. "It got to the point where they figured out this wasn't a place where they wanted to be."
Ultimately, police uncovered the gang's organizational scheme, penetrated its membership and arrested one of its kingpins, and Los Solidos began to fade from the Vermont criminal scene.
But immitators and homegrown gangs, including the Green Mountain Boys, became intent on filling the vacuum. Lamoria and the Rutland police kept up the pressure.
"We treated them just the same as we had treated Los Solidos," said Lamoria, who believes homegrown hustlers and would-be gangsters can be every bit as dangerous as members from recognized, established outfits.
Various arrests and a collection of souvenirs - an immitation automatic pistol used by a gang member to bluff rivals and a real, sawed-off shotgun found in a 17-year-old boy's sock drawer - attest to how close Rutland came to becoming an incubator for gangs.
Today, Lamoria said, it wouldn't be surprising if the Rutland area still included at least a few people who style themselves as gang members or even one or more small, homegrown gangs.
But there's no sign of a continued presence by Los Solidos or any other hardcore gang with national credentials.
It could have been much different.
"There's no doubt in my mind that if we hadn't done what we did, today we might be in the same position as Holyoke or Springfield," Lamoria said. "We couldn't let it happen."