Shades Of Gray: Are They Groups Or Gangs? -- Seattle's Barcadas -- I-5 Shooting A Symptom Of The Rising Violence Among Filipino Youths

Willie and Jonathan are rivals. Many yesterdays ago, they were more like brothers, and tomorrow they could be again.

That is the nature of Seattle's barcadas - the Tagalog word for groups of Filipino youths who, in this city at this time, have started to look a lot like gangs.

Both Willie and Jonathan are skinny, with suggestions of facial hair, baseball caps turned backward, T-shirts and jeans. Both try at times to climb quietly out of the barcadas and into their 20s, but ties thick as blood have firm grips on their ankles.

Their groups spend much more time playing basketball and hanging out than they do cruising for vengeance. Each member struggles to balance Filipino tradition with American pressures.

But nothing so far has been able to kill their feud - not truce meetings brokered by cops and community leaders, not city attempts to open gymnasiums, not parent meetings or threats to send youths back to the Philippines.

Three years ago the fight, with different players, was like most others among teenagers, settled with fists and sticks in schoolyards. But guns are in vogue now, and several other groups have joined Willie's in fighting Jonathan's barcada.

Last Friday, the conflict between the two groups claimed its first victim, 17-year-old Carrie Ann Tran of Seattle. Tran was in a car with a member of a group allied with Willie's when a member of Jonathan's group shot at the car.

These South Seattle youths aren't the only ones catching the attention of police gang units throughout the area. The past few months have brought to the forefront groups involving immigrants from a number of Asian countries.

"We have seen the trend in the last year of Asian gangs adopting a lot of the black gangs' behavior - throwing signs, using violence," said King County police Lt. Sue Rahr, head of the department's gang unit.

Seattle gang incidents involving Asians doubled in the past month alone, and a higher percentage included weapons, said Seattle police Lt. Emett Kelsie.

Detectives have identified about 23 different sets of Asian youths in the city alone with about 200 members, 10 to 20 percent of whom are directly involved in violence, Kelsie said. Tacoma police have identified 60 to 65 hardcore Asian gang members.

Many of the groups are unrelated, but the escalation of violence is a common denominator.

Recent trends:

-- The conflict among barcadas has started to involve a number of groups and members of various ethnicities from around the city.

-- Vietnamese and Cambodian gangs from out of town have been robbing Asian restaurants on Sunday nights before the businesses have deposited their weekly receipts, according to police. The robberies so far have occurred in businesses outside predominantly Asian areas - probably, police say, so the assailants have less of a chance of being recognized.

-- Samoan and Cambodian groups have been warring in the High Point neighborhood of West Seattle, with drive-by shootings increasing in frequency, according to police reports.

To understand the phenomenon requires knowledge of culture and familiarity with ironic truths. Such as: To gain identity is to submerge it in a group that acts as one. To know where your children are, and perhaps to keep them safe, is to end up providing what some consider a gang hangout.

For parents to fight a group's inclination toward violence requires conquering a natural distrust of police, language barriers and assumptions about their own countrymen.

"There is a forest conflagration coming on, and we're holding a garden hose," said Sluggo Rigor, youth coordinator for Filipino Youth Activities in Seattle, who has been organizing parents, youths and officials to head off crisis.

The leaders of the fighting Filipino barcadas see what they're doing is futile, hurtful. They also see no way to stop it.

GROUP DIFFERENCES

The latest feud reportedly was sparked when a youth from one group informed police about who fired a gun during an altercation at an Edmonds entertainment center. But the conflict is as much about regional and class differences that began in the Philippines and continued when a group of recent immigrants here felt they were ridiculed by "Americanized" Filipinos.

Jonathan Mendoza's barcada, the more Americanized group, has mostly stayed in school - a number graduated this summer from Cleveland High School and lead decidedly middle-class lifestyles. Most live in and around Beacon Hill.

The group led by 20-year-old Willie (who declined to give his last name) speaks more Tagalog than English. Many members left school, frustrated by bilingual education or by hard times they saw their parents face in this country. The group is based in Rainier Valley, with allies in West Seattle.

In the core group is a 16-year-old Franklin High School student with wide, expressive eyes and hopes for the future.

"I worry. I just don't like it when people die," said the boy, nicknamed "D." "When one of us dies, he dies for the group. But if an innocent guy dies, it's for nothing."

This teen, one of the few members of this group who has stayed in school, said he doesn't drop out because "my dad would kick my ass." But then, he admits, he wants to go to college and become a businessman, an executive.

"It's a dream, man," interjects Willie from the end of the table.

THE HANGOUTS

Both groups have makeshift hangouts - one in a private basketball court behind a Samoan church, the other at Mendoza's home. Both say they need a real place to go and things to do, and maybe their minds would turn to something besides retaliation. They are working with the mayor's office to open a local gymnasium.

Neither wants the younger kids to grow up as they did.

The Mendoza house is a family's home, immaculately kept with the trappings of middle class and cultural devotion: candles under a tapestry bearing Christ's sad face, flowers and figurines everywhere, a grandmother who vacates her seat for guests without a second thought.

Keeper of the house is Mendoza's mother, Antonia, whose graveyard-shift job and constant fears about her children rob sleep and fray nerves, not to mention the drive-by shooting that riddled the front of the house last month. With rapid speed she recounts every fight, every misunderstanding on the part of school officials, every time her children edged closer to trouble and she didn't know quite what to do. She still doesn't.

"If I know they're outside, it's OK. If I don't know, I cannot sleep. When they want to come in the door past curfew, I don't open. I watch through the window."

PARENTAL PLEA

A plea for some control over this group is taped to the inside of the front door.

"Please! Please! Please! No Friends Are Allowed to Come In and out of the Door after 10 p.m.

Respect our privacy. Mom and Dad are working and can't sleep because of the noise.

Thanks."

Parents of the other group are concerned, too, Rigor said. But many do not speak English, so educating those parents about meetings and ways to seek help with their children is a challenge.

"They try to make us do the smart stuff," said Willie, "but sometimes the dumber stuff is more fun."