Jeb Bladine: History urges strong response to youth violence
To be clear, there’s no public evidence the April 28 melee in Joe Dancer Park was gang-related. But if it was, historic lessons have taught us as a community to act quickly and vigorously.
Last week’s gathering of mostly teenage males at the Joe Dancer skate park followed a confrontation day or two before at Taco Bell that reportedly involved youths from McMinnville and Dayton. Mass fighting broke out in the park; police responded in force; 16 males aged 15-20 were arrested; and a 16-year-old was charged with multiple felony and misdemeanor counts after another youth was shot.
McMinnville Police Chief Cord Wood, when asked last week if the incident was gang-related, said: “This wouldn’t be an appropriate time to comment on what factors might have played a role until the investigation is complete.”
The community, waiting for investigation results, should recall its history and contemplate ways to put a hard stop to any growth of organized youth violence. Here’s come of that history:
In 1990, there were enough warnings of gang activity that School District 40 adopted a policy for responding to gang activities that threatened students and disrupted the educational process. In 1992, community leaders met to discuss gang problems and prevention programs, but two years later there were still serious gang and youth violence problems at the high school.
In 1995, local police warned that gang-related problems “must be dealt with or will grow.”
Those years produced gang-related shootings in Lafayette and Newberg, and ongoing work by a Yamhill County Gang Enforcement Team. Isolated incidents continued to warn of underlying gang activity, but those headlines were sporadic until McMinnville faced a wave of gang-related graffiti in 1999-2000. There was a 2001 drive-by shooting at local apartments, and a gang-related killing at a McMinnville church.
Our newspaper commentary in 2001 warned about a “growing cultural clash among young people” and a reintroduction of local gang activity. That warning wasn’t unheeded, but the gang-related graffiti continued.
In 2008, Oregon documented 118 gangs statewide, and McMinnville was concerned about local incidents. The graffiti wars were persistent, with more busts as MPD adopted a zero-tolerance policy for “tagging.” The News-Register published ran a lengthy series on gang-related activities, “Drawing the Line.”
More recent McMinnville incidents with gang overtones included a 2014 stabbing and shootings in 2015 and 2016. There were gang-related shots fired locally in 2021, and reported 2024 growth of gang-related activity in local schools.
No doubt, that search of newspaper archives didn’t uncover all the local gang-related activity. What it did reveal is while youth violence is nothing new, it needs a strong, coordinated community response on multiple levels.
McMinnville police should air their records of youth violence; McMinnville School District should do likewise with an overview of records for school disciplinary and suspension actions; the juvenile justice system should provide a report on its experience with, and response to, youth violence.
This Dancer Park brawl may just be another isolated incident, but we need to see all the related facts.
Jeb Bladine can be reached at jbladine@newsregister.com or 503-687-1223.
Comments
Bigfootlives
Well said, Jeb.