No Sporting Chance : Danger Lurks for Fans as Gangs Adopt Pro Attire

Professional sports paraphernalia are fast becoming the preferred fashion of Southern California street gangs, forcing educators to ban students from wearing certain caps, jackets and the like and creating a ticklish marketing problem for team officials, who do not want their popular insignia tainted by sinister affiliations.

Police officials said that casual fans who wear apparel that proclaims their sporting allegiances are in danger of being misidentified as gang members--often with tragic consequences.

Authorities said the county’s 800 street gangs, with more than 90,000 members, were responsible for 650 killings in 1990, compared to 554 deaths the year before. While it is impossible to say how many of Los Angeles County’s 650 gang-related killings in 1990 can be attributed directly to gang apparel, law enforcement officials said gang colors and sports colors can be a lethal blend.

Fear for her students’ safety is what compelled Yolanda Mendoza to ban the Raiders logo from Inglewood’s Oak Street Elementary School when she took over as principal last year. A chorus of complaints from her pupils prompted her to back down on the policy just once--the Friday before the Raiders met the Buffalo Bills in the American Conference championship game.

The Raiders ban has led many of Mendoza’s students to begin wearing Kings jackets instead, and she is considering a ban on that team, too.

“The safety of my students is more important than rooting for the Raiders,” Mendoza said. “This is serious business.”

Southern California educators have been scrambling for years to keep their dress codes one step ahead of gang fashion. Blue and red bandannas, shoelaces and belts are banned at schools throughout the region. Earrings on males are often collected at the front gate.

Athletic apparel is popular among most youngsters, but law enforcement officials and those who counsel gang members say that in some areas sports logos can be as indicative of gang membership as a blue or red rag. They say jacket thefts are on the rise and that at some gang funerals the black Raiders jacket is more common than the dark suit.

“It’s sad,” said Richard Lapchick, director of the Center for the Study of Sport in Society at Northeastern University in Boston. “We like to think of sports being immune to the problems of society but that’s not the case. The times have changed so much that what was once an overreaction may now be necessary.”

At an alternative high school in El Monte, Principal Ralph Gutierrez has prohibited Raiders apparel despite the fact that he is a devoted season-ticket holder who has rooted for the infamous NFL heavies since before the team moved to Los Angeles in 1982. Now, to comply with his own policy, Gutierrez must take off his prized Raiders jacket at his van and walk inside El Monte’s Education Center coatless.

Educators seem apologetic for the heavy-handed tactics but insist that their dress restrictions are needed to help ensure that innocent fans are not mistakenly given more sinister affiliations--and end up dead.

“Our No. 1 priority is the safety of the kids,” said Louise Browning, assistant principal at White Junior High School in Carson where no caps are allowed. “I personally don’t care if a kid wears 14 earrings and has hair to his waist. But the kids’ safety would be at stake if they wear gang symbols.”

Added F.K. Neumann, a security guard at an Inglewood athletic apparel shop called Sports Section: “If you wear a Raiders jacket in some places, people are going to think, ‘Hey, that’s a gang kid.’ I’m a Raiders fan but I wouldn’t wear one of those. I’m not going to get my butt shot off.”

Two recent gang-related shootings in San Gabriel prompted John Avila, the superintendent of the Garvey School District, to ban Raiders and Kings clothing at the district’s 13 intermediate and elementary schools in Rosemead, Monterey Park and San Gabriel.

In a letter to parents, he wrote, “It is unfortunate that the local gangs have adopted the colors and clothing of two well-known Los Angeles sports teams.”

Not everyone is behind the dress codes, though.

Students at the affected schools often protest them and some gang experts say they divert attention from the real roots of the gang problem.

“I always look to treat the causes rather than the symptoms,” said Steve Valdivia, director of Community Youth Gang Services. “I don’t think there’s tremendous benefit in banning a particular outfit. I think the issue is much deeper than that.”

Raiders paraphernalia makes up 20% of all the National Football League apparel sold nationwide and is popular among young people thousands of miles from the Coliseum. The reasons offered for the rush on Raiders garb range from the team’s winning record and rough-and-tumble image to the tough look of the black and silver and menacing pirate logo. The Raiders logo is also a common accessory on album covers for such rap acts as Ice Cube, Public Enemy and Run DMC and is the most popular team on MTV videos.

Black is so popular that the Kings adopted it as the team’s official color in 1989, replacing purple and gold, and jacket manufacturers, with permission from the sports leagues, are altering team colors for popular teams like the Los Angeles Lakers and San Francisco 49ers to black.

“Why black?” asked Sgt. Joe Holmes, a veteran gang investigator in the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s Lynwood Station. “It’s the imposing, ominous look. Yellow would not produce the same results.”

But black is not the sole color of choice. Although Holmes refused to name any specific gangs, other experts mentioned the following color-conscious groups: The Grape Street Crips in Watts are fond of purple Lakers jackets; the East Coast Crips on 118th Street are partial to New York Yankees navy blue, and Boston Celtics green is worn by the Lime Avenue Bloods.

“If athletic apparel fits in with their color scheme, they wear it,” said Holmes, who gives presentations across the country on Los Angeles street gangs. “When I’m on the street and I see certain teams, I connect it with a certain gang.”

Holmes supports the idea of schools selectively banning team attire that has established ties to area street gangs. That means, he said, banning Raiders jackets in some areas and Kings or Chicago Bulls attire across town.

The initials on hats can take on some special meanings as well: Dodger caps for Cain Street Crips, Houston Astros caps for Hoover Street Crips, Detroit Tiger caps for Durock Crips, all L.A. gangs.

A dispute over a Kansas City Royals cap was blamed for triggering a drive-by shooting in Compton in 1988 that killed a 6-year-old girl and wounded four members of her family.

The girl’s brother said a dispute between him and members of a neighborhood gang over the blue cap led to the attack. The cap bears a “KC” that some sets of Crips interpret to mean “Kill Crips” and that Bloods widely dislike because of the blue color.

Sports attire is sometimes altered when it doesn’t match just right with the gang’s scheme.

Two Inglewood Bloods stopped by police recently for stealing beer from a liquor store were wearing Cincinnati Reds hats with an “X” over the “C” and a “K” embroidered next to it. “We’re Crip killers,” one said.

Outside of Inglewood, some gang members translate the hockey “Kings” logo to mean “Kill Inglewood Gangster Slobs.” So it is not uncommon to see jackets on the streets of Inglewood with the letters “K,” “G” and “S” carefully removed. The remaining “ING” simply stands for “Inglewood.”

Bulky, black team jackets fill up half the store at Rookies in Carson Mall and store manager Randy Petro knows that gang members are keeping his business afloat. Young men sometimes go into the store a dozen at a time, pay more than $200 each and leave with top-of-the-line jackets with the same team logos on the back.

They are not all sports fans.

“I sometimes ask them to name someone on the Kings that is not Wayne Gretzky,” Petro said of his customers who favor black Kings jackets. “They can’t do it. They don’t have a clue what a hockey puck even is.”

His store sold 1,300 team jackets last year and he expects to sell a couple hundred more than that this year. He estimates that more than half of the jackets he sells are purchased because they conform to gang colors. “I don’t think we’d survive with just the sports fans,” he said.

Shortly after the Raiders moved to Los Angeles, then-marketing director Michael Orenstein gave free Raiders pennants and caps to movie producers, radio disc jockeys and the then-emerging rap groups N.W.A. and Run DMC.

He said he is pleased by the success of his marketing efforts but regrets that the team’s image has been marred by gangs.

Orenstein, now the NFL’s director of club marketing, said the National Football League is planning an advertising campaign designed to let teen-agers know that they can support football teams and still be against drugs and street violence.

The teams whose jackets are the most popular are also sensitive to the negative connotations the team logos carry in some quarters.

“We’re very concerned about it,” said Rob Moore, director of marketing for the Los Angeles Kings. “I don’t enjoy watching ‘America’s Most Wanted’ and always seeing someone in a Kings hat being thrown in the back of a patrol car.”

Gil Hernandez, Raiders director of community relations, sits on the board of directors of Community Youth Gang Services and is working with a number of school districts to try to change the negative image of the Raiders logo and restore the team’s “Commitment to Excellence” theme. The team is also involved in anti-drug, anti-vandalism and stay-in-school promotions.

Hernandez questions whether the bans are unfairly targeting minority youngsters and punishing the vast majority of good kids for the dress habits of a few.

“It’s just a fashion that everybody is into--gangbangers and other people,” said Kathie Allen, 17, a senior at Inglewood High School who occasionally wears her sister’s Dallas Cowboys jacket. “A jacket is just material. It has nothing to do with gangs.”

Hector Acosta, who counsels gang members in Inglewood schools, said many gang members are turning away from Raiders jackets because they have become too popular and gangs like to be on the cutting edge of fashion. One of the latest fads for gang members is overalls with one shoulder strap hanging down, but that trend too has reached the mainstream.

Gutierrez, the El Monte principal, may be among the first to turn his ban around. He plans to modify his policy later this week to allow only those with a certain number of school credits to wear Raiders attire. Once the new policy begins, Gutierrez says, he no longer plans to leave his jacket in the van.