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Twin Town High (vol. 8) |
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Somali Gangs: Fact or Fiction?
Wednesday 07 January @ 13:40:24 |
 by Burt Berlowe
One day last fall, East Phillips resident Annie Young received a most provocative e-mail from a source that prefers anonymity. It read as follows:
“Somali violence has been happening on the West Bank since before Bush was elected. Somali youth travel in groups of six to 25. They carry unbroken beer bottles in their pockets to break later and use as weapons. They also use two by fours, tire irons etc. They are undeserving of our country and its values."
 "Somali elders are in denial. Teens have taken over Riverside Park and kids in my neighborhood rarely venture there anymore. The gangs are rude, uncivil and not quite human. They are cowards and like to hurt strangers while robbing them. They knock people down and beat them while stealing from them.”
The writer went on to describe an alleged incident late last year where a bartender from the Viking Bar was beaten up.
“He looked like an eggplant” and had to be taken to a hospital emergency room… The e-mail gives another example: “Some…South High School students were cooling off in the pool at Riverside Park after 10 p.m. They were surrounded by a group of 10 Somali ‘gangstas’ that terrorized them with threats of gang rape for about 10 minutes until the girls’ screams drove them away. Give me gangsters from Detroit and Gary (Indiana) any day. At least they only hurt each other. The West Bank is a war zone and it is because of our ridiculous immigration laws allowing masses of Third World refugees to move here from a culture that does not respect women, our laws, religion or values. They will never assimilate, they do not want to…”
Young writes of her own personal experience last September 16: “A friend and I walked into the Viking bar about 9:30 p.m. There was a paddy wagon out back in the alley and several cops on bikes roaming the area. The pull tab machine lady at the Viking was beat up and two teeth knocked out as she left the place. A bartender at Palmers Bar had stones and bricks thrown at her. Somali gangs have been terrorizing women lately. Violence does not see skin color or culture. It is created by fear and anger.”
Based on these two incidents alone, one would get the impression that wild bands of Somali youth gangs are constantly roaming the streets of Cedar-Riverside wreaking havoc on all who stand in their way. But whether that perception is largely fact or fiction—reality or exaggeration—depends on who you talk to.
One thing is for sure: ongoing conflicts between Somali residents and law enforcement officials are having an impact on hundreds of immigrant teenagers with too much idle time on their hands.
The smoke from 9/11 is still rising from the ruins of that fateful September day. The Bush administration’s response to the attacks of September 11, 2001, has had a devastating impact on the safety and civil liberties of most Americans, but especially recent immigrants.
 And the Twin Cities have been no exception. Annie Young puts it this way: “Thanks to George W. Bush and the war on terrorism for adding to the violence on the streets of America and right here in our own beautiful Minneapolis.”
The Twin Cities has its own Ground Zero located in and around a quintet of residential towers in the Cedar-Riverside community on the West Bank of the University of Minnesota campus. Those structures, known as Riverside Plaza, and the neighborhood surrounding them, contain the largest concentration of East African immigrants—mostly Somalis—in the state and possibly in the country.
During the past two years, Cedar-Riverside has become a hotbed of controversy surrounding the Muslim community. When the U.S government decided to crack down on some Muslim-run businesses it claimed were funneling money to terrorists soon after 9/11 it picked a Somali-run company next door to the North Country Co-op on Riverside Avenue, raiding the shop and arresting its owners, actions that made the national news.
The neighborhood’s Muslim community and its friends responded with a candlelight rally on a chilly winter night outside the accused business. On other occasions, they have gathered in the gym of the Coyle Center to rally support for Somali advocate Omar Jamal who has been fighting government efforts to deport him for minor immigration offenses, or in that center’s community room for heated exchanges with Minneapolis city officials over alleged police brutality and racial profiling directed at the Somali community.
Recently, they gathered at Coyle in support of Mohammed A. Warsame, who is being detained for alleged connections to Al Qaeda—the first Somali to be jailed for a 9/11 related offense.
The abundant and active Somali presence on the West Bank has manifested itself in another significant way. East African youth, caught between cultures and generations, and often seen congregating in groups, have been branded as gang members by some Cedar-Riverside residents—an accusation denied by most Somali leaders and law enforcement officials.
Saeed Fahia is executive director of the Confederation of Somali Community in Minnesota (CSCM) located in the Coyle Center on the west edge of Cedar-Riverside. On the day I interview him, he is seated in his office working with a woman volunteer who is helping draft a grant proposal to raise money for a soccer league that provides activities for neighborhood youth as a way to keep them off the streets and out of trouble. Fahia says, “You can say that one of the reasons youth get into trouble is not having enough money for programs for them.”
Unlike some of his cohorts, Fahia acknowledges that Somali youth gangs may exist. “There aren’t Somali gangs in the same sense as in other cultures,” he says, “but there are groups of youth who hang out together and commit crimes. Some take names like the Somali Hard Boys and adapt the dress and language of gangs. The West Bank has more of this problem than any other area of the city. This is a particular problem with seniors in the high-rises. They complain about disrespect and misbehavior of the youth.
“Some of these troubled youth are drop-outs or homeless or have come from single parent households where they have not been adequately cared for, or may be living with relatives other than parents,” Fahia continues. “Some are bitter and angry about the civil war in their home country or over some personal issue. They all have had problems integrating into American culture. In Somali culture, for example, there are strict curfews and dating is not allowed like it is here. The problems usually start with lack of adequate parental supervision complicated by the fact that some youth learn English before their parents and then rebel against authority.”
City police officials with connections to the West Bank and/or Muslim community, don’t buy the “Somali gang” line. Luther Krueger, downtown-area community crime prevention specialist, claims that most reports on Somali gangs are “exaggerated.” For example, he says, “We get reports like ‘there was a gang of 40 Somalis beating up somebody’ from someone who may not like immigrants being here. When we ask them for names of victims, details on time, place, etc, they can’t provide that. There have been (lots of) rumors that have not panned out. It’s mainly fear-mongering. Somalis complain that they have been accused of loitering,” he says. “They loiter or congregate as part of their culture.”
Lt. Kevin Stoll, police officer in charge of the First Precinct, also believes that the public perception of Somali gangs is skewed. “There are no official Somali gangs like there are black or Asian gangs,” he says. “People perceive when there are groups of youth loitering that they are gangs. But Somalis are no bigger a problem than any other nationality.”
He reports a recent increase in thefts of and from cars in Cedar-Riverside, but adds: “We don’t always know who commits those crimes. Just because the perpetrator is black doesn’t mean they’re Somali. They could be from another African country or African Americans. And lots of the perpetrators don’t even come from the neighborhood.”
First precinct commander Rob Allen calls the inquiry about the presence of Somali youth gangs “a loaded question. “We define ‘gang’ as someone who does an act for the benefit of the group. There are some Somali youth doing crimes for personal gain but no more so than any other population. (These allegations) are based on racism and fear coming from people who can’t deal with the changes that have taken place in the neighborhood.”
Allen admits that there were a series of muggings last fall in neighborhood, some of which were committed by Somali youth, but he says that the perpetrators were arrested and the problem solved. He adds that the (aforementioned) Palmers Bar and Riverside Park reports were not what they appeared. In both cases, there was a heated exchange of words but no assault charges were filed.
 A police report of the aforementioned Viking incident says that the victim Christine Ann Sutherland of Minneapolis was assaulted inside the bar during the evening of last September 15. She was "hit in the mouth with a closed fist, knocking her teeth out and cutting open her lip" and also had a rock thrown at her. According to the report, police arrested only one suspect Hussein Abdihakim Mohamed of Richfield, indicating that he acted alone, which would appear to discredit any conclusions of Somali gang involvement.
My attempts to reach Ms. Sutherland at the bar and two of the officers whose names were listed on the police report were unsuccessful as Pulse went to press.
Whatever their disagreements on the existence of Somali gangs, everyone interviewed shared a common observation. Immigrant youths are ripe for mischief because of cultural conflicts and the lack of constructive activity to keep them busy.
Abduzah Bihi, a 24-year-old Somali immigrant and assistant manager of the Riverside Plaza Resource Center, argues that “there are no Somali youth gangs per se, but there are groups of youth who gather together on street corners and other places in the neighborhood who are perceived as being part of gangs.”
Bihi notes that 99 percent of the 3000 Riverside Plaza residents are from Somalia and about half of those are children under the age of 18. That means about 1,500 youth crowded together with little to occupy their time.
Riverside Plaza does have a homework helper and soccer program for youth, and will be opening a computer center. But, Bihi says, much more is needed.
“There is not enough youth programming in the neighborhood. There is a lack of sufficient park space for the youth to use. The period after school between two and five p.m is when they need activities and education programs. There isn’t even a library for them.”
According to Bihi, congregating in small groups in open spaces and street corners is a cultural tradition in Somalia, one that youth carry over to America. Many of the young people were born and/or raised in Minnesota so they don’t mind the cold weather. They congregate more when its warm, but they can be outside any time.
“It’s up to the parents to control their kids when they are indoors,” he says, “but outside, they’re often on their own.”
When idle youth hang out in groups, negative things can happen. As Bihi explains: “When they hang around in the plaza area outside of the apartment buildings they can get into trouble if a drug dealer comes into that area, or they may be tempted to commit other kinds of crime.”
But even when they don’t do anything wrong, the mere presence of the congregating youth can cause problems. Passers-by, affected by post 9/11 fear-mongering or ingrained cultural perceptions, will assume that the “group” is a gang. Some may choose to avoid the crowd. Others may report them for loitering or assume they are planning to commit a crime. Worse yet, says Bihi, police often are suspicious of the youth standing around and harass them for no apparent reason.
That latter reaction exemplifies a problem much deeper than the definition of “youth gang”—the tense, conflict-ridden relationship between West Bank Muslim and law enforcement communities.
No one has been more active on this issue than Omar Jamal, director of the Somali Advocacy Justice Center in St. Paul. As mentioned previously, Jamal has been fighting his own legal battle to stay in this country, a result, he believes of his aggressive advocacy for human rights. He has also been at the forefront of efforts to heal the wounds of 9/11 and bring all affected parties together, thus far, with mixed success. Most recently, he has been helping Mohammed A.Warsame’s family deal with his incarceration.
Jamal bristles at the mention of the words “Somali gang,” calling it “an overreaction” due to a lack of understanding.
“These teens are alienated,” he says, “caught between cultures, resulting in social problems. I have met with some of these youth and a lot of them blame others—elders, police, city officials, etc. There is a great deal of tension between police and the Somali community, including its younger generation.”
The youth Jamal has talked to claim they are unduly harassed by the police, sometimes for merely congregating on street corners. He singled out police in the Stevens Square and Whittier neighborhoods of Minneapolis for arresting Somali youth and putting them in jail without just cause, and said that the youth are afraid that when they get out the police will come and get them again.
“And others have jumped on the wagon and danced to the music,” he adds, “They just don’t feel Somali pain.”
In an effort to improve its relationships and reputation with minority communities, the Minneapolis police department, with city council approval, has recently adopted a new policy designed to enhance the training of officers in dealing with diverse populations.
Jamal calls that agreement “bogus,” and doubts it will do much to resolve the police-community conflicts. He says that his meetings with police on the issue have generally hit a brick wall, emphasizing the fact that there are no Somali police officers in the city. But he doesn’t put all the blame on the police or the city administration.
“Nobody is taking responsibility for solving the problem,” he says. “Community organizations are too dysfunctional to do anything about this issue. They just marginalize it. We need mediation between elders, the youth community and the police. It’s not being done. I have talked to lots of people in coffee shops, parks and elsewhere and they say nothing is working for them. I blame not just government but also the citizenry. There is no leadership. We need to work together on this.”
There are some programs in place that promise to address Jamal’s concerns. According to Saeed Fahia, CSCM has been working on and with various programs to keep Somali youth away from gang activity and help them better adapt to their new home. These include connecting with activities at schools, a local YMCA, and the Police Athletic League, (PAL), urging youth to work with homeless families, and conducting conflict resolution circles, often under the direction of a youth coordinator. Fahia says, “The key is keeping the kids busy."
The PALS program is an example of the way the Somali community is attempting to enhance its relationship with law enforcement officials to counteract the notion that cops have been too quick to arrest and brutalize Somali residents. In an effort to improve relations, police meet regularly with Somali leaders and residents to discuss issues of concern, to educate them on issues like traffic laws, police actions, etc.
Paul Zerby, city council member for the ward that includes most of the West Bank, says that while he hasn’t specifically heard about the youth gangs, he is aware of the tensions between Somalis and police.
Unlike Jamal, he believes the new mediation agreement will deal with many of those issues. He is encouraged that Somali leaders attended meetings discussing the hiring of the city’s new police chief and wants to get them more involved. He offered to help facilitate a meeting with Somali youth, elders and other interested parties.
Providing youth programs and improving Somali-police relations are keys to preventing and stemming violence on the West Bank and elsewhere. But there is still the public perception to deal with. As Fahia puts it: “These are the same problems immigrants have faced ever since 9/11.” The question is: will the new generation of immigrants continue to bear this burden?
Omar Jamal is urging anyone wanting to get involved in resolving the problems posed in this article to call him at 651-917-6383.
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