Some battles won in war on gangs

When it comes to gang violence, there's more bad news than good. So let's take care of the bad news first.

A national survey on drive-by shootings released last week by the Violence Policy Center, an educational group dedicated to reducing violence in America, ranked Washington state at No. 4. Conducted over a six-month period from July to December 2008, the analysis added up 733 drive-by shooting incidents that claimed 154 lives and injured 631 individuals nationwide.

California topped the list with 148 shootings that resulted in 40 deaths. Washington had 38 drive-by shootings that claimed three lives.

Those statewide figures will surely be eclipsed this year. In the past two weeks, two teens have died following drive-by shootings just in Sunnyside. Police believe both cases were gang-related.

On July 10, an 18-year-old man was gunned down while house-sitting for a neighbor. Though police say the assailants were gang members, the victim appears to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

A week later, on July 17, a 15-year-old boy was killed during a drive-by shooting along a street in Sunnyside. It happened on a sunny afternoon while he was standing next to a bicycle.

This is about as grim as gang violence can get for a small rural city like Sunnyside.

But in the shadows of these deaths, there's a glimmer of hope. It comes in the form of arrests and a crackdown by police.

Wedged between the two fatal drive-by shootings, a coordinated sweep by federal and local law enforcement agencies resulted in the arrests of 21 gang members. Among those nabbed in the sweep were 10 people detained for immigration violations. They are regarded by law enforcement as criminal aliens -- those who are accused of committing a crime while in the country illegally.

The sweep brought together officials with the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the state Department of Corrections and the Sunnyside Police Department. The raids, which spanned two days, occurred in Toppenish, Granger and Grandview as well as in Sunnyside.

This sweep in the Yakima Valley followed an equally successful series of gang arrests in May in the Tri-Cities, which netted 27 arrests.

That's a persuasive way to deal with gang members: greeting them with a pair of handcuffs.

More good news arrived Tuesday with the arrest of three teens in the July 17 drive-by shooting. None of these teens was a stranger to the Sunnyside Police Department.

They are "all very, very well-documented gang members," said Chief Ed Radder.

Obviously, we need far more of these arrests to put a crimp on gang violence. But they do provide proof that the battle to curb this type of corrosive criminal activity is far from hopeless.