Trish Long

El Paso Times



In this Oct. 20, 1956, El Paso Times article, Bill Montgomery reported on the widespread gang problem on El Paso streets:

The Dead End Kids and Gashouse Guys are back. Fifty organized gangs of teenagers – some of them numbering 50 to 75 members – roam the streets of El Paso nightly now.

Their operations: beatings, stabbings, zip-gun shootings, thefts, burglaries, vandalism, auto thefts, drinking.

Their field of operations: from the Crossroads to Ysleta; from 13th Street to Mountain View.

So far this year, the rat packs have shot one person with a zip-gun, severely beaten several, and stabbed at least eight who have had to go to the hospital for treatment.

How many have nursed their black eyes, bruises, split heads, sliced ribs and chain-flayed backs at home or under care of private doctors is not known.

Juvenile gangsters at the moment have reached the greatest numerical status in history here. There is no distinction as to neighborhoods which spawn them, no racial, religious or economic group which supplies more of their recruits than others.

Biggest since 1951

Not since the bloody days of 1950-51, when juveniles hospitalized someone every few days for weeks at a time, has El Paso permitted the young gangsters to achieve such widespread organizations.

Capt. John M. Fuller, county probation officer, Friday confirmed that a list of 50 gangs obtained by The Times were all in active operation at this time and that all were under investigation by his office and City Police juvenile officers.

Concerted effort by probation officers, police, sheriff’s deputies, church groups and, above all, parents crushed the vicious rat packs here in 1950.

But now they’re back, as Capt. Fuller emphatically confirmed.

They congregate at drive-in cafes, intimidating employes and customers, picking fights and committing acts of vandalism. They pick out a likely recruit and rough him up until he joins one gang or another in simple self defense.

They use knives, clubs, homemade blackjacks and zip-guns. And a weapon which has rapidly gained ascendancy in recent years, the bicycle chain.

Rugged weapon

It has sharp edges and leaves a welt or gash halfway round its victim. It tears and gouges with its dirty, rusty edges and, properly used, leaves a dandy scar.

Mainly the tough kids (none of whose El Paso gangs are named Dead End Kids or Gashouse Guys) fight other kids about the same age, but adults are fair game for the thievery and retaliation.

At drive-in cafes near the military bases, they gather by the carloads, make slighting remarks to waitresses in hopes of stirring up a battle with soldiers to whom some of the carhops are married.

Usually they succeed in getting their battle.

One boy whose father lives in a distant city and whose mother lives here was sent to live with his father after becoming a chronic juvenile offender here. The father intercepted a letter to the youth from fellow gangsters and sent it back to El Paso officers.

Maybe most of that letter was youthful (and badly-spelled) boasting. Officers and citizens can hope it wasn’t all true.

Full schedule

His correspondent told the ex-gang member than the kids were doing OK and that the “midnight auto fund” was in good shape.

The “midnight auto fund,” the letter indicated, was made up of money obtained from sale of stolen autos, auto parts and other property. The writer assured the exile that a car recently had been sold for $2,500 and that he, the writer, would soon forward “a grand” to his deported buddy.

Keeping the midnight auto fund supplied hurt the gang once, the letter said. They were meeting (presumably with their girls’ auxiliary) in a six-room house “near the mountain” which they had rented and only 23 were on hand, since the rest were out “replenishing the fund.”

Along came a gang of “30 guys from Ruidoso” who had traveled here in seven autos and fell upon the unsuspecting local gang with the advantage of surprise.

The battle raged for 20 minutes, the “Ruidoso” gang set fire to a trellis on the house, and “four cop cars and two fire engines” came screaming to the scene.

The letter-writer calmly described one youngster with three ribs and a shoulder fractured, others with other injuries. But maybe that was just bragging, because the hospitals did not report any such cases.

Maybe.

Mouthpiece fund

In another intercepted letter, officers learned that one gang turned all its stolen property into a “mouthpiece fund” to hire a good lawyer if any of its members ever got arrested.

Capt. Fuller, who retired after years as an El Paso policeman before taking the probation officer’s post, has plenty of personal experience to draw on in commenting on juvenile affairs here. He told a service club recently that delinquency in the form of gangs was now at a peak in El Paso.

What makes juvenile gangsters?

“Cars,” says Capt. Fuller. “Giving a youngster a car is the worst sin a parent can commit in connection with that child.”

Police echo the sentiment.

Kids with cars have to go someplace to show them off. They don’t go alone. Kids with cars have to have money to keep them going, to “dress them up,” to make them “dig out” faster than the other kids’ cars.

That makes thefts, according to Fuller and police.

The parents’ responsibility comes in not keeping track of their children; not knowing where they are when they go out night after night.

Police think most parents must not even know the contents of their children’s rooms or their own garages, or they would discover evidence of gang membership – maybe a bicycle chain with one end wrapped with tape for a grip.

Maybe a zip-gun made out of an auto radio antenna, a rubber band a block of wood. Maybe an extra hubcap or spare tire.

Or a black eye or a bloody shirt.

No high school in El Paso is without its gang, and police say at the present rate of growth, there are few homes in El Paso proof from them.

Trish Long is the El Paso Times’ archivist and spends her time in the morgue, where the newspaper keeps its old clippings and photos.