Two teenagers have been charged with murder in the death of 18-year-old Dennis McGee.
McGee was killed just hours after he graduated from West Potomac High School. Police said that McGee was attending a party in the Hybla Valley area of Fairfax County when a fight broke out outside the residence where the party was being held. McGee tried to stop the fight and was killed. Preliminary autopsy results indicate that his death was the result of blunt force trauma to his upper body.
The two 17-year-olds who have been charged with the crime are members of an Asian street gang that operates in Fairfax County. Police do not believe that McGee was gang-involved or that the fight was gang-related.
Commonwealth Attorney Robert Horan will ask that the two teens be tried as adults at a hearing on July 10. In the meantime, they are being held without bond.
McGee’s death raises the question of the prevalence of gang activity in Fairfax County. Detective Ken Cumpher is a member of the Fairfax County Police Department’s gang unit. The unit was formed in 1997 with federal funds and then became a regular part of the police department.
“We have definitely seen an increase in gang activity in the county over the past 10 years,” Cumpher said. “In the early 1990's, we began to see a problem but by the late 1990's, we knew we had to do something about it.”
CUMPHER SAID that there are between 2,000 and 3,000 gang members in Fairfax County, members of 20 to 25 different gangs. About 75 percent of those gang members are Latino, 15 percent are Asian and the remaining ten percent are all other races. Most gang members are between 15 and 18 years of age, although gang members are recruiting Middle School students.
“Most of the criminal activity we see from gangs is larceny, malicious wounding, theft and that sort of thing,” Cumpher said. “Gang members are not usually armed with guns although I am not naive enough to believe that some of them don’t have access to those types of weapons.”
Cumpher said that most gang violence is directed at other gangs. “It is rare to see gangs attack random individuals,” he said. “The incident involving the young man from West Potomac was unusual in that respect.”
FAIRFAX COUNTY GANGS are organized around neighborhoods in which gang members live or around places where they like to meet. “Some of them are not that well organized but we do see some that are,” Cumpher said. “Some meet every day, some meet once a week and some don’t really meet at all. Some of them like to meet at certain clubs in the area.”
Trends show that gangs are moving from the inner city to the suburbs. “Every high school in Fairfax County has at least one gang member and I would say that the same is probably true for most of the middle schools,” Cumpher said. “People should not believe that just because they live in Fairfax County that there are no gangs.”
National trends show that gang membership has declined over the past five years, albeit slightly. In 2000, there were estimated 772,500-gang members nationwide. Eighty-six percent of cities with populations between 100,000 and 250,00 reported persistent gang activity between 1996 and 2000, according to the National Youth Gang Center.
IN 2000, 94 percent of all gang members were male and six percent were female. Thirty-nine percent of all youth gangs, nationally, reported having some female members. The most recent data that is available related to the age of gang members is from 1999 when 37 percent of all gang members were juvenile, younger than 18, and 63 percent were adults, older than 18. In 1999, the National Youth Gang Center reported that 47 percent of all gang members were Hispanic, 31 percent were African-American, 13 percent were white, seven percent were Asian and two percent were other.
Parents should pay attention to their children’s friends and know what their children are involved in during their free time. “There are lots of signs,” Cumpher said. “We do presentations for groups and can provide some good information to parents.”
Civic groups or other organizations interested in having a presentation or receiving more information should call 703-246-4650. Summer is a busy time for the Gang Unit so groups should plan for presentations in the fall and winter.