New gang may have started in Tracy prison

[Lucinda F. Boyd]

State prison officials have traced the genesis of a new gang to Tracy's Deuel Vocational Institution. The Northern Riders first gained attention in 2000 when a founding member made a brazen declaration of war in a yard at Deuel. Officials today are determining if this group should hold rank among California's established prison gangs.

If it started inside the Tracy prison, as officials suspect, it would become the state's eighth documented prison gang and Deuel's second in a little more than 50 years. The Mexican Mafia, one of the oldest and most notorious prison gangs, was the first spawned there.

The Northern Riders — a gang with an origin unlike others — went undetected for a time while prison investigators focused on more prominent groups.

"We didn't think they'd materialize into anything," said Special Agent Mike Brodie, a gang investigator for the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. "We were wrong."

So far, the Northern Riders has grown to 1,200 members throughout Northern California prisons. In a sweep last month at Deuel, officers confirmed 43 inmates as members, chief deputy warden Ron Rackley said.

Brodie described the Northern Riders as a so-called dropout gang. It formed in reaction to the rigid Northern Structure and Nuestra Familia, related gangs that demand their members carry out commands from those further up in the hierarchy.

Unhappy with the politics of these established gangs, then-Deuel inmate Maurice Vasquez a decade ago walked onto a prison yard controlled by Nuestra Familia and began fighting several of its leaders at once, Brodie said.

"That was his declaration that the Northern Riders are up and running," Brodie said, adding that its members operate more as a network than as a hierarchy and recruit members with the idea, "If you come with us, you don't answer to anybody."

He said its origin in reaction to other gangs makes it unique, because most band together for self-protection. The Northern Riders dominate special-needs yards at Deuel and other Northern California prisons populated by inmates who have dropped out of gangs, Brodie said.

While the list of street gangs in California is long, corrections officials recognize only seven that originated inside California's prison walls, said Special Agent Michael Ruff, also a prison gang investigator with the corrections department.

According to Ruff, the Mexican Mafia started at Deuel in 1958. San Quentin State Prison was the birthplace of Nuestra Familia (1967), Aryan Brotherhood (1968), Black Guerrilla Family (1971) and Texas Syndicate (1973).

Nuestra Familia launched the Northern Structure (1983) at Folsom State Prison, but officials considered it a distinct gang. The Nazi Lowriders (1998) began in the California Youth Authority.

Stockton police Sgt. Rodney Rego, a gang investigator, said he's aware of the Northern Riders, but the group has yet to be connected with any incidents in town.

State prison officials are well into a yearlong analysis of the Northern Riders to determine if it should be classified as a validated prison gang.

Once the analysis is complete, they will pass their information to headquarters in Sacramento, where top brass will make the final determination, Ruff said.

There is little mystery to why California's crowded prisons continue to give rise to new gangs, said Barry Krisberg, a distinguished senior fellow at UC Berkeley's Center for Criminal Justice.

Gangs have formed throughout history as tools for powerless segments of a society to gain some control over their lives, he said. That explains warlords in Afghanistan, the Mafia in Sicily and inmates in California's chronically overcrowded prisons, he said.

"What you have in prison is almost a hothouse," Krisberg said. "We put together a large number of people who are generally powerless over their lives. ... The gang gives them an alternative identity."..