Globe on Sept. 28, 2003 * Tribune on Sept. 30, 2003
(This is the Globe version)

A gang (Or is it?) afflicts upscale Las Vegas area

BY STEVE FRIESS
GLOBE CORRESPONDENT

LAS VEGAS: Their weapons of choice allegedly include lacrosse sticks, rocks, and a hot butter knife. Their neighborhoods, mostly, aren't in the inner city, but in gated subdivisions, where homes sell for at least $250,000. And, in the absence of criminal business, their motives seem inscrutable.

Police and prosecutors here say they're investigating an unusual sort of teen gang, one made up of as many as 30 suburban teens from one of the region's best high schools. Their summer vacation exploits, the authorities say, included videotaping themselves attacking random victims.

More than a dozen of the alleged "311 Boyz" have been charged with a long list of felonies in connection with a range of assaults. In one, a victim was attacked with brass knuckles; in another a horde of teens incited a late-night melee while chanting the gang's name.

"What's unusual about this is that you have a gang of white suburban kids of this size that seems well-organized, as opposed to smaller groups of white kids doing isolated, predatory things," said C. Ronald Huff, dean of the School of Social Ecology at the University of California, Irvine, and author of "Gangs in America."

"It's more common for suburban kids to mix in with established urban gangs than to start one of their own," Huff said. "I don't know of a case like this to this extent."

The most serious charges thus far have targeted nine suspects, 16 to 18 years old. They are accused of attempted murder and 12 other felonies in a rock attack on July 18 that crushed the face of a 17-year-old, Stephen "Tanner" Hansen. Police say Hansen and two friends were chased out of a party by boys who pelted their sports utility vehicle with landscaping stones until one crashed through the windshield and disfigured Hansen. He has undergone reconstructive surgery; he now has two plates holding his face together.

That attack, which was not taped, led police to discover the existence of the 311 Boyz, most of whom are or were students at Centennial High School in the Las Vegas Valley's fast-growing, upper-class northwest. Several targets have told police that they were being assaulted by a few youths who called others on their cellphones to assist.

The videos, released to the media as an attachment to a court motion, support the organized-gang theory. About 30 minutes of tape, which authorities say came from an alleged member, shows assaults in which assailants warned victims about the 311 Boyz and, in one instance, rebuffed a boy asking to join. The lacrosse stick attack is shown.

A defense lawyer, James Buchanan, rejected the contentions that the 311 Boyz exist or that such a group might constitute a gang. Buchanan accused prosecutors of releasing the videos for inflammatory purposes. Buchanan represents Steven Gazley, 18, who has pleaded not guilty to charges that he was the ringleader in the Hansen case and, in a separate matter, that he had burned a youth with a hot butter knife. Neither of the alleged attacks is on the videos, and few of the Hansen suspects are shown.

Another gang specialist, Mark Fleisher, author of "Dead End Kids," also disputes the assertion that a group such as the 311 Boyz would qualify as a gang. "The difference between this and a real gang is the difference between jumping off a chair and calling that flying," said Fleisher, director of the Begun Center for Violence Prevention Research and Education at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. "Here you have a bunch of kids from rich families raising hell."

Prosecutors say they're flummoxed as to why youths with relatively prosperous families would behave this way, but they insist that the tapes back up the assertion that 311 Boyz exists.

"During the course of the beatings on the tapes, they call out the gang name," said Jonathan VanBoskerck, a local prosecutor. "I believe that proved the attacks were for the furtherance of the aims of the gang, be it terror, beatings, or whatever they were."

Indeed, the group's motives are unclear. One suspect told police that the group's name pays homage to the Ku Klux Klan, "K" being the 11th letter in the alphabet. Yet only one of the known attacks have been listed by police as bias-related -- the victims were two Asian men -- and some of the alleged members aren't white. The group's symbol seems to be the Iron Cross, originally a German military decoration. Some teens in the videos have tattoos resembling the decoration. Centennial High School has barred the symbol.

Huff agreed with prosecutors that the 311 Boyz are a gang, and suggested that these teens may be emulating the urban gangs depicted in movies, television, and some rap music.

"The 311 Boyz are somebody everybody is talking about, and that may be exactly what they're after," Huff said. "I see no evidence that this is a hate group, but they're clearly a gang. In order to be a gang, they have to be involved in criminal activity."

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