* Feb. 25: Two men were stabbed outside the Taco Bell on Sunset
Drive, and the victims are reluctant to tell police who their
attackers were or to even make complaints. After weeks of
investigation, one of the victims said there had been tension
between the 38th Street Gang and La Raza, of which he was a member,
that included vandalism to a car and an apartment building before
the incident, and a prior run-in with the suspects, Rueben Ramos and
Nicholas Aguilar, the previous fall. Both suspects were prosecuted
in the case.
* July 21: Waukesha police were sent to a Wauwatosa hospital,
where an 18-year-old man was taken after he was stabbed at least
three times, although no evidence of such was found at the reported
crime scene in the 1900 block of Madera Drive. The victim wouldn’t
give the names of the people involved, was "fairly vague"
about details in the case, and said he was a former member of the
38th Street Gang and is no longer active.
* Sept. 1: A man speaking very little English goes to Waukesha
Memorial Hospital to report he’d been beaten near a friend’s
house at Grand Avenue and Dodie Drive, by a group of people wearing
green bandanas and carrying baseball bats. The man’s friend was a
suspected member of the 38th Street Gang, but the man said he was
here visiting family from Puerto Rico. He decided it wouldn’t be
worthwhile to file a complaint, leaving police to wonder if the man
was a victim of a crime or just had been involved in a
"beat-in" gang initiation.
The above incidents, described in police reports, illustrate the
type of activity recently seen in Waukesha. Although street gangs
are nothing new in Waukesha, as Police Capt. Mark Stigler said they’ve
been around since the early 1990s, the crimes they are involved in
seem to be escalating in severity, from misdemeanor offenses to
felonies.
