From January to June of this year, Escondido police made 41 juvenile crime arrests. That’s a faster pace than in 2023 when they made 57 arrests over the whole year.
"In the last year or so, we've been seeing a lot more gang activity with our juveniles," said Ryan Hicks, a lieutenant in charge of investigations with Escondido Police. "These kids are getting in fights, and they're carrying knives and they're carrying guns and they're carrying improvised weapons to stab with."
Hicks said the presence of those weapons turned what could have been a fight among teenagers into a homicide or an attempted homicide.
Now, Escondido police are bringing back a gang enforcement team. The department had one a few years ago but had to cut it due to staffing problems and a decrease in gang crime.
"Obviously, patrol always has to come first. And so we had to get rid of that enforcement team and it was just left up to the patrol officers to do gang enforcement," Hicks said.
The two-officer team will be conducting outreach with at risk youth as well as fentanyl enforcement. One of the officers is fluent in Spanish, in hopes of connecting with non-English-speaking parents.
Part of the team's assignment will be getting to know the youth and identifying the kids hanging out in gang-related neighborhoods.
Younger and new faces are new territory for the police department. So are some of the new trends in the younger generations, like social media.
"So we need to change our tactics in how we monitor them," Hicks said. "We do have a person whose sole job is monitoring social media for some of the gang and gang-affiliated kids. That's a lot of times where they're going to show their affiliation."
While police are trying to get ahead of any more gang-related crimes, community advocate Agner Medrano said the problem has deeper roots.
As a former gang member, he’s familiar with the gang activity and violence that has plagued the city for years.
"All the flower streets (streets named for flowers) on the East side of town, that's Diablos' territory. Westside gang is all the number streets and old Escondido area," he said. "Mission is another active street too. There's a few memorials on that side."
Medrano took us to the most recent memorial site, off Wanek Road. "This is the memorial site of one of the young kids that got killed about a month ago," he said.
Kayden Alan Romo, 14, died at a hospital after being stabbed in a street fight. Police said the fight was gang-related and arrested two teenage boys.
While gang violence took Romo’s life, others survive with lifelong consequences — including a young man who, fearing for his safety, asked not to be identified for this story.
Earlier this year, he was shot outside of his home.
"We were just fighting for a long time until one of them pulls out a gun and shoots up. ... After the shot, they got back in the car and ran," he said.
The bullet struck his back, ultimately leaving him paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of his life.
"It was really life changing. … everything that I was able to do back then. I'm trying to relearn how to do everything on my own now," he said.
No arrests were made in connection with the shooting. He and his family hope to move out of Escondido after saving some money.
Medrano said one ingredient in the rise of gangs is a lack of resources for youth. "Where there's poverty, where there's division, where there's drugs, where there's guns, all that, those are elements for gangs," he said.
Escondido Council Member Consuelo Martinez acknowledged that gaps in the city's budget have prevented any kind of expansion of youth and community resources.
"There are not enough resources," she said. "Our city is facing a huge budget deficit."
So, she’s put out a call for creativity.
"We might not have unlimited resources, but we do have our community and our community does have resources. They have creative ideas. We are innovative in our city. So let's come together and really try to support our youth and really deter this violence and say, 'This is not okay. We don't want violence in our community.'"
She is calling for community members, businesses and churches that could host after-school activities for youth. She would also like to offer grief support for the families impacted by gang violence.
Medrano said when he was in a gang, he was a young boy who needed some guidance, and he still sees that need today.
"We need to be mentors to our kids, our youth. Sometimes as adults, we need to take responsibility of our village (and say), 'This is our village. And at the end of the day, what can we do to help our youth?'"
Medrano and police advise parents to be vigilant about their children and talk to them — monitoring their whereabouts, the clothing they wear, any weapons or graffiti in their belongings, and their social media activity.
Medrano said the change can fall into anyone’s hands. "We need to mentor our community," he said. 'We can't say, 'Oh, that's a cop's job, that's the nonprofits' job.' It's all of our job."
