Daily Press from Newport News, Virginia • Page 22

if- Sunday, Oct. 30, 1994 INSIDE LOCAL mm: Saturday's numbers Pick 3: 3-2-2 Pick 4: M-1-5 Lotto: 7-8-17-20-39-42 Friday's Cash 5 scorecard Pick Winners Prlzt 5 of 5 2 $100,000 4 0(5 115 $100 30(5 4,227 $5 Winning number 19-22-23-24-33 928-1111 call the Daily Press 1-Line at 928-1111 and enter category 7623 (ROAD). The call is toll-free throughout most of Hampton Roads. Other areas: James City County 989-01 11; Smithfield, 357-6594; and Gloucester, 1-800-981-6600. BRIDGES AND TUNNELS.

Coleman Bridge No opening scheduled today, subject to change. INTERSTATE HIGHWAYS. 1-64, Newport News One westbound lane closed, 8 p.m.-6 a.m. Monday. 1-64, York CountyNewport News East and westbound lanes alternate, routes 105 and 238 intersection, 8 p.m.-6 a.m.

daily, Tuesday-Nov. 24. NEWPORT NEWS. Boxley Boulevard East and westbound traffic alternating at Menchville Road and Warwick Boulevard through Nov. 28.

27th Street 600 block of 27th Street closed through Monday. Menchville Road Detours, Nicewood Drive to Smucker Road through Nov. 22. Warwick Boulevard North and southbound lanes will alternate closing, Elm Avenue and Post Street, 8 a.m.-4 p.m. through Nov.

23. HAMPTON. Kecoughtan Road Alternating east and westbound closures at Little Farms Avenue, 7 a.m.-4:30 p.m., through Nov. 17. Also, detour set i 9 fJVING HISTORY CAMP.

Spend time with the 32nd Regiment Virginia Volunteers from noon to 3 J.m. today at their camp in New--port News Park. The Civil War unit saw action on the Peninsula. Information: 886-7912. HALLOWEEN HOURS.

Area cities and counties have issued these hours for Monday's holiday. Trick-or-treaters, 12 and younger (unless otherwise specified), should be accompanied by an adult. Citycounty Hoursage 6-8 p.m. County p.m. Poquoson dusk-8 p.m.

Hampton sundown-8 p.m. West Point until 8 p.m. "Mathews Cnty until 9 p.m. Newport News until 8 p.m. Smithfield until 8 p.m.

isle of Wight until 9 p.m. Surry until 9 p.m. age limit 13) COURT EXPENDITURES. The total judicial system expenditures in Virginia grew by 3.0 percent in fiscal year 1993. Expenditures reached nearly $147 million with the district courts spending approximately $85.5 million or about 58 percent of the total, according to the Virginia State of the Judiciary Report.

TRAFFIC HOT LINES. For information on closings and traffic conditions for Hampton Roads, CLIP AND confined to spray-paint sneaking into one another's territory and "tagging" the Denbigh area of Newport News was "tagged" with this graffiti. FudgDaiiy Press Writing is on the wall; gang signs emerge in NN up for road closure from Hampton Roads Avenue to Powhatan Parkway through Nov. 4. SAVE YOUR COMMUNITY dven though United Way has more than 750 volunteers working in more than 400 campaigns, it simply isn't possible to reach everyone.

If you haven't been asked to give, please clip the coupon and send your, donation to: Peninsula United Way, 1520 Aberdeen 201 Hampton, VA 23666. Thank you for helping to save lives and families in our community. State Zip 1 1 Name I Home Address City Peninsula United Way 1520 Aberdeen Rd. 201 Hampton, VA 23666 (804) 838-9750 i'MMl I THANKY0U Early Billing JOTALGJFT. FOR YOUR GIF! (circle one) Oct.

Nov. Dec. Monthly tMOUNT PAID NOV Quarterly S'9nature Mar. June Sept. Dec.

Once BALANCE DUE To be billed in Date month Virginia Lottery 1901 Other lotteries 1911 JAMES CITY. Route 614 One northbound lane closed, Jolly Pond Road to near Route 60, 7 a.m. -5 p.m. through Tuesday. "Most of the undecided will not vote." Larry Sabato, University of Virginia political analyst, referring to the state's U.S.

Senate campaign. Story, A8. "There is something better, if possible, that a man can give than his life. That is his living spirit to a service that is not easy, to resist counsels that are hard to resist, to stand against purposes that are difficult to stand against." Woodrow Wilson, 28th President of the United States Dial 928-1111, category 1222 to give your opinion on today's question. Calls will be taken until noon today.

excursions The 611, which the railroad gave to Roanoke after commercial steam operations ceased in 1959, will be returned to Roanoke, probably to the transportation museum, Fort said. Norfolk Southern had been using the refurbished engine for excursions under an agreement with the dry since 1982. The engine was built in the Roanoke shops in 1950. Fort said no Norfolk Southern employees are expected to be laid off. The excursion program was conducted largely with volunteer labor.

Officials intially said the final run would be Nov. 13 from Greenville, S.C., to Asheville, N.C. They later said excursion runs would be extended into December. "Vol 1 Under Newport News' previ ous police chief, Jay A. Carey the department never made a public concession that youth gangs had organized in the city.

Chief William F. Corvello, who took over when Carey was dismissed, has changed course. "Chief Corvello recognizes the fact that we do have a problem and we're going to deal with it," said police spokesman Bill Roth. Trump, who has published articles on gangs in national education journals, is a strong proponent of early and direct intervention in the schools. "A gang," he wrote in the July 1993 issue of The American School Board Journal, "is defined by the negative behavior of its members: Kids who sit together in the lunchroom don't constitute a gang.

But when groups start assaulting other students or creating an atmosphere of fear and intimidation, they become a gang." Both the police and Newport News school officials say gang activity is not yet a problem in the schools. Rosalynne Whitaker-Heck, a Newport News schools spokeswoman, says there are no specific policies relating to gangs, only a dress code that applies to all seek power in many ways and one of them is to frighten people." Michael Newman, a 19-year-old Hoods Mob member, was at Nice-wood Park the day of the shooting. So was his girlfriend and their 18-month-old daughter. At first he ran for cover, he says, but when he saw one of the gunmen aiming at his daughter, he went on the offensive, unarmed and livid. "When I saw that, I was going to hurt whoever did it.

I didn't care about no gun," he said. Newman, who dropped out of school in the 10th grade when his girlfriend became pregnant, now lives off welfare, working only occasionally as he plots his career as a rap artist. The gang life the rivalries, the danger is something he wants to escape. Some day. "We want to be out of it, but if we walk away right now, do you think Skoob and all the others are going to let us be out?" he Skoob says he used to be a good baseball player.

Now he wants to make music. "I rap," he said, tapping his foot on the bench. "That's what I dd. I'm trying to get a recording contract. I can flow for a white boy." But when he called from jail recently, Skoob seemed more reflective, hinting that he, too, thought there must be a better way to live, that there must be more than getting drunk, making trouble and passing out.

But what? "It's like I'm stuck in this," he said. "This is the only thing I know." For now, he is also stuck in the judicial system. When he finishes paying the court costs from York County, hell have to answer to the charges stemming from the vandalism at White's trailer. But White, who is scheduled to go to trial on the grand larceny and burglary charges Monday, doesn't seem interested in reform. The prospect of going to jail doesn't seem to faze him.

His boasts of not caring seem to place him in higher standing among his Hoods Mob brethren. He goes back to working the basketball, eyeing the hoop as he trots ahead, not too fast, not too slow his kind of swagger. And everyone is watching. His friends in Hoods Mob. The two admiring 16-year-olds.

And the police, in their uCrnarked car yards away. ft Much of the rivalry between gangs is area The Beechmont Theater in the Gangs Continued from B1 the talk and walk of urban gangs. Their gangster act might seem laughable if it were not for what the Nicewood Park shootout proved: These are bad kids doing bad things. In interviews since the shooting, members of Hoods Mob and a rival midtown troop called The Brotherhood have even suggested they are poised to battle over Denbigh turf. Hoods Mob claims the Den-bigh-Menchville area.

The Brotherhood also called The Brotherhood of Bloods or just the Bloods hangs mainly in midtown, between Main Street and Harpersville Road. Members of the two gangs each said they have a core of about 20 members, with plenty of hangers-on if they need reinforcements. Newport News police, who previously dismissed any mention of organized gangs as over-reaction, are now not only conceding for the first time that there is such a problem but have assigned a number of officers to help solve it. "We are going to aggressively pursue these people that are causing the problems," said police spokesman Bill Roth. "We're going to take whatever measures we need to stop the problem." At 20, Hoods Mob leader Joey White has a lengthy criminal record, both as a juvenile and an adult.

He has already done a short stint in jail for burglary. He is due to appear in court Monday on charges that he was involved in a burglary in June that netted him and four accomplices audio equipment, jewelry and 15 guns. The shooting in Nicewood Park, which led to the arrest of three teens, could prompt some kind of retaliation from Hoods Mob. But that's about all Joey White will say about it. "Somebody's gonna do something, but I ain't gonna tell on myself," he said with a shrug.

White is a typical candidate for suburban gang leadership. He is from a broken home and got into trouble early on. He is clever. He has charisma. He is a high school dropout with few job skills and fewer job prospects.

He is not worried about going to jail. He says he is not afraid to die. "Convicted felons? It's hard to get a job," he said. "And I ain't gonna work no job. I've got a baby on the way and I've got to do what I've got to do.

"I guess you could call me a career criminal," White said. "I've been getting into trouble ever since I was 11, ever since my dad was killed." His father, he said, was clubbed to death by someone armed with a baseball bat. While in jail last year, White said, he had a fellow inmate fashion a tattoo on his left shoulder blade: A tombstone with his father's initials and the year of his death. Skoob's family is splintered, too. He is the leader of The Brotherhood, a gang whose members sport three-dot tattoos on their hands.

His knack for getting into scrapes goes way back. He is a dropout He is a big talker. Sometimes people call him a "wigger," a racist slur recast for whites who act black. And like his adversary in Hoods Mob, he is not fond of society's rules. "I wanted to be a hardhead," he said, reflecting upon earlier days.

"I wasn't going to listen to nobody." His grades started to plummet at 12, he said. He got into drugs at 13, mixing alcohol and marijuana. "I was like, "The hell with all I didn't want to be bothered with it. The more I heard, 'You need to change, you need to the more I rebelled," said the 19-year-old, whose real name is Michael HarrelL Eventually, he joined fcYork County gang called Esquire, tak- By Blair Anthony Robertson Daily Press NEWPORT NEWS The graffiti, the tattoos and the tough talk of Hood's Mob and The Brotherhood are signals, experts said. Signals that gangs are developing in Newport News, and that the community needs to respond.

"The growth of the problem is a process, it's not an event," said Kenneth S. Trump, a nationally recognized authority on teen gangs who coordinates a gang task force in the suburbs of Cleveland. "What communities and school districts have to remember is that an emerging problem could become a chronic problem if it isn't addressed in its emerging stage." Gang behavior may begin with graffiti, but it gets worse, according to Wolfgang Pindur, a professor of urban studies and public administration at Old Dominion University. "There is a very clear pattern of escalation," he said, noting that the mischief often begins as young as age 8 with property vandalism and moves from there toward stealing from houses, breaking into cars and taking joy rides. Violence is at the end of the process.

ing the beating required for membership and adopting his current street name. He enjoyed seeing the fear on people's faces when he and his pals were near, he said. He liked making mayhem. "The excitement," he said. "It's fun as hell.

You're out there drinking with your boys and everybody's scared of you. I wanted to get respect." Now, the word is out that Skoob and Joey White are sworn enemies even though they really don't know one another. A couple of weeks after the Nicewood Park shooting, Skoob and a handful of gang members were arrested on charges they broke out three windows at White's Rivermont Drive mobile home. Last week, he called collect from the York County jail, saying that after the arrest he was nabbed for unpaid court costs and was transferred out of the Newport News jail. "Some of my troops did do it, but I was not there," he said of the attack on White's trailer.

"The Brotherhood hates Hoods Mob; Hoods Mob hates The Brotherhood. Things have been escalating. "We'll peace it up for a while. Then somebody wants to be a jerk. They'll get drunk; we'll get drunk.

Then things happen." Much of the tit-for-tat mayhem involving gangs is confined to spray-paint sneaking into one another's territory and "tagging" the area. Some involves driving past the rival gang and making eye contact. Both are about respect, or lack of it One way Newport News police are checking out gangs is by investigating the abundance of graffiti. Sgt Tom Penny, who is supervising the task force, draws a distinction between gangs like Hoods Mob and The Brotherhood and the more violent gangs of major cities. "These groups are basically groups of adolescents that have grown up together, formed associations and have taken on certain elements of gangs," Penny said.

Gangs fill a void left by dysfunctional families for teens who don't seem to fit in with their peers, he said. Skoob concedes that he doesn't fit in. That's one reason he gets his laughs by scaring people. That's part of feeling powerful," said Wolfgang Pindur, a professor of urban studies and public administration at Old Dominion University. "If you feel alienated, then you Saturday's question: Should cops get tickets like everyone else? 1 1 i i i I I iL.

YES: 148 0:20 Officers should be allowed to drive faster than us, because they are experienced drivers and they know what they are doing. No, they shouldn't. They are the law. I think being the law they will abide by the law more so than anyone else. We should keep these cops busy handling more important things.

Since so few cops do it, I don't see the need to bicker about it. No, not if he was on official police business. Since when is reckless driving considered a minor infraction of the law? It's clear that the police in this state think that they are above the law. The sheriffs deputy should be fired, the state trooper should be disciplined and the policies should be reviewed. If we allow exceptions to him, how about other city officials? They should also be allowed to drive 110 mph? This is just another example of why people don't have a lot of respect for police officers.

If they are in pursuit that is different story, but if it's routine business, they shouldn't be allowed to exceed the speed limit. Traffic laws are made for the safety of the public. broke the law. I say cuff him and stuff him. Today's question: Are gangs a problem on the Peninsula? Norfolk Southern ends company extra money, Fort said.

The news was greeted with sadness by those who have been connected with the steam trips and prompted a letter of protest from Roanoke Mayor David Bowers to Norfolk Southern Chairman David Goode. In his letter, Bowers reminded Goode that the city has been promoting tourism centered on the Virginia Museum of Transportation. Excursions are a big part of the city's plans, Bowers said. In a statement, Goode said, "as much as we love the history and tradition mat attach to steam excursions, steam operations have become incompatible with our total commitment to customer service." The Associated Press ROANOKE Norfolk Southern Corp. says it will end its steam excursion trips in the eastern United States because it can no longer justify the expense.

The company said Friday it is discontinuing the 28-year program after the close of the 1994 season. Norfolk Southern ran the 1950s-era steam locomotive 611 just about every weekend from April to November. The steam excursions don't fit in with the operation of a modern railroad, said Bob Fort, a spokman at the company's Norfolk headquarters. Many of the costs, such as security, cost the.