San Bruno police, who have been meeting the Tongan community trying to find ways to reach out to troubled families following violence by Tongan gangs in their areas, plan to visit Tonga in March 2005 to learn more about the culture.

By Amy Yarbrough

Fuming from a fight two days before, nine men piled into their cars in San Mateo and headed for a home on Walnut Street in San Bruno seeking revenge, police say. There, they allegedly shot one teenager in the back and beat another unconscious with a pipe, breaking his arm.

"Everything just really came to a head," San Bruno Police Chief Lee Violett said of the August 22, 2004, attack. "This was a pretty violent retaliation on a quiet Sunday afternoon."

Both victims survived the attack, which authorities say was the worst of a recent upswing in violence in parts of the county involving young Tongans. San Bruno police have been trying to reverse the trend by teaming up with their counterparts in San Mateo and Burlingame and working with community organizations and local churches.

Since July last year San Bruno police have been meeting with members of the Tongan faith community to find ways to reach out to troubled families. This month the agency got the City Council's approval to send one of its officers, along with one from Burlingame, to the Kingdom of Tonga to learn about the island nation's culture.

There have been at about two dozen incidents ...— from drive-by shootings to fights ...— since last year in San Bruno involving young Tongans, some of whom are members of rival gangs, the Shoreview Crips and the Baby Crip Gangsters, Violett said. San Mateo, which also has many Tongan residents, and Burlingame, which gets fallout from the two cities, have also been experiencing problems.

"On a couple of cases, we've had to call in outside resources, because the fights are so big," Violett said.

To help solve the problems, police have worked with the Peninsula Conflict Resolution Center and sought funding from the Peninsula Community Foundation to send two representatives from the Tongan community to a 40-hour parent seminar.

The meetings have also led to gang-awareness training and presentations by Probation Department and Project KLEAR (Kids Learning Empathy and Respect), a program taught in the schools which promotes positive solutions and respectful behavior.

"I think it's fortunate we haven't had any incidents on our high school campus," Violett said, adding that feuds in the community are bound to end up in the schools. "I think they end up looking over their shoulders on Monday morning."

Another key to the effort is helping police to understand and relate to the community, Violett said. The upcoming trip to Tonga, which will take place between March 10 and 17 and be funded through community donations, is intended to help officers learn about Tonga's police, cultural mores, and help build credibility with the community back home.

"There needs to be better understanding of us by them, and they need to understand law enforcement," said Burlingame Police Chief Jack Van Etten, whose agency is still seeking funding for the trip. Though Burlingame does not have a large Tongan population, the city has had three or four incidents, two involving guns. The city played host to a Tongan beauty pageant last year, after which a quarrel started. During the dispute, a shot was fired from the crowd.

"There were several hundred people there in a riot situation we had to deal with," Van Etten said.

Reverend Kalatini Ahio of the First Tongan United Methodist Church in San Bruno said problems seem to have been improving since police and the community have been meeting.

Ahio said the upcoming trip will be a good education for police, and that the Tongan culture involves large family groups, which may have given authorities the wrong impression that youngsters, who choose to hang out in groups, are involved in gangs.

"They respect the older people, they respect the faith leaders, they don't respect police," Ahio added. "We know in the Tongan community, the power and authority is the parents." - San Mateo County Times