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The fear - that youngsters are banding together for criminal activities that are becoming more and more violent - is causing pressure for stronger law enforcement and political measures to keep Down By Law and similar groups from becoming more organized, more recognized and possibly more violent.
Concern about increasing reports linking the name Down By Law with crimes has caused the DeKalb County Commission to strengthen loitering laws and prompted police from Atlanta and DeKalb County to begin a joint investigation of suspected gang activities.
But discerning exactly what exists behind the name has proved difficult for local police and politicians alike.
Tracking Down By Law is like trying to grab a puff of smoke. Members do not wear identifying paraphernalia, hold meetings or even publicly admit they are Down By Law. They don't seem to protect turf like gangs in other cities, but the name keeps popping up in connection with various crimes ranging from trespassing to murder.
"There are so many ingredients to this thing, you just can't put it all together and say, `Well, here comes the gang Down By Law,' " said DeKalb County Commissioner John Evans. "But what we do know is that things are happening that we cannot tolerate."
Metropolitan Atlanta does not yet have the hard-core, organized gangs of some other major cities, but groups such as Down By Law do contain the seeds for such gangs, according to Julius Debro, a sociologist in the Criminal Justice Department at Atlanta University.
"What we have here now is very similar to what Chicago had in the very beginning," Debro said. "The gangs there grew out of a need for kids to get together and be with other kids. Then, the violence came from their staking out territory. . . . I think we do have loosely knit gangs in Atlanta."
Increasingly, reports of activity linked to Down By Law are of violent, sometimes senseless attacks, most of the time against other youths.
Steve Cartwright, Atlanta assault squad detective, filed a report on such an incident last week. The report described an attack on a 17-year-old east Atlanta youth who was beaten by two teenagers his own age while the incident was "supervised" by a 22-year-old.
The 17-year-old identified at least one of his attackers as a member of Down By Law. The youngster was hit in the face with a brick and was taken to DeKalb General Hospital for stitches after the fracas was broken up by a passing motorist, according to the police report. He told police that it was the third time he had been attacked. On one occasion, the teenager told police, a gang member held a .357-caliber Magnum revolver to his head.
While he was at the hospital talking to the youth, Cartwright said in his sworn report, "A nurse there told me that she had recently noticed a large number of people in the DeKalb General emergency room who had been victims of Down By Law violence. She expressed her own concern that this gang had recently been accelerating its violent attacks and she wanted to let this fact be known."
The youth's mother, who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution, said that Down By Law members, who first drew public attention during fracases last fall at a South DeKalb shopping center, have since moved into the neighborhoods.
"We're scared," said the mother. "I'm scared for him, and I'm scared for me. If I wasn't buying this house, I would move tomorrow."
In another incident, the director of a Decatur boys club was intimidated by Down By Law members late last year.
"They came out to the club looking for me one particular night, because I had put one of their members out of the club," said Charles Reeves, director of the Samuel L. Jones Boys Club at 450 East Lake Drive. "They came in and scoped the building out, and then went outside. . . . About an hour later, one of the tires was flat on my car," Reeves said.
Reeves was fortunate. The gang has been connected to much more serious crimes, including two murders and the armed robbery of passengers on a MARTA train.
"We get reports every now and again where the victim says the perpetrators are members of Down By Law," Cartwright said. "We seem to get reports about them more than any other group."
Members hard to identify
While Down By Law members are hard to identify, community activists, school officials and police sources said Down By Law activities include:
Older members seeking recruits at area high schools.
Bill Rogers, DeKalb County school system Area I administrator, said "eight or nine arrests'' were made this school year at south Dekalb schools involving non-students who came to campuses and refused to leave. Some of those arrested claimed to be members of Down By Law.
And an officer in the Atlanta police intelligence unit said that many members of Down By Law are 22 to 25 years old. "The ones that are 25 are going into the schools and recruiting members," he said.
Members carrying weapons.
Melvin Spearman, a former partner in the Atlantis Teen Club in Decatur, said the club was so plagued with security problems that owners installed a metal detector at the front door to keep weapons out.
Members intimidating non-members.
Spearman said at times tensions ran so high at the Atlantis that "if you touched one of them - bumped into them - you were going to have 30 kids on top of you."
The club has since closed, partly due to problems with armed teens, Spearman said.
Spearman, and Ernest Marshall, who was also a partner in the Atlantis club and is a member of Mayor Andrew Young's Youth Task Force, maintain that youths also have to commit a crime before they are accepted in Down By Law.
Officer denies gangs exist
However, police in Atlanta and DeKalb, and an admitted former member of Down By Law say there are no initiation rites.
The former gang member, who requested anonymity, said some members may decide on their own to commit crimes to impress others in the gang. He said Down By Law does not have uniforms or other identifying marks. "It's just them knowing your face and your name," he said.
In September, the wounding of three teenagers at Rainbow Village Shopping Center in south Dekalb ignited the first publicity about heavily armed groups of teens congregating on weekend nights to swap stolen goods.
Press coverage of the alleged "swap shop," where police confiscated weapons including an M-1 carbine, an M-16 and a pump action shotgun, prompted DeKalb County officials to respond to allegations that the groups of youths might be gangs.
Commissioner Evans said the response was not strong enough. "We were not aggressive enough in dealing with the problem at Rainbow Village," he said. "We knew we had a problem then but I don't think we wanted to face it."
But DeKalb Chief Executive Officer Manuel Maloof maintains the press over-dramatized the situation at Rainbow Village.
"I will not accept the notion of turf and gangs," Maloof said. "We have problems with certain young people who band together and commit crimes, and we are dealing with that forthrightly.
"I think we understood without any disagreement that there are problems in some areas of the county," Maloof said. "I have never denied that there is a problem."
Police patrols increased
DeKalb police increased patrols and began gathering intelligence information immediately after teen disturbances at south DeKalb's Rainbow Village shopping center last September, according to DeKalb Public Safety Director Dick Hand.
"We are trying to keep as much pressure there as we can, and we have not had, since that point last fall, any major problems. It's been very quiet," Hand said.
Atlanta police are more willing to recognize Down By Law as a gang and have linked several serious, violent crimes to the group, which they said has its origins in and around the East Lake Meadows Housing Project in southeast Atlanta.
An Atlanta teenager was slain in April after a run-in with an alleged member of Down By Law.
London Vonshone Jackson, a 16-year-old member of the Five Percent Nations - a group that police have stopped short of calling a gang - was shot to death at a party that was crashed by members of Down By Law.
Timothy Antwan "Peanut" Harris, called a leader of Down By Law by DeKalb District Attorney Bob Wilson, was charged with Jackson's murder.
A few weeks earlier, Harris had been found not guilty of robbing at gunpoint passengers aboard a MARTA train in December. One co-defendant pleaded guilty to the robbery, and two others were tried and convicted.
The range of Down By Law apparently does not stop at the Perimeter, police said. Security officers at Six Flags Over Georgia on Interstate 20 in Cobb County were notified by Atlanta police in early May to be on the lookout for members of Down By Law. "Atlanta police have informed us that this group is around. They believe this group has a large enough scope to alert us to that," said Six Flags spokesman John Millsaps.
The activities of the group have led to a number of responses from various community leaders.
In DeKalb, Evans recently introduced a curfew proposal for youths under the age of 18, which the commission approved. But Maloof late last week vetoed the curfew, saying the new ordinance was too broad. He did sign into law an amended loitering ordinance that gives police officers more enforcement authority.
The DeKalb County Board of Education is discussing a proposal for providing a police officer at each high school campus. The proposal, by school board member Paul Womack Jr., is designed to discourage non-students who come on campus for a number of reasons, including drug peddling or gang activities.
Jackson, the teenager killed at the party in April, was a member of Israel Baptist Church in southeast Atlanta. After his death, the church started a Youth Non-violent Committee that will sponsor programs for area teens in tje hope of channeling their energy into positive outlets.
Most community leaders agree with Zepora Roberts, head of the PTA at Columbia High School in south DeKalb, who said parents and churches also must take responsibility for helping teenagers stay out of trouble.
"We just cannot put that burden on the police department," she said. "We need to put some type of law on the books to make parents responsible."
Evans agreed, but asked, "What's the line of time on trying to get them together when here comes an elephant herd?"
So, while police and politicians try to stop the stampede, Down By Law remains an enigma, rarely seen but nevertheless creating an air of fear and uneasiness among some residents of east Atlanta and south DeKalb.
"They just keep killing and keep killing," said the mother whose son has been beaten up three times. "Children killing children - that ain't fair."
