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CRIME
Slayings of Latinos Increasing in Prince George's
By Aaron C. Davis
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 8, 2008; Page C06
In Prince George's County, where young black males have overwhelmingly dominated homicide statistics for decades, young Latino males in recent months were nearly as likely to be killed.
From mid-March to mid-May, Latinos were victims in 10 of 24 homicides. For the year, Latinos now account for 21 percent of all homicides investigated by county police, up from an average of less than 13 percent over the past five years.
Nearly all the slayings occurred in or around Langley Park. Although officers there have made determined efforts in recent years, language barriers and an immigrant population sometimes reluctant to cooperate with police mean the slayings are among the hardest to solve.
"There has definitely been an increase in the number of Latino homicides in the last 60 days or so," Prince George's County State's Attorney Glenn F. Ivey said. "It's definitely a problem."
Police officers, community leaders and doctors serving the county's Latino population said anecdotal evidence, including increased numbers of Virginia license plates, suggests the immigrant population is surging in Langley Park amid the crackdown in parts of neighboring Virginia.
County police spokeswoman Sharon Taylor cautioned against drawing broad conclusions about the increase. "These things go in cycles; you could just as easily have a string of 10 or 12 black murders," she said.
The county has led the Washington region in Latino homicides in recent years, and as a percentage of Prince George's population, Latinos appear to be dying at an increasingly disproportionate rate. Although they account for more than one of every five homicides this year, Latinos make up less than 12 percent of the county's population, according to 2006 census estimates, the latest available.
Of the 10 homicides that occurred between mid-March and mid-May, investigators have classified two as gang-related. Another was an officer-involved shooting that remains under investigation. Three appear to have begun as arguments, and four occurred during apparent robberies. Police say immigrants are increasingly targeted for robberies, particularly on Friday nights, because they're known to carry around their weekly earnings in cash.
Of the four homicides in which police have made arrests, including both alleged gang killings, one of which took the life of a 15-year-old, charges point to Latino-on-Latino crime in every case. The remaining cases are unsolved, but many contain hallmarks that suggest killers knew their victims, police said.
John Realpe Montoya was killed execution style April 25, knelt down and shot in the back of the head. The body of Juan Carlos Guzman was found mutilated in a park May 12 -- shot and stabbed so many times that police close to the investigation say it appeared the killer was trying to make a point.
Some appear to have begun with senseless arguments, however, and community leaders say those killings are tied to a lethal combination of overcrowding and alcohol, most evident in a cluster of low-rent apartment complexes two miles northeast of the District line.
Charged with first-degree murder, Cesar Euelder Carbajal-Aldana is accused of killing Isaias Lopez-Vail on May 4 with a bat and a broken beer bottle after a night of drinking. Law enforcement sources, speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing, said they found Carbajal-Aldana a few doors away, bloodied and inebriated; he never left the building.
"These past few weeks have been sad, bizarre -- some of the worst I've seen," said Bill Hanna, a professor of urban studies and planning at the University of Maryland at College Park who runs the advocacy group Action Langley Park.
Langley Park has for decades been an entry point for some of the Washington area's poorest immigrants. The county's Latino population -- led by Salvadorans, according to local estimates -- nearly doubled from 57,000 in 2000 to more than 98,000 in 2006, according to the census. Sheets often divide one-bedroom apartments into homes for two or three families, say local health-care workers. Some apartments are cordoned off for a dozen or more single men.
Lately, the Latino population has spilled beyond the neighborhood's unincorporated one-square-mile area into neighboring Lewisdale and Adelphi, and across the Montgomery County border into Silver Spring. But police say much of the trouble is at Riggs Road and University Boulevard in the heart of Langley Park, an area that at first glance could be mistaken for East Los Angeles.
Old men gamble on corners by kicking dice with their feet instead of rolling them by hand -- standing makes it easier to walk away and disown the game if police cruise by. Laborers scarf down pupusa, while women sell sliced mango and salt from shopping carts. On paydays, Cuzco, Coco Cabana and a half-dozen other warehouse-size clubs overflow following a clockworklike surge of Corona sales at Tick Tock Liquor and Restaurant.
Maj. Kevin Davis, commander of the 1st Police District, which encompasses Langley Park, has won over community groups by pressing the store's owner to stop selling singles -- and glass bottles. Four of the slayings this year, and dozens of stabbings in the past several, have occurred within a half-mile of its parking lot; broken beer bottles also have been a weapon used in more than half the assaults in his district's crime statistics, he said.
When Davis took over the area two years ago following a rash of machete attacks, he shrunk the Langley Park patrol beat to the smallest in the county, dedicating two cruisers to a handful of its worst blocks. Davis also has said he has nearly tripled the number of Spanish-speaking officers in the district.
On a good day, however, that means he still operates on a thin margin -- just one Spanish-speaking patrol officer available for each squad, on each shift.
On April 26, officers had to rely on a civilian passerby to translate for a female acquaintance of a stabbing victim. As police took notes, paramedics nearby attended to the alleged assailant, who had been subsequently attacked by a mob. Hobbled by the language barrier, police officers were able to do little about the secondary attack. A Spanish-speaking detective eventually arrived, but only after the initial report was taken through the civilian.
A week later in the same area, another stabbing victim, Erlli Amillcar Fuentes, died before he could be interviewed in Spanish and possibly identify his attacker, Cpl. Arvel Lewis, a former police spokesman, said at the time.
"There was a language barrier. They couldn't get someone to speak Spanish to him," Lewis said.
Officers who responded to the scene disputed that account and said Fuentes was unconscious by the time police arrived. The officers spoke on condition of anonymity because the case is still open.
Davis said that the department has made strides in hiring Spanish-speaking officers but that it takes time before inexperienced recruits are ready to be put on some of the county's roughest streets. "We've done a lot, but this is an issue where we're still in the catcher's position," he said.
The department said that 112 of its 1,570 officers, or 7 percent, speak Spanish and that it is recruiting more.
But unlike many other jurisdictions with burgeoning Spanish-speaking populations, basic language courses are not part of officers' routine, in-service training in the county. Taylor, the spokeswoman, said one of the department's Spanish-speaking officers recently completed an instructor's course and would soon begin teaching colleagues.
She said the department also is taking other steps, including nearly doubling the size of its gang unit. By acting quickly, officers with that unit might have prevented possible retaliatory violence after the slaying in April of 15-year-old Guillermo Enrique Medina, said Maj. Robert Liberati, who oversees the gang unit.
"We got in there right away; we sat down with the opposing leaders and said we know where you're at, we know who you are and if you do anything back, we're going to be right on you," he said.
