Mom wants to help kids avoid gangs

 

By J.J. Huggins

 

FITCHBURG -- Anne Torres cried when she found out her then-13-year-old son had joined the Latin Kings gang.

"I cried like a baby," Torres told the Sentinel & Enterprise during an interview this week in her home. "It was the most devastating thing -- the youngest, the one who kept me sane when his brother died."

 

Her son told her he joined the gang for "protection and respect," and because it was a cool thing to do.

 

"How could you do this to me?" she scolded her son. "How could you do this to yourself?"

Torres' comments come more than five years after her son, Samuel Torres joined the Latin Kings.

 

The 19-year-old is being held on $5,000 bail after police arrested him and three of his friends on March 18 on drugs and weapons charges.

 

State police obtained a search warrant for 229 Mechanic St., second-floor apartment, and found two sawed-off shotguns, one with an obliterated serial number; shotgun ammunition; a .22-caliber long rifle with ammunition and scope; a 9 mm handgun replica; and a .177-caliber BB gun, after they entered the apartment.

 

Police also recovered "trafficking weight" of cocaine (more than 28 grams), 55 bags of heroin, more than $3,000 in cash, three digital scales, a computer, surveillance cameras, and a heat sealer and small quantity of marijuana, according to the statement.

 

Torres hopes to get involved in the community to prevent other people's kids from ending up like hers.

 

"My son already did it (joined a gang), but I can reach out to other kids," she said during an interview in the neatly decorated living room of her Fitchburg home. "I want to reach out to other parents, they have to be more involved."

 

She doesn't deny that her son is a gang member.

 

"My son is a Latin King, and everybody knows that," Torres said."I'm not going to sugarcoat it, because that would be ignorant and that would be a lie. I'm not going to lie to my community and to the police department."

 

The wrong choice?

 

But Torres said gang members only keep guns on   hand to protect them from other rival gangs.

 

"They weren't thinking of going and killing anyone," she said. "Guns don't kill people, people are the ones who kill people."

 

"They made the wrong choice," she said. "The boys shouldn't have been there in the first place. I've know them since they were kids, I just hope for the best. It's up to the law, it's up to the system."

 

Torres even praised the police for conducting the raid that resulted in her son's arrest.

 

"They came in, they found them, and they stopped them," she said. "I give the police department credit for what they're doing. They're keeping the community safe for the next generation."

 

She said her son has dreamed of one day becoming member of the United States Marshal's service -- an elite law enforcement agency that investigates crimes across the country, ever since he was 8 years old.

 

But he never followed his dream after he joined the gang.

 

She knows it won't be easy for him to get out.

 

"Once you're in a gang, it's not like being a member of a church," Torres said. "All I could do was talk to them, cry, and tell them that I hope you're not going to be involved in something you're not supposed to be involved in."

 

Torres said she wanted to move her son out of Fitchburg when he first got involved in a gang, but she couldn't afford to.

 

"If I had the opportunity, and was financially situated, I would have taken my son out of the state," she said. "Financially, when you're a single mother, there's not a lot you can do."

 

Despite being a gang member, Samuel Torres didn't get into serious trouble with police until he was arrested earlier this month.

 

He even helped his mother run a youth intervention program called "Reality Point."

 

The program tried to give middle-school kids an opportunity to sit down and discuss problems, play games, make arts and crafts and play sports, according to Torres.

 

Torres also used to take her son and his friends to break-dancing competitions around the state, and once   took them to pick up trash in Fitchburg's Cleghorn neighborhood.

 

Torres stopped running the Reality Point program in 2001 when her father died, and her mother got sick with cancer at the same time.

 

She said kids who join gangs often come from single-parent households, and easily succumb to the peer pressure to join a gang for protection.

 

"Most of the kids (in Reality Point) came from broken homes and hadn't seen their fathers," she said. "You can't just say if you want to come see me, you'll visit me. The child didn't sit down and ask you to come into this world."

 

Torres separated from Samuel Torres' father, but said her son could see his father whenever he wanted.

 

A family history

 

She said her son looked up to his older brother, who was also a member of the Latin Kings.

 

"My son is respected by a lot of Latinos for what he represents," Torres said.

 

Her older son lost an eye in a shooting several years ago.

 

Another son died in a car wreck on a rainy night in August 1990,   as he was riding in a car with a drunken driver.

 

Now that her youngest is in jail, Torres wants to restart the Reality Point program.

 

She said both her sons could give the children first-hand knowledge of what it's like to be a gang member, and what the consequences can be.

 

"If you don't make mistakes in life and you don't know what it is to suffer, you can't be a teacher," she said. "It has to come from your soul."

 

"I am trying to get the youth off the street, and not become gang members," Torres said.