[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 67 (Wednesday, May 25, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: May 25, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                               GANG CRIME

  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, last Wednesday, the New York Times ran a 
lengthy article on the growing number of crimes committed by gangs of 
white youths.
  The article focused on the brutal and senseless murder last August of 
17-year-old Michelle Jensen in my own State on Iowa. Miss Jensen was 
killed because she would not turn over her car keys so that the gang 
members could rob a convenience store.
  Three youths, aged 17, 18, and 19, were convicted of murder for their 
role in the crime, and three other gang member were convicted of lesser 
offenses.
  For many years, Iowa was spared the ravages of gang activity that 
have plagued other states.
  Although rural crime is growing at a rapid rate, Iowa still has a 
crime rate much below the national average. In recent years, gangs have 
begun to be formed in my State. In the quad cities, at least 23 gangs 
roam the streets.
  As tragic as this crime was, I can at least praise the State of Iowa 
for its response.
  Suspects were taken into custody quickly, and have been convicted 
less than 9 months later. The trigger man was convicted of first degree 
murder and robbery, and the others present at the scene were convicted 
of second degree murder and robbery. In Iowa, our criminal laws are 
more enlightened than ``three strikes and you're out'' if someone 
commits violent offenses.
  Iowa's tough criminal justice system will sentence all three of these 
individuals, despite their ages, to life without parole. I deeply 
appreciate the outstanding efforts of Iowa law enforcement personnel 
and prosecutors in bringing these criminals to justice.
  I believe that swift, certain, and tough law enforcement is the most 
important weapon we have to contain gang activity.
  Mr. President, the article also mentioned that only one of the gang 
members came from a two-parent family.
  A criminologist quoted in the article maintained that gang activity 
grew in the quad cities as a result of corporate downsizing there over 
the years. There are some important points to note in response to the 
article.
  First, we all agree that two-parent families are more likely to 
instill the moral training helpful to producing law-abiding citizens.
  But an individual is not less culpable for the crimes he commits 
merely because he comes from a single-parent family. And, second, 
corporate downsizing and its accompanying unemployment also cannot be 
used to excuse gangs or murders. Moreover, the corporate downsizing in 
the quad cities took place quite a few years ago.
  Today, unemployment in Iowa is under 4 percent, so the state 
government's economic policies are working well. Nonetheless, 
significant reductions in the unemployment rate have not led to 
lessened gang activity or fewer brutal murders.
  The Senate crime bill conferees may want to think about this when 
considering how much so-called crime prevention money should be 
included in the bill, and whether it is likely to really have any 
effect on crime.
  We need to focus on the growing problem of gangs.
  We need to punish strictly those gang members who commit violent 
crimes. And we must stop looking for explanations of crime that focus 
entirely on societal factors and not on the moral decisions that 
individuals choose to make, and for which they must be held 
accountable.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the New York Times 
article be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                [From the New York Times, May 18, 1994]

               Killed by Her Friends In an All-White Gang

                             (By Don Terry)

       Davenport, IA, May 13.--In the middle of a silent country 
     night last August, 17-year-old Michelle Jensen was shot to 
     death. Her body was left along a dusty rural road, near a 
     cornfield not far from the center of the city.
       Three teen-age gang members murdered her, a jury ruled on 
     Friday, for the keys to her Ford Escort. The killing by the 
     youths, all from Davenport's blue-collar West end, rocked the 
     eastern edge of the state, not only because of the cold-
     blooded brutality of the crime but because Iowa boys are 
     supposed to join the Scouts, not gangs; they are supposed to 
     be committing pranks, not murder.
       Three other young men arrested in the case pleaded guilty 
     to lesser charges and testified against the fellow gang 
     members they had vowed to die for. But what seemed to shock 
     people even more than the big-city style of the gang violence 
     were the suspects themselves: six white sons of the 
     heartland.
       ``People were amazed when they saw them on TV and found out 
     all six of them were white,'' said Michelle's mother, Cheryl 
     Jensen. ``For some reason, that blew people's minds.''
       Seeing the suspects shuffle into the courtroom in handcuffs 
     forced people here to question beliefs about race and crime 
     and the boys down the block. When many people here used to 
     talk of gang violence, they were referring to black and 
     hispanic youngsters in big city ghettos, not young people in 
     Iowa cities like Davenport, which has fewer than 100,000 
     residents.
       Dan Wulff, coordinator of a neighborhood youth program 
     here, said, ``I think the Jensen case made a dent in those 
     stereo types, but I'm afraid they're still alive and 
     unwell.''
       Davenport, along with Bettendorf, Iowa, and Rock Island and 
     Moline, Ill., make up the Quad Cities, clustered on the banks 
     of the Mississippi River. The police say there are 2,000 to 
     2,500 gang members of all races in the Quad Cities, which 
     have a total population of about 200,000. asian, black and 
     Hispanic residents make up about 9 percent of that number.
       About a third of the gang members are white, a percentage 
     that some criminologist and sociologists say is high compared 
     with the rest of the country. Nationally, experts say, more 
     whites are turning to gangs for the same reason that black 
     and Hispanic youngsters do: family, esteem and fast money.
       Youth workers here say that before Michelle was killed, 
     white gang members were ignored in a way that black and 
     hispanic gang members were not, even though some of the 
     whites were conspicuous with multiple gang tattoos and 
     clothing adorned with gang insignias. One worker said, for 
     example, that white and black gang members would go 
     shoplifting together, then split up by race, knowing that the 
     shopkeeper would follow the blacks and not pay attention to 
     the whites.
       ``I see white kids running around here with gang colors and 
     flashing gang signs and nobody pays them that much 
     attention,'' said Prof. James Houston, who teaches criminal 
     justice at St. Ambrose University here and is an expert on 
     street gangs. ``But if you're black and you do it, then 
     everybody's radar goes off.''


            the background--copycat gangs, a girl with a car

       Michelle Jensen's body was discovered on Chapel Hill Road 
     shortly before 2 a.m. on Aug. 29. Within hours, according to 
     her sister, Veronica, 14, the police had rounded up six 
     members of an all-white chapter of the Vice Lords street 
     gang.
       One of Chicago's oldest black street gangs, the Vice Lords 
     have haunted that city for 30 years and spawned chapters or 
     copycats around the Midwest. The authorities here said gang 
     members from Chicago and St. Louis often come to Davenport on 
     weekends to sell drugs, recruit members and escape the heat 
     from the hometown police. Chicago is a three-hour drive from 
     here.
       Cpl. Henry Hawkins of the Davenport Police Department grew 
     up in Chicago and never imagined that so much of the mean 
     streets would follow him to Iowa. Now he spends a lot of his 
     time talking to school and neighborhood groups about street 
     gangs.


                       `the saddest part of all'

       One thing Corporal Hawkins tells the groups is that white 
     and black teen-agers join street gangs for basically the same 
     reasons. Some are lured by money, others by the rush that 
     comes with a gang fight or trying to outrun the police. A lot 
     of them do it for love. being in a gang provides them with a 
     sense of family they have not found anywhere else. ``That's 
     the saddest part of all,'' Corporal Hawkins says.
       Lieut. Phil Yerington of the Police Department said: ``A 
     lot of these kids don't have much to cling to. I think these 
     guys were closer as a gang then they were in their own 
     homes.''
       Only one of the six involved in Michelle's killing lived 
     with both birth parents, and he provided the gun for the 
     killing. Fathers, for most of them, were only faded memories. 
     All six had dropped out of school, although one earned a high 
     school equivalency degree.
       Michelle was not a member of the gang. But she was friendly 
     with several members, and close enough to one, Jason Means, 
     17, that he accompanied Michelle and her family on a camping 
     trip last July.
       The night Michelle died, the Vice Lords wanted to borrow 
     her 11-year-old Escort to use in the robbery of a convenience 
     store, according to court testimony. They had high hopes for 
     the stolen cash. They planned to start a drug ring, so they 
     could jump into the major leagues of the gang world, the 
     police said.


                           only blocks apart

       The evening began with a party at the home of Anthony 
     Hoeck, 19, a high school dropout and would-be gang leader. He 
     lived with his father, Lavern, a former steel foundry worker 
     who had been disabled, and his mother, Marsha.
       Michelle lived a few blocks away. Her mother, Cheryl, works 
     at a gift shop, and her father, Mark, is an electrician. A 
     good student, Michelle loved drama and music and helped out 
     at the Zion Lutheran Church pre-school on Sundays. She also 
     worked at a summer camp for disabled children, where she had 
     met a new boyfriend, a college freshman her parents were 
     crazy about.
       ``I said, `Thank, God, finally, Michelle has met a decent 
     boy,''' her mother recalled. ``She was so happy.''
       Michelle and her mother had the usual conflicts, Mrs. 
     Jensen said, and one particularly bitter battle, when she 
     thought her daughter might be sniffing glue. But Mrs. Jensen 
     said Michelle could not resist the badboy charms of the Vice 
     Lords; they looked so cool with their tattoos and red gang 
     bandanas. Michelle had dated a gang member who was in jail 
     the night she was killed. She considered the Vice Lords her 
     friends.
       ``They put up a good front when they were around us,'' Mrs. 
     Jensen said. ``We never realized they were a threat. Michelle 
     never thought they would hurt her.''
       Before going to the party, Michelle cleaned up her family's 
     house. Then she lied to her parents. She told them she was 
     going baby sitting. She gave her sister $5 not to tell where 
     she was really going.
       ``She had her troubles, but we got through them; at least I 
     thought we did,'' Mrs. Jensen said. ``She was on the right 
     track. I could trust her again. I did everything in my power 
     to protect my kids. I thought I had it under control.''


         the night of the killing--a demand for keys at a party

       At the party, everyone was drinking gin and malt liquor, 
     said Christopher Felgenhauer, 19, who pleaded guilty to 
     robbery and kidnapping. Also at the party were the other two 
     who pleaded guilty, Shawn Shewmake, 18, the leader of the 
     gang, and Joe Hager, 20, who lived with the Hoecks.
       Their plan was to rob a convenience store that night, and 
     they needed a car. They chose Michelle's. But when Michelle 
     refused to turn over her keys, Chris Felgenhauer testified, 
     Tony Hoeck told him to hit her in the head with an electric 
     fan to knock her out. When he hesitated, Chris said, Tony 
     threatened to kill him if he did not carry out his order. 
     Chris then hit Michelle once in the face, knocking her onto 
     the bed but not unconscious. When he tried to take her keys, 
     he said, Michelle got angrier and louder.
       Hearing the noise, Mrs. Hoeck came up stairs and told her 
     son to get Michelle out of the house because she was drunk, 
     Joe Hager testified.
       Chris testified that Michelle had complained to Mrs. Hoeck 
     that he had struck her, but he said he had denied it.
       Chris said Tony then gave Jason Means and Justin Voelkers, 
     19, another gang member, a sawed-off shotgun that he kept 
     under his bed and called ``Bud.'' The gun had been stolen and 
     the barrel sawed off, a prosecutor said. Tony told Jason and 
     Justin to take Michelle outside and to get her car, according 
     to court testimony. The witnesses, including the three 
     suspects who pleaded guilty, provided this account of the 
     slaying:
       The boys convinced Michelle that she was too drunk to drive 
     and promised to take her home. They drove away with no 
     destination in mind, turning down Chapel Hill Road. Justin 
     had to urinate. He got out of the car with the shotgun. 
     Michelle got out and walked down the road. Justin ran after 
     her, hiding the gun behind his leg, and ordered her to sit 
     down in the road. She refused. He gave her until the count of 
     five. When she continued walking, he shot her. The blast tore 
     away part of her head.
       Justin, in a videotaped confession, never said why he 
     pulled the trigger. He said he had been drunk and has been 
     told ``to take care of the bitch'' because she knew too much. 
     ``I didn't look,'' He said. ``All I saw was a big flame, a 
     big flash.
       Justin and Jason went back to the house and picked up the 
     other boys and headed for the convenience store. But they 
     decided against robbing it because it was too crowded. 
     Instead they drove to a Hardee's for hamburgers before 
     driving back out to Chapel Hill Road to prove to the other 
     gang members that they had had the nerve to kill someone. The 
     police were already there, so they went back to Davenport.
       The police woke most of them up a few hours later.
       Jason, who also gave a videotaped confession, was asked by 
     a sheriff's deputy if it had been hard for him to eat after 
     Michelle was shot. He replied: ``No, not really. I was 
     hungry. I wasn't even thinking about it.''


                       A ``Wrong Place'' Defense

       Tony, Justin and Jason all pleaded not guilty. Tony's 
     lawyer said his client, with an I.Q. of 77, was not smart 
     enough to be the leader of the plot, as the prosecution 
     contended. The lawyers for Justin and Jason said their 
     confessions had been manipulated. Justin's lawyer said the 
     killing had been an accident. Jason's lawyer said his client 
     had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. The 
     three did not testify.
       The Scott County District Court convicted Justin of first-
     degree murder and Jason and Tony of second-degree murder. All 
     three were convicted of kidnapping and robbery and under Iowa 
     law will be sentenced to life in prison without parole. The 
     sentencing is scheduled for May 31. There is no capital 
     punishment in Iowa.
       [Shawn Shewmake and Joe Hager were each sentenced on 
     Tuesday to two 25-year terms to run consecutively. Chris 
     Felgenhauer is expected to receive about the same term when 
     he is sentenced on Thursday. They will have to serve at least 
     a quarter of their sentences before being eligible for 
     parole.]


           The Personalities--2 Teen-Agers On Different Paths

       Earlier in August, Michelle had been so excited about 
     starting her senior year at Davenport Central High School 
     that she had loaded her school locker with new notebooks and 
     decorated the gray metal door with photographs of her new 
     boyfriend.
       She also had some photographs taken of herself. Her mother 
     said she had never looked better. She had dark hair and an 
     easy smile, though she still worried about her weight and 
     chewed her nails constantly.
       In the morgue, her mother said, the only way she was sure 
     it was Michelle was by looking at her fingernails.
       Justin Voelkers, who was 18 at the time he killed Michelle, 
     had been in and out of trouble at school and with the police.
       His background is not that of the stereo-typed gang member. 
     He grew up about 45 minutes from Davenport, just outside of 
     Calamus, population 450, on a 250-acre farm owned by his 
     stepgrandparents, Clara and Robert Wilhelm. There is a rope 
     swing at the farm and a yardful of cats and dogs.
       His mother, Dorinda Voelkers, commutes to Davenport to tend 
     bar.
       Justin was shifted from one school to another in Calamus 
     and Davenport for students with behavioral or learning 
     problems.
       Niki Soto, who drives a school bus in Calamus and developed 
     a close relationship with Justin, said: ``I'd have him into 
     my house. I just wouldn't trust him. There's a difference.''
       She said Justin had a lightning-fast temper and a short 
     attention span. ``He's not a kid with a bad heart,'' she 
     said. ``I've had others that you could actually fear.''
       In his videotaped confession, Justin said the gang was 
     after money and power when Michelle was killed.
       ``Money will get you power,'' he said. ``Power and money 
     are everything.''
       Justin said he did not feel too bad about the dead girl 
     because he did not know her well.
       ``I ain't worried about going to jail,'' he said between 
     sobs. ``I'm worried about my mom. She might kill me.''


                  The Gangs--Substitutes For a Family

       Street gangs began showing up in Davenport in the 1980's, 
     about when the hard times hit. From 1980 to 1987, the Quad 
     Cities area lost 17,000 jobs when large farm-implement and 
     construction concerns trimmed their payrolls, according to 
     the Quad City Development Group, which tries to attract 
     business to the area.
       The jobs had kept families and dreams together for decades, 
     but in 1983 the unemployment rate for the area was 14.8 
     percent. It was fertile ground for gangs. Then, in 1987, 
     crack came to town and the sound of gunfire in the night 
     became more common.
       The unemployment rate is down to 5.5 percent but Malcolm W. 
     Klein, director of the Social Science Research Institute at 
     the University of Southern California, who has been studying 
     street gangs since the 1960's, said once gangs come to town 
     they are hard to get rid of. ``There are almost no ex-gang 
     cities,'' he said.
       Today, the police say there are at least 23 street gangs in 
     the Quad Cities. ``We're a real melting pot,'' said 
     Lieutenant Yerington of the Police Department. ``We have 
     black Asian Tigers and white Black Gangster Disciples.'' It 
     has been that way here almost from the birth of the gangs, 
     and in that respect, at least, Davenport is different, when 
     so much of life in other places remains segregated.


                     `you got to be there with us'

       ``Black, white, Mexican, gook, it don't matter to us,'' 
     said Hershey McFarland, 19, of the Imperial Gangsters, 
     another largely white gang and the main rival of the Vice 
     Lords. ``What matters is, `Is you down?' When we go out and 
     mob somebody, you got to be out there with us, throwing 
     blows, pulling the trigger.''
       Lieutenant Yerington said the average gang member in the 
     Quad Cities is a ``wannabe tough guy.'' For these gang 
     members, bricks, bats and bottles are still the most common 
     weapons.
       Elliott Currie, a criminologist and the author of 
     ``Confronting Crime'' (Pantheon Books, 1986), said one reason 
     white gang members are not studied more is that they blend 
     into the American mainstream more easily than their black or 
     brown counter-parts.
       Mr. Currie said white gang members, especially in 
     Midwestern cities like Davenport, are the bitter fruit of 
     years of corporate cutbacks. ``The white kids and their 
     families are going through what black kids in ghettos have 
     gone through for generations,'' he said. ``For black kids, 
     it's worse.''
       A total of 2,829 people under 18 were arrested for murder 
     and nonnegligent manslaughter in 1992, the last year for 
     which the Federal Bureau of Investigation has records. More 
     than 40 percent of them, 1,162, were white. The same year 
     63,683 young people were arrested for aggravated assault; 56 
     percent of them, 35,865, were white.


            investigation and trial--``a lot i didn't know''

       An early break in Michelle's slaying came when the police 
     learned that the last person she had been seen with was a 
     skinny young-ster called ``Opie,'' because of his resemblance 
     to the son of the sheriff on the old ``Andy Griffith'' 
     television show. That was Jason, the only one of the six who 
     is not tattooed.
       His mother, Cheryl Means, is a 40-year-old single mother 
     and a housekeeper at a nursing home. Five years ago, her 
     oldest boy died of heart failure, at 16. Now her 16-year-old 
     daughter is in a home for troubled children.
       Mrs. Means said she had her put there ``so she wouldn't end 
     up dead on the street.''
       The weekend Michelle was killed, Jason was supposed to be 
     driving with his mother to visit his sister, who lives 160 
     miles away. They were going to leave the day before Michelle 
     was killed, but Jason left home that Tuesday, and Mrs. Means 
     says she did not see him again until he was under arrest in 
     the slaying. She said she had not been concerned about his 
     absence because it was summertime and he was 17.
       ``There's a lot of things I have to admit that Jason did 
     that I didn't know about,'' she said. ``I didn't even know he 
     knew Michelle. Later, I heard he went camping with her.''
       Mrs. Means says Jason's father left the family when his 
     youngest boy was 5 years old and was not around when Jason, a 
     shy boy, fell in love with baseball and football. But sports 
     was not enough to keep the streets away.
       Jason had been in trouble before for shoplifting, his 
     mother said. Jason hated school and dropped out when he was 
     16, as soon as the system allowed it, his mother said.
       ``I tried a good two years to get help for Jason,'' she 
     said. ``I would call the truant officer on my own son. I did 
     that four times. `Hey, do your job,' I'd say. `I want my son 
     to grow up and be someone.' But when he turned 16, it was 
     like nobody care anymore. It was like everybody stopped 
     trying.''
       In July, five weeks before he took Michelle to her death, 
     Jason accompanied her and her family on a camping trip to 
     celebrate her parents' 20th wedding anniversary. For six 
     days, he tried his best to please, Mrs. Jensen said. He 
     washed dishes, he gathered wood, he helped with the cooking. 
     And he followed the Jensens everywhere, like a lost child.
       ``It was almost impossible for me and Mark to get a bike 
     ride alone,'' Mrs. Jensen said. ``I don't understand it. We 
     treated him decent and he turned around and got involved in 
     this.''
       The trial lasted a week and a half. The jury reached its 
     verdicts in a few hours. Guilty, guilty, guilty, the foreman 
     said, looking as sad as Tony Hoeck's father, who put his head 
     down and began to sob.
       Across the aisle, Michelle Jensen's father was also crying. 
     ``Let's go,'' he said to his wife. ``No, wait,'' she said.
       She wanted to watch as the deputies put each boy-turned-
     killer into leg irons and handcuffs and led them away.
       ``We're pleased with the verdict,'' Mr. Jensen said later, 
     his eyes filled with hurt. ``But we don't like to see these 
     teen-agers waste their lives like this. We just hope other 
     teenagers will look at this and think twice.''

  I yield the floor and yield back the remainder of whatever time I 
have.
  Mr. BAUCUS addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. (Mr. Akaka). The Senator from Montana.

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