Oh he's definitely not the most honest with me! According to him, (and keep in mind here that he has his issues with "guys" in general because he's felt like he doesn't fit in to groups of guys since he was raised by a single mom)- and there are going to be gaps in this story because he hasn't revealed the "in between"- that particular gang and another particular gang are rivals. I don't know if this was a new gang member or just a new member who ended up in Department of Juvenile Justice- but the guy had been obnoxious and somewhat aggressive or threatening to some other boys in there including difficult child and difficult child says he saw the boy leave a folded piece of paper in a concrete block or somewhere and he had heard runor that they were going to start a riot in a couple of days so he swiped the piece of paper. What it turned out to be was the list of leaders, secret "codes" or something along those lines, and the rules of the gang. He then gave it to another kid, apparently thinking he'd make a friend or get defense that way, and that kid ran his mouth. When the riot happened, the boy that had written and left the paper (meaning it to be picked up by a fellow gang member) started antagonizing difficult child, even though that really had nothing to do with the original intent of the riot. difficult child wasn't going to take it, stood up and starting fighting back and the fight got pretty bad. That's his story.
Part of that has to be true because over the summer, when all of them were locked in isolation about 6-8 weeks, the gang staff person talked to me without difficult child being around and was trying to find out if he was a target, trying to be a member of a gang, or what. I didn't know much at that point but told her what I knew and stressed to her that if difficult child was becoming too close with any gang, I wanted to be notified. I never heard anything back from them.
difficult child told me today that he has a contact in near our jurisdiction that will help him get out of here if it "gets to the point that he feels seriously threatened in an immediate way" and all he has to do is call the guy- it's someone who used to be there, incarcerated with difficult child. What I think is that the boy who "recieved" the info from difficult child is here in this locality or got difficult child connected to someone who is and that was a boy who used to be a room-mate (for lack of better term) with difficult child and tried to help difficult child with these other guys when they were trying to intimidate him- which is why he stole the paper and gave it to the guy to begin with. I don't know this for sure, I'm just trying to fill in those gaps based on difficult child's hx.
When I asked difficult child why he did it, he said "because I was stupid".
When difficult child was incarcerated the first time, he told me some of the colors and numbers and gestures that meant gang stuff and told me not to do this or that- the Department of Juvenile Justice staff even refused to let me take a friggin ink pen to an IEP mtg if the ink was a certain color. (Needless to say, this is when I decided gangs are stupid.) And difficult child told me that they do pressure boys to join one or another in a locked facility- it's a matter of survival. However, I am sure that at least throughout that first incarceration, he did not join one. I'm concerned now that it looks like he probably has an affiliation to one but has not joined one- again, my speculation. I don't think he wants in one.
