War between rival Hispanic gangs

Arturo Marcial-Alvarez's face was covered with a blue bandanna and he had a stolen revolver in his waistband when he was intercepted by two King County sheriff's detectives in February as he got off a Metro bus.

The detectives, who were also on the bus, noticed him reaching for his waist while glaring at another man who was stepping off the coach, court records say.

"Looks like we just missed some gang stuff," one detective texted the other before they arrested the 19-year-old for carrying a concealed pistol, according to court records.

Whether the detectives thwarted a shooting by arresting Marcial-Alvarez will likely never be known. Two months after his release from jail, Marcial-Alvarez, who police called an "avowed" gang member, was fatally shot at a bus stop in Federal Way on April 11.

Police say he was a targeted victim of a war between rival Hispanic gangs that detectives trace to the January shooting death of Manuel Ortiz, 18, over the defacing of gang graffiti near his Burien apartment.

Although it's impossible to pin down a single reason for the recent violence, the conflict goes much deeper than spray paint on concrete, according to Sgt. Cindi West, a spokeswoman for the King County Sheriff's Office.

"Sometimes it's something as simple as somebody's girlfriend went out with somebody from a different gang. Generally it's not one specific thing that starts it off. It's usually a combination of things over time and then it escalates," West said.

There have been at least 14 homicides, dozens of injury shootings and scores of shots-fired calls believed to be connected to gang disputes from Seattle to South King County since the beginning of the year, said Federal Way Mayor Jim Ferrell.

"I'm very concerned about this heating up in the summer months. I'm very concerned about the high-caliber weaponry that's being recovered (by police)," Ferrell said. "It's why we're linking up arms regionally and addressing this in a comprehensive way."

The spate of gang violence has prompted a unified response from the Sheriff's Office, Seattle police, federal law-enforcement agencies and police across South King County, which have teamed up to share information and resources. Two gang-emphasis operations - one in late April and the other in mid-May - focused on gang hot spots and led to the arrests of alleged gang members on warrants for crimes like unlawful possession of a firearm and armed robbery, according to West and other law-enforcement sources.

In May, Ferrell and Auburn Mayor Nancy Backus convened a meeting with police and city leaders from Algona, Burien, Des Moines, Kent, Pacific, Renton, SeaTac and Tukwila to create a strategy to address rising gun and gang violence, with Seattle police and the Sheriff's Office also sending representatives. The group is scheduled to meet again in mid-June.

"This is tragically about these people in these gang rivalries clinging to these concepts of respect and disrespect as justifications for homicide," said Ferrell, a former King County deputy prosecutor. "People are just baffled. It seems so nonsensical that lives would be taken over these seemingly meaningless disputes."

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