Robberies Targeting Latinos on the Rise

By Theresa Vargas
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 21, 2006

Jose Jaime Molino stands in the middle of his mostly Hispanic neighborhood and points to houses as if counting mailboxes.

"Two over here. My roommate, that's three. About five people," he said.

Those are just the neighbors he knows of who have been robbed on the streets of Manassas. The ones who have told the same stories of turning a corner, encountering two or more men, and losing a week's pay along with whatever semblance of safety they had.

"Everybody is scared," said Molino, 45, an immigrant from El Salvador. "They do it every week -- every Friday, every Saturday. They know it's payday."

For the Latino community in Prince William County, street robberies have become almost commonplace, so much so that even the most brutal are spoken of in a monotone reserved for the mundane. Edgar Gonzalez, 27, who was robbed of $100 and a gold cross a few weeks ago, uses the word acostumbrado , or "accustomed," when describing the attacks.

Like some of their Asian counterparts who have fallen victim to home invasions because of a tendency to keep their money in their homes instead of banks, Latino immigrants, who often carry large amounts of cash instead of depositing it, have become a growing target in the region, according to police.

Even as Prince William police announced this week that the county's overall crime rate for 2005 dipped to its lowest level in five years, robberies against Hispanics doubled in the county last year. Manassas also experienced a 50 percent increase in robberies, with Latinos being the victims in most cases.

"These folks, for the most part, make absolutely the perfect victims," said Maj. Don McKinnon of the Manassas police. "You have a perfect formula -- a victim who wants no contact with police, who has a lot of money [on him] and who is there on the street."

Many area police departments said they do not distinguish robbery victims by ethnicity and could not say whether there have been increases. But Latino day laborers working on homes in Northeast Washington were targeted recently, D.C. police said. And in Prince George's County, 448 Hispanics were robbed last year, compared with 289 the year before.

The robberies in Prince William, where the Latino population has risen 215 percent over the past 15 years, are particularly alarming because of the rapid spike.

"It's troubling," said Prince William Police Chief Charlie T. Deane.

Maj. Ray Colgan said an analysis of crimes last year showed that Latinos were victims in 97 of 250 overall robberies, compared with 43 of 206 the previous year.

"Obviously the concern is someone might get killed," Colgan said. "And it's a concern that people get put in fear. We are attacking this."

In Prince William, where communication between an English-speaking officer and Spanish-speaking victim is often conducted with the help of a phone service, a concerted effort has been made to warn Hispanic neighborhoods. An interpreter was hired, brochures were printed in Spanish, and officers have been guests on the local Spanish radio station. The streets crime unit also has increased surveillance to stop robberies in progress, and police will offer personal safety protection training in Spanish next week.

Manassas police are also launching a special problems unit, which will take on this issue. The concern, both police departments said, is not only the cases they have seen, but also the ones they haven't.

On Tuesday afternoon, less than an hour after Prince William police released their crime statistics, four Hispanic men stood talking outside of Todos Supermarket in Woodbridge. Two of the men said they had been attacked, and the other two said they knew men who had been.

"They take everything -- money, shoes, everything," Jose Dimas Igraheta, a painter from El Salvador, said in Spanish.

Standing beside him, his friend Andres Torres, 21, said six or seven men attacked him on Occoquan Road about two months ago. They wanted money, but he didn't have any.

"He held a gun to my head," he said in Spanish, holding his fingers up like an imaginary pistol. "They hit me and kicked me. All I could do was . . . " he tucked his head under the shelter of his arms. He said he didn't call police.

" Por qué ?" he said. "Why?"

Yanette Herrera has lived in Manassas for 12 years, raising three children, and only recently has she thought of moving, she said. The modest homes on her block are increasingly getting security alarms, she said. She has one.

"They don't assault just men -- it's women, too," she said. "We don't feel safe."

She fears that if nothing is done soon, her Latino neighbors may soon retaliate, with the victim becoming the assailant.

"We are very patient, but when we see something not changing . . . ," she said. "You know how bad it is working 12 hours a day and someone just takes it in a minute?"

Staff writers Ernesto Londoño, Tom Jackman and Del Quentin Wilber contributed to this report.