Before the Gilbert Goons were the Devil Dogs. Why the town could've seen the Goons coming

Twenty-five years ago, the town of Gilbert created a human relations commission to tackle a rash of violence by a white supremacist gang of teens called the "Devil Dogs."

The commission was intended to address social issues that led to the outbreak of violence at a time when Gilbert was experiencing explosive growth. The hope was to prevent more brutality.

But in 2017, the Gilbert Town Council decided to disband the human relations commission and replace it with an ad hoc task force to address problems only on an as-needed basis. The task force wasn't put into action until five years later, in 2022, after tensions flared on a busy Gilbert street corner between opposing groups of pro-police and anti-police violence protesters.

Now Gilbert has experienced another outbreak of teen violence — this time by a group known as the "Gilbert Goons" — that has been connected to the fatal beating of Preston Lord, 16, at a Halloween party in Queen Creek.

The task force will begin tackling the issue of teen violence in June and, later this year, will make recommendations to the Town Council on how to address it.

But some observers say the Gilbert Goons attacks demonstrate why Gilbert should bring back the commission permanently to address social issues before they blow up into a crisis instead of attempting to deal with them after they are already a problem.

"Would a human relations commission have stopped the Gilbert Goons? It probably wouldn't have. But they probably would have been having conversations (about teen violence) prior to a young man losing his life," said Andre Miller Sr., second vice president of the Arizona chapter of the NAACP and the pastor at New Beginnings Christian Church in Mesa.

The Gilbert Goons attacks underscore that the mostly white affluent community about 25 miles east of Phoenix is not immune to the issue of teen violence, which has plagued Black and Brown communities but has not been adequately addressed, Miller said.

"When you look at teen violence, it does cross racial lines, it does cross social economic lines and it's something that we as a community have to come together to have discussions about," Miller said.

Miller said he was speaking for himself as a pastor and community organizer. He said the state conference of the NAACP is "in support of anything that will highlight disparities and will further the cause of justice, regardless of race."

Floyd Galloway, the former chairman of the East Valley NAACP, was one of the people who pushed for the creation of a human relations commission in Gilbert following the Devil Dogs attacks 25 years ago. The Devil Dogs attacks exposed a climate of "racial intolerance" in Gilbert, he said.

He is critical of Gilbert's decision to end the human relations commission and replace it with an ad hoc task force.

A task force is designed to address issues once they are already a problem. A human relations commission, on the other hand, provides a forum for people in the community to identify issues while they are still bubbling up. He pointed out that the Gilbert Goons attacks had been taking place for months or years before Lord's death.

Galloway also noted that Gilbert is the only large community in the southeast Valley without a human relations commission. Most of the surrounding suburbs, Chandler, Scottsdale, Tempe, and Mesa, have human relations commissions or advisory panels. Queen Creek also does not have a human relations commission, a spokesperson said.

If Gilbert had a "functioning human relations (commission) they probably could have found out early on about what's going on … (and) you wouldn't have the situation you have now," Galloway said. "If you're going to bring a group of people together after you have an incident, how is that going to really solve the problem? You want to solve the problem beforehand so you don't have a problem."

Sean Warren, who once chaired the Gilbert Community Engagement Task Force — the ad hoc committee that replaced the human relations commission — agreed that restoring a human relations commission is needed. Although technically a town, Gilbert, now nearing a population of 300,000, has grown into a more racially and economically diverse community, Warren said.

"The more ears that we can have to the ground and the more voices that we have going out toward people who oftentimes are overlooked, who feel disenfranchised, who in some ways the culture would think of as the least and the last, I think it's good that we focus on that," Warren said.

What is a human relations commission?

Human relations commissions have a long history and are rooted in the civil rights era of the 1950s and 1960s, said Shannon Portillo, director of Arizona State University's School of Public Affairs.

They were formed by local governments to create a forum for conversations about race relations, Portillo said. Because local elected officials are not often representative of their communities, the commissions were viewed as a way of engaging with people from diverse backgrounds, Portillo said.

"The goal was to have a mechanism within local government to bring people from different backgrounds together to talk about how to productively live in community," Portillo said.

The groups have since broadened their focus, Portillo said. In general, they now primarily serve as a liaison between the local government and the community. In short, they help raise issues local governments should be paying attention to, Portillo said.

Local governments decide what role a commission will play and what authority they will have, Portillo said. They come up with policy suggestions and make recommendations to elected officials, she said. While some human relations commissions have some oversight of police, others do not, she said. Some also help organize or support cultural events and activities to foster better relations in the community, she said.

"It really varies by locality," Portillo said.

Human relations commissions have faced political backlash in some communities, Portillo said.

When they were first introduced during the civil rights era, some "folks who were not a fan of what was being asked for in the civil rights movement were saying that it wasn't necessary, it wasn't the role of local government," Portillo said.

More recently, some local governments have reactivated human relations commissions that had been dormant, Portillo said, in response to protests against police violence that erupted after the murder of George Floyd in 2020.

Some of those commissions have also faced political backlash, Portillo said.

Still, Portillo believes human relations commissions are a good way for local governments to tap into community concerns at the grassroots level.

"There is always a need for local governments to hear from (different) perspectives of their community," Portillo said.

The most effective human relations commissions, Portillo said, are made up of people who represent a broad swath of the community, not just people who have the time or means to volunteer, she said.

For instance, "Are these committees only meeting during the day? That could be really exclusionary for people who have to work during the day. Is there child care provided? Or are there other ways to make it accessible?" Portillo said.

What happened to Gilbert's human relations commission?

The Gilbert Human Relations Commission was created in 2001 in response to the Devil Dogs attacks, said Dawn Price, an assistant town manager.

The gang, an offshoot of an older gang called White Power, terrorized Gilbert residents with a string of assaults and beatings and used white supremacist rhetoric. Members of the Devil Dogs were later connected with a drug trafficking ring led by former mobster Salvatore "Sammy the Bull" Gravano.

In 2016, however, the Town Council conducted a review of all boards and commissions to assess whether they represented a meaningful use of volunteers' time, Price said.

Following the review, in January 2017, the Town Council decided to make several changes, among them to replace the human relations commission with an ad hoc task force "to be convened as needed to address any relevant issues," Price said.

In 2020, Town Councilmember Kathy Tilque began considering convening the task force after tensions in Gilbert flared, stemming from a series of protests by supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement and pro-police responses.

The weekly protests and counterprotests took place at the intersection of Gilbert and Warner roads for weeks and escalated into violence in August 2020, prompting the police to step in to keep the groups apart.

"I was concerned that people in our community were not feeling heard and how to best address that," Tilque said.

Tilque said as she started evaluating the vision for the task force she realized there were a lot of issues the community had not taken the time to understand, in large part because the town had been focused mostly on the community's explosive growth.

The task force was convened in 2022 to address several issues identified through community surveys: domestic violence, human and sex trafficking, mental health, suicide prevention, homelessness, low-income challenges and "ensuring Gilbert is a kind and inclusive community," Tilque said.

"I don't believe that you are truly a well-rounded community until you have time to just stop focusing on growth and those infrastructure needs and look at your changing population and the changing needs within your community," Tilque said. "Sometimes it's lifting up the covers to look underneath and saying, 'Hey, not everything is as perfect as perhaps the perception is.'"

Still, Tilque is unsure whether Gilbert needs to bring back a human relations commission. The task force, she said, provides flexibility to address issues as they come up.

"Until somebody gives me a scope and what are the measurements and the end results that we're looking for, it's hard for me to say whether we need it or not," Tilque said.

After speaking out on protest tensions, invited to join task force

Iya Affo, who is Black, was living in Los Angeles when she visited Gilbert nearly 20 years ago. A positive encounter with a Gilbert police officer after she was pulled over for a cracked windshield convinced her the town would be a good place to raise her three sons.

"I had Black sons and I wanted to go somewhere where I thought my sons would be safe," Affo said. "And then I had an interaction with a police officer, and it made me have a feel for the police culture and I thought this is a place I need to be with my sons."

Affo moved to Gilbert in 2006. After three years of living abroad, she and her family have lived there continuously since 2014.

Her sons, however, experienced several racist incidents while attending public schools in Gilbert, Affo said, prompting her to file complaints.

One son was called a racial slur by a custodian, Affo said. Another was wrongly accused in front of his classroom of writing graffiti that another student later admitted he wrote, she said.

"The only reason that my child would have been accused of it was because he was the only Black kid in the classroom, and the teacher automatically assumed that he was the person that did the graffiti," Affo said.

She also pulled her young son out of one school after he was continuously called racial slurs and humiliated by teachers, she said. She sent him to a charter school.

Dawn Mackay, a Gilbert Public Schools spokeswoman, confirmed complaints were made. She said in a written statement that the district "takes any incidents of racism extremely seriously."

"When an act of racism is identified, it is investigated to its full extent, and district policies and procedures are followed to deliver consequences," Mackay said. "When campus administration becomes aware of an incident, such as in this case, they work with the student and family, as well as our district Hearing Office, and other district teams and support services, to ensure a thorough and detailed investigation, as well as providing support for the student and family."

During the tense 2020 demonstrations in Gilbert between the Black Lives Matter movement and pro-police counterprotesters, Affo, a historical trauma expert and educator, contacted town officials to suggest ways to reduce tensions.

"I kept (saying) to the mayor and the police chief, 'Hey, we need to educate people. We need people to understand about historical trauma, people need to understand about oppression and racism,'" Affo recalled.

Her suggestions prompted town officials to invite her to serve on the Gilbert Community Engagement Task Force.

Affo said her experience on the task force over the past two years did not turn out the way she expected.

"I thought we would have more interaction with community members," said Affo, who supports bringing back a human relations commission.

Instead, the group "really just talked amongst ourselves," made recommendations to the Town Council and then waited to see if any of their ideas would be implemented, she said.

As one task force wraps up, a new one launches on teen violence

The task force wrapped up its work in May, after spending the past two years listening to experts and making recommendations to the Town Council on issues ranging from domestic violence to homelessness.

Eleven new members, including three teens, were appointed at the June 4 Town Council meeting to address teen violence. The first meeting of the new task force was scheduled for 5 p.m. Monday, June 10. Four additional members, two adults and two teens, were appointed as alternates.

The new task force will spend six months reviewing recommendations for addressing teen violence that were created by a subcommittee of the Town Council in April. The subcommittee spent four months coming up with the recommendations. The list of 13 recommendations created by the subcommittee include increasing funding for school resource officers, adopting a law barring juveniles from buying brass knuckles, addressing parental responsibility and devoting a page on the town's website to teen resources.

In response to the subcommittee's teen violence recommendations, the Town Council quickly passed an ordinance in May banning the sale and possession of brass knuckles to minors. In addition to the brass knuckle ban, the Town Council passed an ordinance making residential homeowners, commercial landlords and tenants legally liable and responsible for unruly gatherings on their property.

The task force will present a final report in December to the Town Council, which will then decide whether to approve the recommendations.

Warren, the former chair, said serving on the task force showed him Gilbert needs to take a more proactive approach to addressing issues like teen violence and re-establishing a human relations commission would help accomplish that.

"The task force, I think, has really served to underscore the fact that there's a lot of issues and a lot of needs that need to be kept before people all the time," Warren said.

Warren said conversations about social issues facing communities are often uncomfortable. A human relations commission would provide a forum for those conversations to take place, he said

He recalled a recent conversation he had with a Gilbert resident who, at a town meeting, railed against building multifamily rental housing in Gilbert.

Warren approached the man afterward and explained that Gilbert "has the least amount of multifamily housing in the state, practically."

"I said, 'I want you to know that my daughter is graduating from (the University of Arizona) and she can't afford to come back and rent in our area,'" Warren said. "And I would like for my kids' teachers to afford housing in the area and my barista as well."

The man was unpersuaded, Warren recalled. But that's not the point.

"There is this notion that anyone who rents is like this social pariah for some people who want to keep an iron fist on something. I just think that's ridiculous and horrifically limiting of the future," Warren said. "But I also know that people are afraid of change and what I saw was a guy who was just trying to have some element of control in a world that he feels like is spinning out."

Reach the reporter at [email protected].

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: 'Gilbert Goons' prompt calls to resume human relations commission