Disappearing ink
Inmates leaving gangs, removing tattoos for better lives
WHEATON, Ill. — Under penalty of a beating or death, Erik Eck pledged at age 13 to adhere to the Latin Kings’ first rule: “Once a King, always a King.” Tattoos that bedeck his entire body express his fealty forever to one of the largest gangs in the U.S.
Now 36, the longtime Latin King enforcer is trying to leave anyway. He is seeking to scrub his past by erasing his gang tattoos through a new gang-cessation and jobs program he and 11 other inmates signed up for at a Chicago-area jail.
The Associated Press got exclusive access over two days to the first 12 inmates enrolled in the largely privately funded program at the DuPage County Jail and to their cellblock. For their safety, they’re isolated from the jail’s 500 other inmates, half of whom are in gangs.
Eck, jailed on burglary charges, earned the nickname “Hollywood” on the street for his swagger. But nightmares jarred him awake for days before he recently walked into the jail’s new tattoo-removal wing.
“This life is all I’ve ever known,” Eck said about agonizing over his decision to deface the tattoos that have been central to his identity for 20 years. “But it’s for the better.”
He added: “I feel like the change has officially begun.”
One goal is to land the inmates jobs in horticulture, welding and other fields they’re learning, said the program’s civilian director and chief architect, Michael Beary. He said there’s booming interest among businesses scrambling to address covid-19-driven labor shortages.
Jobs training was available previously, but the gang and tattoo emphasis was added this year.
“I used to beg businesses to hire these guys. Now they say, ‘As long as they show up for work, we don’t care what they did,’” said Beary, a longtime business owner and executive director of the nonprofit JUST of DuPage, founded by a Roman Catholic nun to develop reentry programs for inmates.
The inmates aren’t promised jobs or reduced sentences. But if they graduate, they do get help searching for work and relocating away from their gangs. A letter from the sheriff touts their participation.
To graduate, participants must have their gang tattoos removed or covered with other tattoos. It’s proof, said DuPage County Sheriff James Mendrick, they’re serious about forsaking their old lives.
“It’s a point of no return,” he said. “It’s a commitment to themselves — and to us, that we aren’t wasting our time.”
The first tattoo Eck had covered was one on his arm of the Latin Kings’ initials. Jail-sanctioned tattooist Tom Begley inked the image of a deer over it in a four-hour session in February. Covering all of Eck’s gang tattoos will take months.
A roaring lion — a favorite Latin Kings symbol — was recently converted to a roaring bear. Eck has to be careful to pick animals that aren’t other gangs’ symbols. A rabbit, he said, is out. It’s a symbol of Latin Kings rival Two Six Nation.
Begley and his wife, Meagan Begley, of the suburban Electric Tattoo Parlor, jumped at the chance to lend their skills. Inmates painted a mural on a wall in the jail’s three-chaired tattoo studio. It says: “Hope, Purpose and Redemption.”
On a previous day, Tom Begley transformed a Satan Disciples tattoo on Jaime Marinez’s forearm from a Christian cross fashioned from rifles into the image of a vulture.
Nearby, Meagen Begley removed hand tattoos of 27-yearold Latin Count leader Gilberto Rios, wielding a pen-like tool to scrape off outer skin, then injecting a saline solution. That pushes ink into a scab, which flakes away over several weeks.
“There’s lots of crying by them,” she said, but not due to the pain. “These tattoos have been their identity. (Giving them up) is very emotional.”
One she removed from Rios’ hand was a backward “D,” a symbol of disdain for Marinez’s gang.
The two chatted amiably, comparing tattoo work done on them that day.
“If they saw each other on the street,” Beary said, “they’d try and kill each other.”
Affluent DuPage County isn’t considered a hotbed of gangs. Mendrick, elected sheriff as a Republican, contends violent crime in his county is often committed by gangs from Chicago, in neighboring Cook County.
Mendrick is convinced the program, funded partly by church donations, will help reduce crime.
“I am a religious man,” he said. “I feel I am answering my calling.” Beary cites religion as a motivation, too.
The program also offers classes on the Bible, anger management and decision-making. And it provides counseling to drug-addicted inmates.
Once freed, Eck wants to own a business. He believes he can apply leadership skills honed in his gang.
He’s blunt about the perks of gang life.
“Being a gang member in my neighborhood was better than being the president of the United States,” he said. “I wanted the cars, the women … the power, the respect.”
The killing of his best friend two months before Eck was jailed a year ago began changing his perspective. It was an internal hit by a Latin King who coveted his friend’s higher perch in the gang hierarchy, Eck said.
“He took 16 bullets, four in the face. It was like, enough is enough,” said Eck, adding that guilt at having hurt others also began weighing on him.
Other participants also cited trauma from years of gang violence as motivation for wanting out. Chicago police say most of the nearly 800 homicides in the city last year, the most in a quarter century, were gang-related.
In another tattoo session, Tom Begley traced a new image over a scar on Marinez’s chest from when he was shot last year at a stoplight.
The tattoo is of a clock set to 6:20, memorializing the date his father died of a heroin overdose on June 20, 2016. Marinez turns quiet when he mentions his dad.
The 21-year-old knows he’s putting himself in peril by spurning his gang.
“I don’t want to be doing this 50 years from now. … I know a lot of (adults) still in this life. And it’s just eating them up,” he said.
Eck credits Beary, whom he describes as a father figure, for persuading him to join the program.
“I have never had anyone come up to me and say there’s another way to live,” he said.
Eck wants to create a meaningful life. One more criminal conviction, he said, could send him to prison for life.
There are already signs of his transformation.
Speaking on a recent afternoon, he appeared startled when he realized what pronoun he was using to talk about the Latin Kings.
“I’m saying ‘they’ not ‘we,’” he said, looking at Beary sitting nearby and laughing.
He has stopped answering to his street name, too. When several inmates recently addressed him by it, he bristled.
“My name’s Erik,” he snapped. “Hollywood? … I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
As he struggles to reinvent himself, he says he wants nothing to do with his gang persona.
“I want to be able to wake up and not see that person anymore.”
GRAND LAKE, Colorado — With a backdrop of mountain vistas and a rink of natural ice, the annual ice hockey tournament at Grand Lake offers a picturesque snapshot of Colorado’s beauty. What’s not apparent is the problem brewing under players’ skates.
This year’s tournament was held a month later than normal, with thin ice forcing organizers to postpone the event originally scheduled for the third weekend of January.
“We had slushy conditions and less than 6 inches of ice. There just was no way it could safely be held,” said Steve Kudron, mayor of Grand Lake.
That is a reality that many communities that live near lakes, which freeze and provide myriad activities during winter months, are increasingly confronting. According to a major U.N. report on climate released Feb. 28, as the planet warms, the amount of ice, and amount of time it keeps a body of water solid, are diminishing. Those changes are forcing communities to adapt and curtail some winter activities while also raising the spectre of long-term environmental and health issues.
Sapna Sharma, an aquatic ecologist at Toronto’s York University, analyzed 100 to 200 years of data for 60 North American lakes, finding that in the last 25 years, “we’re losing ice six times faster than the historical average.” Air temperature, particularly in winter, is the most significant driver of lake ice, she said.
In addition to shorter ice seasons, so-called “winter weirding events” are becoming more widespread, Sharma said.
“You’ll have really cold days and some warm days with rainfall and cold days again and some more rain and the melting of snow,” she said. “That’s exactly the type of winter we’re having in Toronto right now.”
Some impacts of climate change can be addressed through efforts like building fire-resistant homes, reducing overfishing and building infrastructure that can with withstand intense storms. But there are no simple solutions for preserving lake ice cover; only sharply reducing greenhouse gas emissions can slow warming, and subsequent ice loss, in the decades to come, scientists say.
According to handwritten records maintained by Northern Water, a major water provider for northeastern Colorado, the last 20 years at Grand Lake saw a shorter ice season by about 14 days than the prior 20-year period. There, November’s air temperature has warmed on average about five degrees Fahrenheit, according to data by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. This past November was the second hottest on record.
David Gochis, a hydrometeorologist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, says Colorado’s trend of very hot summers and last year’s unseasonably warm fall combined to raise the lake’s water temperature, contributing to a delayed and gradual freeze.
That meant the hockey tournament in Grand Lake had to be pushed back, already a sign of community adaptation.
“Moving forward, I would schedule it the last weekend in January at the earliest, just to make sure in case we have another year like this,” said organizer Brian Blumenfeld.
Beyond the hit to recreation activities and economic impacts, longer open water periods will affect “quality and quantity of downstream water resources,” according to a 2021 study from the University of Colorado, Boulder.
“When a lake is frozen, it’s not evaporating water,” said Adam Jokerst, a water manager for Greeley, a rapidly growing Colorado city that just acquired an aquifer to support future growth. Water that’s open for longer periods increases your evaporative loss for the year, he said.
Additionally, warm, stagnant water can provide prime conditions for algal blooms, which can be toxic to humans and animals, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
“We can treat any water, but just get out your check book,” Jokerst said, reciting a common phrase in the water utility world.
The warming temperatures are having an impact on lake communities around North America.
For example, much of Alaska is currently experiencing an unusual season — a warm start to the year followed below-average temperatures in late fall.
Lynnette Warren has led fishing groups around Alaska for 46 years. At popular ice fishing lakes across the Matanuska-Susitna Borough north of Anchorage, this year’s warmer temperatures melted the snow, resulting in a chain reaction. The water weighed down the ice. The ice weakened. More water seeped up through cracks. Fishers avoided those lakes, and congregated on the handful of viable ones.
“When those lakes are the ones people are fishing all the time, then the catching opportunities are highly reduced because those lakes are overfished,” Warren said.
A longer open-water season means more time for tourists who pay premiums to fish from a boat. But it also means more time for the sun to heat it — a threat to cold water fish that have faced dieoffs in recent years coinciding with record-setting summer temperatures.
In parts of Alaska and Northern Canada, frozen lakes and rivers also serve a critical role connecting remote, often indigenous communities that are inaccessible by road. Without the ice, residents cannot access outside goods and services except by plane or boat. For both transportation and recreation, changes in ice trends can be deadly.
Back at Grand Lake, a Johnny Cash song blasts from a speaker as five simultaneous hockey games are played, the humidity in players’ breath crystalizing in the frigid air as they cheer on their teammates.
Hockey player Rachel Kindsvatter, a caseworker who assisted people who lost their homes in a wildfire that ravaged the area in the fall of 2020, said she recognizes that delaying a tournament pales in comparison to many problems facing the world. Still, having to push it back an entire month so that people don’t fall in is “scary.”
“Give it 10 to 20 plus years and who knows if (the tournament) could even happen,” she said.