The victims of the 67 drive-by shootings in 2005 and the known suspects in those crimes were mainly black or Hispanic in Wichita

Tim Potter:

Or put precisely: 60 percent of the 224 drive-by shooting victims were black, and 23 percent were Hispanic.

Of the 109 suspects, 56 percent were black -- and overwhelmingly male. Fourteen percent were Hispanic.

The ethnicity of gang violence varies from year to year, said Deputy Police Chief Tom Stolz. In past years, Asian and white gangs have been at the center of problems, he said.

Last year, 66 drive-by victims were juveniles, and nine of the suspects were juveniles. Police saw an increase in gang recruitment of youths last year. They found that 141 youths between 13 and 17 joined gangs. The youngest person claiming to be a gang member was 7.

Last year, gangs committed three-fourths of the drive-by shootings.

None of last year's victims died, although at least several, like J.J., suffered life-threatening wounds. Not all victims were hit. Being defined as a victim means bullets struck the person or put them in immediate danger. Many of the female victims weren't intended targets but were with someone who was.

"We had so many near misses... inches away from homicides," Stolz said.

It is the first time Wichita police have tabulated and released the races, ethnicities and genders of drive-by shooting victims. Such accounting is part of a national trend called "victimology," Stolz said.

Drive-by shootings peaked around 241 in 1993, then fell steadily, to as low as 28 in 2002, then spurted up to 68 in 2004. They leveled off at 67 last year. So far this year, there have been eight drive-by shootings.

Police say that the racial and gender breakdowns help them to target resources to combat drive-by shootings and that tracking the numbers is part of their obligation to help victims.

Resources get deployed two main ways -- concentrating more officers by shrinking the size of troubled beats and doing more surveillance in areas where most shootings occur.

What many residents don't want, police say, is officers blanketing neighborhoods and randomly stopping cars.

But, said Lt. Jeff Easter, head of the gang unit: "They have no problem with us targeting gang members" involved in shootings.

"We're not targeting whole neighborhoods," Easter said. "We're targeting individuals who are victimizing citizens."

The dominant involvement of blacks and Hispanics in last year's shootings makes sense to police because it came at a time of feuding among black gangs and among Hispanic gangs. That trend continues.

Police have plotted the locations of last year's shootings on a map that shows the heaviest concentrations within the area roughly from Central to around 25th Street North and from a few blocks west of Broadway to a few blocks east of Oliver. That area includes older neighborhoods that are predominantly black or Hispanic.

Nasty boys move north

Cops finding signs of notorious gangs

Sampson's Silly Theory On Immigrants And Crime

Thousands of immigrant gang members arrested in U.S.