ANTELOPE VALLEY HOME TO MORE THAN 3,000 GANGSTERS, 100 GANGS.

Byline: Greg Botonis Staff Writer

PALMDALE - More than 3,000 gangsters in more than 100 gangs live in the Antelope Valley, sheriff's gang investigators say.

Their numbers are increasing as state prison inmates are paroled into the area, low-cost housing attracts newcomers and some landlords aren't picky about the kind of tenants they take, officials say.

``Throw in all those reasons, and it's just a recipe for increased (gang) activity,'' said Sgt. Larry Mead of the Operation Safe Streets team that along with the Gang Violence Suppression team investigates gang crime in Lancaster and its unincorporated areas.

In some cases, officials said, families of inmates in the California State Prison-Los Angeles County move into the valley to be closer for visiting - just as prison opponents warned before its 1993 opening - and the inmate stays in the valley after his release.

A large portion of the local gang population, officials added, are gangsters from Los Angeles who commit crimes there and then come to the Antelope Valley to stay with family and lay low for a while.

One local gangster is a 16-year-old Rosamond boy, who says he was picked up in Los Angeles on a shooting charge nearly three years ago but let go when investigators decided he wasn't the gunman.

He moved with his mother to Lancaster after her boyfriend was let out of the Lancaster prison. They moved to Rosamond last year. The boyfriend has since gone back to prison on assault and narcotics charges from Los Angeles.

The teen says gangs get a bad rap.

``We just do our thing, but we get messed with all the time by the cops,'' he said. ``We just watch each other's back and that's it. Some of the guys we hang with, they do some stuff that ain't right. But that's not all us.''