Sunday, October 19, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
IN DEPTH: 311: What's in a name?
Police say 311 derived from hate group; members say it comes from musical group, police code
By J.M. KALIL
REVIEW-JOURNAL
Some say the name comes from a police code. Others say it comes from a band.
Still other members of the 311 Boyz claim the name is a reference to the nation's most infamous hate group.
"Eleventh letter of the alphabet times three ... KKK," Brandon Gallion told police detectives in July. "The whole three-letter thing started toward the end of the school year because I guess we were havin' a lot of problems with the black kids at school," said Gallion, one of nine young men now charged with attempted murder.
Metropolitan Police Department investigators say they have no doubt that 311 Boyz is a reference to the Ku Klux Klan. They have Gallion's statement. All of the 37 teens who eventually acknowledged to police that they were members of the 311 Boyz are white, though two have Hispanic surnames. And some of the members had the Iron Cross inked on their bodies, a symbol identified with Nazi Germany.
"We never ran into anybody of any other race," said Sgt. Dave Stansbury, who oversaw the investigation.
Other 311 Boyz members dispute Gallion's explanation.
Among them is Lindsey Paterniti, one of the girls seen brawling on the now-infamous 311 Boyz videotape of fight footage.
"It was never racist," Paterniti said, anger in her voice at the suggestion. "We had black people in the group."
To back up this claim, Paterniti and other members offered up Will Roy, a young man seen hanging out with the 311 Boyz and performing a freestyle rap. Roy, called "Gucci" by his friends, is black.
"He's one of my best friends," said Matt Reid, one of the first 311 Boyz members. He added that Roy went along on the group's out-of-state vacations.
Some teens linked to the group suggested it was named for the rap-rock band 311, which scored radio hits in the mid-1990s with songs such as "Down" and "All Mixed-Up." Members of the band 311, based in Omaha, Neb., have maintained for years that their name is not a reference to the Ku Klux Klan. The musicians have told journalists that their name stems from the 1990 arrest of the group's original guitarist for skinny-dipping. The police code for indecent exposure in Omaha is 311.
Reid said his memory of the exact source of the 311 Boyz's name is murky. But he believes they named themselves for a police code.
"It means, like, indecent exposure," he said.
