One of the few things predictable about gangs is their unpredictability, officials say.

After eight years with no gang-related homicides in Hall County, there have been three in the past 10 months.

And while authorities believe one of those murders was committed by gang members from Athens, the membership numbers for street gangs in Gainesville are up slightly since last summer.

Last weekend’s gang-related brawl that left 23-year-old Sur-13 member Daniel “Ghost” Adame dead has brought a full-court press by law enforcement, particularly the Gainesville-Hall County Gang Task Force, which kept watchful eyes over Adame’s funeral Friday and has been working overtime to patrol known gang areas.

Since last week’s violence, the retaliation many feared has not occurred.

“We’re making the presence of the sheriff’s office and the police department known, to hopefully deter any further gang violence,” said Lt. Scott Ware, commander of the Gainesville-Hall County Multi-Agency Narcotics Squad and Gang Task Force.

Ware said current task force estimates put total gang membership in Hall County at about 420, which would represent a 13 percent increase from the estimate of 370 that officials gave last August, when 16-year-old La Onda member Juan “Baby P-Nut” Gomez was shot to death, allegedly by members of Sur-13.

Those numbers are still far below the peak estimate of 900 in 1998, when the task force was created, and 630 as recently as 2006.

Task force members document each gang member they encounter and keep their personal information in a database. When Adame was run over with a minivan allegedly driven by a member of BOE, authorities already were familiar with all 11 people they arrested.

While 18-year-old BOE member Juan Villanueva was charged with murder, most of the suspects were charged with affray, a misdemeanor, and violation of Georgia’s street gang terrorism prevention act, a felony. They all remain jailed after a Hall County magistrate judge declined to grant bond out of concerns for public safety.

Veteran Gang Task Force Investigator Joe Amerling testified in court this week that he had never seen such a heightened sense of concern over retaliation since last week’s homicide.

While Gang Task Force members can make their presence known and collect intelligence, police rarely can step in to prevent such violence before it occurs, said Robert Walker, a retired Drug Enforcement Administration agent and gang consultant who runs the website “Gangs Or Us.”

“There’s just no way to predict any of this,” Walker said.

The majority of gang membership is made up of young teens with little parental supervision and no motivation, he said.

“These kids have no idea what’s going in life, and most of the time they never will, because they’re not taking the time to learn,” Walker said. “All they know is they’re going to demand respect from someone. They don’t even know what respect is.”

Gangs may carry the names of nationally-known groups like Surenos or La Onda, but most adopt the names locally and have little or no affiliations with gangs of the same names in other towns, Walker said.

Authorities believe that Daniel Vilchis-Ayala and Nelson Vaca, two 17-year-old members of Sur-13 from Athens charged in the March home invasion and beating death of a 68-year-old handyman in a Gainesville mobile home park, have no connection to Hall County’s Sur-13 gang.

Officials in the local judicial system for the most part have taken a hard-line approach to gang activity, with judges imposing long prison sentences.

Two years ago, Charles Douglas Graham, the purported founder of the BOE-23 gang, was sentenced by Judge Andy Fuller to 20 years in prison for dealing cocaine. The KES gang was put out of business with a round of federal convictions in 2006.

Yet in most cases, someone else always seems to be ready to step into the leadership role, and whether long prison sentences serve as a deterrent is questionable.

“It doesn’t mean anything to them,” Walker asserts. “It’s a badge of honor.”

One deterrent that does seem to be working is a local-federal immigration enforcement program, according to Ware. Although many teenage gang members are U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents, often their parents, aunts and uncles are not.

“They don’t want the attention of law enforcement, and I think that has quieted things down quite a bit.”

Still, when incidents like last week’s violence erupt, they are sudden and without warning.

“As long as there are any gang members still active in the community, there’s always the possibility of that type of violence,” Ware said.