An increase in gang activity, including the recruitment of school-age children, prompted the recent consideration by the Revere City Council of a proposed antigang ordinance, which would be a first for Revere.

The proposed ordinance, introduced by Councilor George Rotondo of Ward 4, declares criminal street gang activity a public nuisance and provides definitions for what constitutes a street gang, criminal gang activity, a pattern of criminal gang activity, and gang recruitment.

Despite gang activity in the city over the past two decades, especially during the summer months at Revere Beach, Rotondo said, the city never adopted an antigang ordinance. But after seeing Chelsea officials propose a home-rule petition making gang recruitment a criminal act and Somerville adopt a law under which police officers can arrest and fine gang members who refuse to leave certain locations, Rotondo decided that Revere city officials also should send a message to local gangs.

In the proposed ordinance, Rotondo suggests arrest and a $300 fine for gang recruitment, defined as anyone threatening or conspiring to use physical force to make someone join or remain in a gang. The proposal was sent to committee for further review by the councilors.

Targeting recruitment, Rotondo said, could hinder a gang's ability to grow.

"That's what it is, to make sure we don't permit further growth from recruitment within the gang ranks," Rotondo said. "And to give police reasonable cause to stop somebody suspected of recruiting. . . . If there's a gang recruitment ordinance, at the very least an officer has the ability to go to a group of kids and ask them what they're doing."

Councilor Arthur F. Guinasso of Ward 3 said he is in favor of the proposal and would like to see it combined with a statewide proposal from state Senator Jarrett Barrios that tackles issues of allowing witnesses to be charged with perjury and protects witnesses willing to come forward with information on gang-related crimes.

"These are bad people who should be put off the street," Guinasso said. "I'm for full muscle, a firm believer in discipline. Everybody's aware we need to have controls in place."

But Police Chief Terence K. Reardon, who works with the state Chiefs of Police Association and the North Suffolk County Gang Task Force to share information and identify gang-related trends, said that the Somerville law and initiatives like Chelsea's and Revere's can be difficult for police officers to enforce.

"It puts the police in a very tough spot concerning civil rights and figuring out what exactly constitutes a gang member as a legal definition," Reardon said.

Instead, Reardon and area gang task force groups want legislators to focus on issues of truancy, giving police power to take a school-age child back to school when he or she is spotted hanging around on the streets. Reardon said it would also be more effective to pursue issues such as gang recruitment from a civil standpoint, rather than a criminal approach, because it would make it easier to bring a gang case in front of a grand jury, instead of leaving it on the district court level.

"We've been investigating that, as far as how to approach a kid civilly instead of criminally because there's a different standard of evidence that you have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt," Reardon said.

Taking a criminal law approach to gangs, Reardon said, becomes a "difficult thing to not tread on someone's rights, because of issues of assembly and other constitutional rights. Those are difficult issues to get around.

"If we see a group we're familiar with, we know that this is a gang hangout, that they all dress in red, but there are no laws against that," Reardon said. "Those acts are not criminal."

For the most part, Revere's gang issues revolve around turf wars and petty crime, he said. But unless police are able to quickly and effectively put away gang members, the situation could change, as suggested by the fast-emerging MS-13 gang, with a history of extreme violence in Central America. MS-13 has "really taken hold everywhere in the country," including Revere, Reardon said.

"Nationally, we got notification to be on the lookout for a couple of guys from Los Angeles who came to the Boston area to recruit for MS-13, in order to solidify," said Reardon, who supports efforts like the ones being pushed by Barrios, involving the protection of witnesses from gang retaliation.

"There's no question" that many of Revere's unsolved gang-related crimes are due to silence from community residents and even gang members afraid to come forward with information, the chief said.

For the time being, Rotondo wants to get the proposed ordinance on the books, and possibly expand it to include the region. Rotondo said he was most inspired by the stories of a 19-year-old from his district who "has been in and out of jail and has had issues with gang affiliations in the past." According to the teen, said Rotondo, gangs are looking to recruit Revere's youth.

"Kids are going to be recruited in fertile areas," he said, "and Revere is one of those fertile areas."