Graffiti. Vandalism. Drugs.

Tell-tale signs of gang life used to be reserved for Utah's larger cities. But as gang activity rises in the state's most populated areas, rural pockets are feeling the fallout.

Smaller communities are more often reporting crime linked to gangs, prosecutors and police say.

That trend is one reason Gov. Jon Huntsman has established a new task force to develop a strategy to handle Utah's growing gang problem.

The goals: To decrease gang-related crime by curbing gang membership across the state and to create resources that cities can tap into to battle gang issues.

How to quell gang membership and what kind of resources will help cities do that is what the governor's task force will determine in coming months, said Salt Lake County District Attorney Lohra Miller, who is a co-chairwoman of the 30-member group, which met at the capitol for the first time on Wednesday.

The task force, composed of people from law enforcement, the court system, treatment providers, schools and community groups, will try to pinpoint gang activity in every corner of the state then develop a plan to suppress it.

The challenge for the task force will be to identify which gang suppression tactics work most effectively in each community, while also forming a plan to address the state's gang problem as a whole, said Vince Meister, a prosecutor in Salt Lake County who specializes in gang cases.

Rural communities have struggled to add gang experts to their police forces and prosecution teams, said Meister, who travels to rural counties to train other prosecutors and police on how to handle gang cases.

"Smaller communities don't always know they have a gang problem or won't admit it," he said.

Detective Andrew Burton, a gang enforcement specialist for the Summit County Sheriff's Office, said he has seen a surge in the number of people logged in his agency's gang database. About 100 known gang members have been recorded in the database in the past 8 months -- proof that a gang presence isn't limited to urban areas, he said.

A statewide plan for tackling gang crime could bring new resources to rural areas that lack knowledge about gang issues, both Meister and Burton said.

A timeline for completing a statewide gang suppression model isn't set, Miller said. The task force will meet about once a month while researching and developing a comprehensive gang model, she said.

mrogers@sltrib.com