New London - City police are beefing up patrols and taking aim at "hot spots" of criminal activity in anticipation of a rise in crime that typically occurs in the summer months.

The department has created a fourth squad, comprising nine officers, to target "hot spot" areas wherever they may be in the city, according to police Deputy Chief Marshall Segar. Juvenile crime, including an ongoing dispute between two homegrown gangs, is a priority, along with violent crime and quality-of-life issues, Segar said.

The department has successfully used a fourth squad of officers in the past to augment the existing squads that cover the day, evening and midnight shifts, Segar said. The fourth squad will work shifts that overlap the others.

"We're trying to take a proactive approach to what we anticipate will be the criminal activity associated with the warmer weather," Segar said. "They (squad members) are being briefed and made familiar with our high-priority criminal issues."

One ongoing concern is a festering dispute between two teenage groups that call themselves the Project Boys and the Young East Side. The groups have been rivals since middle school, and members have been implicated in brawls, stabbings and assaults over the past year.

On May 25, a 15-year-old who is awaiting trial in the alleged stabbing of another boy after the Sailfest fireworks last year was rearrested after a fight at the basketball courts in Fulton Park off Crystal Avenue. Demetrius M. Watley was one of two teens charged in the latest incident. In court Friday, a judge placed him under house arrest and ordered him to have no contact with known gang members, including members of the Project Boys.

Details of Watley's new arrest remain under seal as the case is currently being handled by juvenile court.

In last year's incident, Watley allegedly stabbed another teen after the two groups squared off outside a Huntington Street apartment complex on July 11. He is being tried as an adult, having refused a plea offer that would have enabled him to resolve the case confidentially as a youthful offender. He was held in the juvenile detention center in New Haven on the stabbing charge from July 2010 until March, when his parents posted a $150,000 bond.

The stabbing victim, who was airlifted to Yale-New Haven Hospital because of the serious nature of his wounds, has recovered and returned to school, according to his father.

Members of the youth gangs were also involved in a large brawl on Colman Street on April 4, according to law enforcement sources. In that incident, police said they were called to 114 Colman St. for a brawl involving two groups of girls.

Five people were arrested, and police said shots fired in the same neighborhood a short time later may have been related to the brawl. One woman said she was attacked with a baseball bat by a young male who had been harassing her daughter because the daughter was friendly with the rival gang.

k.florin@theday.com