Original Homies
Download Gang Articles |
|
For three decades, police across Southern California have fought a losing war against street gangs, handcuffed by
inadequate resources even as the number of gangsters exploded along with the violence, drug dealing and other crimes.
The war began in earnest in 1975 with creation of the Los Angeles Police Department's elite anti-gang units - a response
to the Crips, Bloods and other gangs that took control of the streets in much of the inner city.
Since then, the number of gangsters has grown nearly 10 times faster than the region's population, while the resources
used to battle them have grown only modestly, or in some cases even declined.
Many communities from the High Desert in San Bernardino County to the coastal plain of Ventura County failed to respond
by hiring more police or creating intervention programs as the tentacles of gangs spread throughout Southern California.
Fontana Police Chief Larry Clark says his city and others experiencing high growth naively ignored the warning signs and
allowed gangs to take hold, so they now face problems similar to those in poor, inner-city areas.
"If you're real honest, the public put its head in the sand and said, 'We don't have a gang problem.' By the time they
realized you have to do something, it was a major issue and we were behind the curve. That has a lot to do with it."
Adds West Covina police Chief Frank Wills: "They are in every city in Southern California, and any city that would deny
it is being disingenuous."
Even in areas of Los Angeles County covered by the Sheriff's Department, where authorities have faced the gang problem
for decades, the response has been inadequate.
A massive increase
The L.A. County Sheriff's Department has grown 44 percent, from 5,786 to 8,341 since 1975, matching the region's
population growth. But the Los Angeles Police Department has grown at half the rate during the same period, or by 22
percent - from 7,514 sworn officers to 9,120.
Despite a steady improvement in crime statistics, gangs accounted for at least 28 of Long Beach's 50 homicides in 2003,
and 18 of the 36 recorded by Sept. 1 of this year, the Long Beach Police Department says.
The city's 6,000 gang members encompass every ethnicity, with 48 Hispanic gangs, 28 black gangs, 12 Asian gangs and two
white gangs.
Meanwhile, the police department has roughly 1.7 to 1.8 officers for every 1,000 residents, Long Beach Police Chief
Anthony Batts says.
"In a utopia, if we had a healthy budget in the city and the state, we would bring in more officers," Batts says.
"We needed to grow the department last year, and we need to do it this year. But we also have budget concerns that aren't
going to go away any time soon."
Programs slashed
"They multiply faster than we do," says Deputy Chief Ron Bergmann, the San Fernando Valley's commanding officer.
"The gang replaces the family. If there's not a cohesive family, they turn to the gangs. It becomes their home."
His boss, Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton, calls losing the war on gangs a tragedy.
"Last year, with some initiatives, we were able to have some impact on the problem, and homicides did go down. But now
they're coming up ... particularly gang homicides.
"Our lack of resources, compounded by the California budget, has affected us so much that the criminal justice system
is being decimated. Like in the Sheriff's Department of Los Angeles County, when we arrest people, they spend 10 percent of
time in jail before being released."
Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca says the region has suffered from a tax base hamstrung since 1978 by Proposition 13
and by longstanding differences among law enforcement and other agencies, particularly the LAPD, that until recently made a
united front virtually impossible.
"It's a resource matter, and a coordination and a 'comp-statting' (computerized statistics) matter."
In Pomona, with 63 gang-related homicides since 1999, 30 to 50 gang probationers and parolees are returned to the street
each month. Prisoners in the overcrowded county jail system routinely do just 10 percent of their sentence, says Pomona
police Chief James Lewis.
"Gang members know that; how little they have to do."
Lewis says after-school and other prevention programs aren't adequate, even with a doubling of the budget for local boys
and girls clubs, and with the fourth of a planned 14 after-school centers about to open in the area.
"We have to do a better job with the young ones, and to keep those already lost off the streets so they don't serve as
role models. We're struggling in both areas."
In Ventura County, budget cuts led to elimination of the Sheriff's Department's 15-person gang unit, cutbacks in patrol
and early jail releases even as a major Oxnard gang, the Colonia Chiques, was becoming more violent.
"That all contributes to an increase in crime and gang violence," says Craig Husband, Ventura County undersheriff.
Problem or breakdown?
Gangs flourished as poverty, family disintegration and neighborhood segregation worsened in much of the region.
Government, along with nonprofits, religious groups, schools and sports and recreational associations, responded in limited
ways without effective coordination.
"The gangs weren't as violent; they weren't as involved in drugs," the San Fernando Valley's Bergmann says. "They
weren't as visible."
When Bergmann moved to South Bureau as a sergeant in 1979, he says, the Bloods-Crips wars were under way. There were
only a handful of gang operations controlling the drugs, prostitution and other criminal trades on the streets that gave
the gangs their names.
"I can think of a half-dozen in the late '70s and early '80s," Bergmann says. "Now there are 100 at least. Now every
street has a 'Rollin'-something.' "
The city now counts 11,257 gangsters in 107 Crip gangs, and 4,505 in 43 Blood gangs, according to LAPD gang
statistics.
The turf wars were driven by the rise in the profitable narcotics traffic, particularly crack cocaine, as well as by
changing immigration patterns that escalated racial tensions between African-Americans and Latinos.
Black gangs resented the change in demographics and preyed on Hispanics in street robberies and violent attacks.
Research by George Tita, assistant professor in the Department of Criminology, Law and Society at the University of
California, Irvine, found that gang-on-gang confrontations account for nearly one-third of killings, followed by escalating
arguments.
Still, most homicide victims in gang neighborhoods remain African-Americans, Tita concluded in his study, "Gang
Homicide in L.A., 1981-2001."
"For most of the period, the number of homicide victims in both groups (African-American and Hispanic) has risen and
fallen in tandem, and the Latino rate has consistently been approximately 2.5 to three times lower than the black rate,"
Tita wrote.
"The growth of homicide in Southeast and other communities of the city of Los Angeles that still contain a sizable
population of African-Americans is exclusively the result of black-on-black violence, mostly concentrated within gang
disputes."
Paramilitary Response
In 1975, the LAPD responded with its first focused anti-gang detail, Total Resources Against Street Hoodlums, in
Hollenbeck Division.
When the TRASH acronym didn't sit well, the units were renamed Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums, or
CRASH.
The units emphasized gang intelligence, with paper "I cards" carrying information on each member - the forerunner of
today's Cal-Gang interstate, computerized gang tracking system.
In 1988, after eight people were killed at a party in South L.A., former Chief Daryl F. Gates launched "Operation
Hammer." Over several years, the sweeps resulted in the arrests of more than 25,000 people suspected of gang activity.
Most of the arrests were for minor offenses or probation or parole violation, and many were never charged. Some
community members may have silently applauded from behind barred doors and windows, but others complained that the LAPD was
behaving like an "occupying army."
Today, Gates says he doubts residents will "tolerate what we have to do to end it. But if there was any time we could
get rid of gangs, it's now. We have a war on terror, and this is terror. If I were chief of police now, I would be coming
down on them like terrorists."
Civil rights attorney Connie Rice says communities looked at the cops in the Gates era as another gang with one notable
difference.
"They could kill you legally. ... It was a Constitution-free zone."
That image was bolstered by the use of military-style equipment such as the B-100, an armored vehicle with a battering
ram mounted on the front and used to break into heavily fortified buildings, particularly crack cocaine houses.
The defining moment for many was the Aug. 1, 1988, Dalton Avenue drug raid in South Los Angeles, when more than 80
officers rampaged through four apartments and beat their residents while seizing an ounce of cocaine and 6 ounces of
marijuana. None of the residents was charged with a crime.
Two secret, high-level LAPD reports compiled after the raid portrayed Gates' war on gangs as a managerial fiasco. The
reports showed that gang officers were uncertain about the chain of command and that the intelligence gathered by task
forces of up to 1,000 members was not critiqued by senior officers.
One lawsuit involved 52 people and cost taxpayers $3.5 million.
It was not until the 1991 beating of black motorist Rodney King, and the riots that followed the next year, that
embarrassed civic leaders began to seriously push for reform of the LAPD.
"The riots were really the beginning of making the department receptive to community concerns," Bergmann says.
As the LAPD and other law enforcement agencies struggled with their images, resources and recruitment, the gangs were
having no trouble filling their ranks and upgrading their arsenals.
Semiautomatic and automatic rifles became standard, augmenting the sawed-off shotguns and the handguns.
CRASH units were the front line but lacked departmentwide uniformity. They handled drug busts but weren't given the same
background scrutiny, including polygraphs, that narcotics officers are.
Rampart scandal
A federal consent decree was imposed on the department, and the city paid tens of millions of dollars to settle
lawsuits, plus more to reform the department.
Police commanders say the current LAPD force - 9,120 officers to both patrol the city and fight gangland murders and
violence - is "thin and dangerous," and that at least 1,800 more officers are needed.
"If we had the time and resources, we'd have a better commitment to being a little more than reacting to crimes of
violence," says LAPD South Bureau Cmdr. Jim Tatreau.
The key, he says, is to add enough cops to the department that gang units can be beefed up without jeopardizing the
daily response to violent crimes and other radio calls.
"We rob Peter to pay Paul."
Shortages of officers and, often, equipment plague police agencies throughout the region. In Los Angeles County, a
half-percent sales tax referendum on the November ballot would allow 5,000 cops and deputies to be hired over time.
"The beauty of that is that all boats rise in that high tide," says LAPD Chief Bratton. "With that we get enough
police resources to truly, for the first time in the history of this city and county, have an impact everywhere at the same
time. This city and this county have never had those type of resources."
In South Bureau, with 114 gang-related homicides through the end of summer, the gang details, known as Gang Impact
Teams, have been beefed up from 10 officers and a sergeant per division to about 30 officers and three sergeants.
Still, eruptions of violence are unpredictable; on some days there is no gang unit coverage, so patrol officers pick up
any gang-related crimes. Some of the toughest areas get less attention today than they did two decades ago.
No one on foot
"Relationships were better then," Tatreau says. "It's going to be more dangerous (in the projects) until we make the
commitment. It's definitely more dangerous than when I was a lieutenant there in 1985."
Lt. Roger Murphy, watch commander of patrol at 77th Street Division, calls the strategy of attacking gangs with an
understaffed department "triage police work" because officers are constantly being redeployed based on the priorities of
the moment.
Last year, the department concentrated resources in 77th - GIT teams and a Community Safety Operation Task Force of
about 100 gang and other officers plus federal agents - and homicides were cut nearly in half. This year, without the same
resources, homicides are back up by about 37 percent.
"If we could impact and deter some of the outrageous violence, that could cause a different feeling among young people
in the community," Murphy says. "They don't think they're going to live that long."
News Topics |
Home | Research |
History | Blood Gangs | Crip Gangs | People|
Life in a Gang |
Gallery | Iraqi Cards
|
Memorial |
Migration |
Graffiti | Resume| Injunctions
Homicides |
Maps |
California Prisons | Contact
Original Homies
Download Gang Articles
Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputy Chris Romash, left, of the Paramount Station, questions a man identified as a gang member while Deputy Lyle Raymond fills out a field interview card. Gang membership has increased at roughly 10 times the rate of local population growth and law enforcement expansion. (Carl Hidalgo / Staff photographer)
Losing the war
Copyright © Streetgangs.com, All RIGHTS RESERVED. Disclaimer
All trademarks mentioned herein belong to their respective owners.
