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Baca plans a countywide clearinghouse on gangs

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Times Staff Writer

Taking a page from the county’s natural disaster playbook, Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca said Wednesday that he planned to open the region’s first Southern California Gang Emergency Operations Center -- a clearinghouse of anti-gang initiatives, social programs and information databases.

Although similar operations centers have been created to deal with earthquakes, wildfires and terrorism, none has been created solely for the suppression of gang crimes. Casualty figures over the last decade cried out for a new model of fighting gangs, he said.

“We lost less than 500 people in natural disasters, but when we come to gangs, we’ve lost 5,000 people,” Baca said.

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The sheriff said he hoped to open the center in January and had budgeted $3 million for the project. The staff of about 30 analysts will help coordinate anti-gang operations across all county jurisdictions and will involve police and social service agencies, as well as religious and community groups.

“This creates a higher sense of accountability for the whole problem,” Baca said during a Los Angeles Times editorial board meeting. “This is an emergency. I want to heighten the reality. . . . If you don’t put it on emergency-level status on a daily basis, it calls for a lesser result. It calls for less support.”

Baca compared the operations center to a “fusion center” established by county law enforcement agencies and the FBI to combat potential acts of terrorism. “A fusion center in the world of intelligence gathering or the world of data is where all sources of data can come in one place and be analyzed,” Baca said. The operations center will help coordinate all aspects of anti-gang work, including gang suppression and gang tracking. The center will also coordinate gang intervention services and prevention programs.

Baca said he saw the need for the center after reviewing an Advancement Project report. The report, titled “A Call to Action,” examined the effectiveness of $82 million in existing gang programs and determined that they lacked coordination, focus and adequate communication.

Sheriff’s officials say the trouble with jurisdictional boundaries is that they exist only for police and social services, not gang members. Baca said the center would allow information on specific gang members or trends to be shared across municipal boundaries.

Los Angeles County is home to 80,757 gang members, according to a sheriff’s database.

A little less than half are in Los Angeles and the remainder are spread across 87 other jurisdictions. Malcolm Klein, professor emeritus at USC and a veteran gang researcher, said the sheriff’s plan had merit.

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“It is a highly appropriate idea. The more information that can be gathered and shared, the better,” Klein said.

Klein said he particularly liked the concept of police being able to draw on gang prevention resources instead of merely resorting to arrests.

Baca said the center wouldn’t replace any existing jurisdiction but was designed to enhance local efforts.

The center, initially to be based at sheriff’s headquarters in Monterey Park, isn’t another layer of bureaucracy, the sheriff insisted.

“This is not a service agency,” he said. “It is a coordinating body for existing programs.”

richard.winton@latimes.com

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