Gang emergency

Street gangs have been insinuating themselves into Los Angeles’ civic psyche for at least half a century, leaving more than a few residents philosophical about the youth violence periodically reported from disparate urban neighborhoods. Gang life was glamorized in pop music in the ‘80s, on the big screen in the ‘90s and in the fashion choices of suburban kids for at least the last decade. Over the years, high-profile shootings of innocent Angelenos waiting at bus stops or riding in the back seats of family cars have set off brief spasms of official resolve, which quickly disappeared but left the city with ineffective programs that drained public coffers and fed taxpayer cynicism about government’s ability to do anything useful.

Today, then -- three months after Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s announcement that he would disband the anti-gang program L.A. Bridges, five months after City Controller Laura Chick released a scathing report about the city’s gang efforts, more than a year after the mayor named a “gang czar,” nearly two years after Advancement Project Co-director Connie Rice reported on what the city does wrong and how to fix it, three years after then-Councilman Martin Ludlow began a series of hearings on how to deal with gangs -- it is easy to reject as hyperbole the claim of experts that the city faces a gang emergency. It is easy. And it is wrong.

It is too easy to miss the emergency because the city’s elected leaders have failed to adequately articulate just what the problem is that anti-gang programs are trying to solve. What is Villaraigosa’s point man on gangs, Jeff Carr, trying to do as he breaks apart L.A. Bridges and works on putting together a successor? Is the goal to reduce crime? We are told emphatically that crime in Los Angeles has dropped to levels not seen since the 1950s (although the number of gang members has skyrocketed). Is it to eliminate gangs? Gangs, like the poor, are with us always. Is it to be able to hold the mayor accountable for progress? Villaraigosa will likely be well into a second term, with a gubernatorial election looming, before the first evaluations of new anti-gang programs are completed. Is it to give the mayor an arrow for his reelection quiver? It may sometimes seem that way.

But there are two more sober and more rational goals. One is to direct at least a portion of Los Angeles’ civic energy to providing a humane living environment in neighborhoods in which gang terror is today a fact of life. Rice focused City Hall’s attention for the first time on studies showing that youth in violent urban communities exhibit post-traumatic stress symptoms at nearly twice the rate as soldiers returning from Iraq. There is, in fact, a gang emergency when children who don’t join gangs still believe they must blend in with gang members or make some other kind of accommodation with organized neighborhood thugs. To better the lives of these children, officials must say what they intend to evaluate. It may be a reduction of PTSD or perhaps something else, but it must be named, peer-reviewed and measured. Carr is working on it. He deserves the city’s support -- and scrutiny.

The second goal is just as fundamental. An anti-gang program over which the mayor is directly accountable provides a chance -- perhaps a final chance -- to show that City Hall is capable of coordinating with the county and the school district to solve the region’s deepest problems. If the effort fails -- if the mayor ends up simply repackaging L.A. Bridges without measuring effectiveness or severing the link between politics and government contracting -- citizens must ask whether their system of municipal governance is tenable. Angelenos should salute Villaraigosa, as well as Carr, for taking on the task. But they also must be vigilant. Government’s failures are often costly, but in this instance, lives of children and citizens’ faith in government are at stake.