Gangs Wage War on Mean Streets of S. Los Angeles

Jagged red, blue and brown lines on a white police map mark the boundaries of South Los Angeles’ war zone, where gangs have names like Bloods and Crips and Rolling 60s, where murder is a game and rite of passage, and the night belongs to teen-age warlords.

America’s second-largest city accounts for the largest number of street gangs in the nation, about 150 cliques that have evolved from loose-knit neighborhood clubs into packs of drug dealers and killers.

It is an area where standing on a street corner can justify a bullet in the back, where drug houses are protected with armor plates, and where the knives and chains of “West Side Story” have given way to Uzi submachine guns.

“I have talked to one youngster who bragged about the 13 homicides he committed,” said Police Lt. Sam Dacus, who commands the city’s largest gang detail. “I believed him.”

Battle Lines Drawn

The jagged lines describe a graffiti-scarred area of mostly blacks and Latinos south of downtown and east of the Harbor Freeway. By day they are neighborhoods of palm-lined streets and modest homes, but at night they become a violent no man’s land.

Red lines on the map show Bloods’ territory, blue lines mark off the Crips’ zone and brown lines mark sectors controlled by Latino gangs.

Four pins stuck in the Rolling 60s ground stand for the four gang killings committed there in the last several months. Three pins mark deaths in the Gangster Crips territory, four more highlight the area controlled by the Inglewood Family Bloods, another four mark attacks in Broadway-Hoover Gangster Crips territory and one pin sits on the border dividing the 18th Street Gang and the Al Capones.

Automobile Ambush

Cruising gangs ambush rivals from the safety of passing cars. Bystanders are routinely gunned down, sometimes by accident, sometimes by mistake, and sometimes for the fun of it. Ambulance sirens wail through the night.

Dacus is convinced that gang members are beginning to arm themselves with high-powered weapons.

“I think we only had one cutting death last year,” he said. “The rest is guns. We’ve only seized shot guns and handguns, but I have heard about the purchase of Uzis and military assault rifles. I have no doubt there are gang members armed with them. The days of knives, chains and clubs are over.”

The number of gang-related deaths has dropped since hitting a peak of 192 in 1980, but the ferocity of gang crime has increased the level of fear among people trying to lead normal lives.

Every time there is a gang killing, officers from Dacus’ Community Resources Against Street Gangs and Hoodlums (CRASH) squad investigates. The police team cleans up the blood, talks to grieving relatives and tries to interview terrified witnesses.

“I was supposed to come to this unit on loan,” said Detective Ray Paik, a veteran investigator assigned to CRASH after five teen-agers were gunned down on 54th Street last October.

“The loan is indefinite and I can see this area of the city is where the need for detectives is the greatest.”

At the scene of a recent killing, Paik and his partner lit 108th Street with powerful spotlights, searching the grit for bullet casings.

Bright red road flares burned in the street and yellow tape marked off the area where Bloods member Donnie Newton hit the ground. The 15-year-old was taken to Martin Luther King Jr. Hospital, where he died from a chest wound.

“I have a 14-year-old,” Paik shook his head. “I can’t imagine dying at such a young age.”

A few feet away, Sgt. Tom Jones, the crime scene supervisor, coaxed leads from a crowd of young spectators wearing identical baseball caps.

“I can’t be seen talking to you, man,” one youth said. “They’ll call me a snitch.”

“We’re going to talk to everybody,” Jones soothed. “You can’t snitch if you don’t know who did it. You just have to tell us what you saw.”

The killing began like a bizarre child’s game, with Bloods chasing a youth--a member of the Crips, police think--down the street, throwing rocks and sticks at him. The youth returned about an hour later and gunned down their friend.

The last words Donnie Newton heard were, “Hey, Cuz, I got ya.”

The killer escaped in a green 1967 Chevy.

“This happens every Friday night,” one officer said, watching traffic slowly move around the flares. “The news would be if it didn’t happen.”

Inaccurate Image

Jones, 33, a 12-year department veteran, hates the romantic “player and gambler” image that gang members exude with their sporty clothes, tattoos and exotic nicknames. Like most gang detail officers, he hates identifying the groups for the news media because the gangs crave attention.

“They’re little thugs,” he said. “Not all kids are in the gangs. A lot of them aren’t. You don’t have to be in a gang.

“They’ve created divisions in a community that didn’t need any more divisions. They’re a subculture that’s creating division. It’s worse than five years ago. In 1979, the gangs were here, but now every neighborhood has its own little gang.

“They’re probably our primary crime problem in Los Angeles. They do more crime than any other group. They’ve specialized and diversified into burglary, robbery and drugs.”

A few blocks away a series of shots are fired in rapid sequence.

“That one was a 9-millimeter,” one officer said.

Revenge a Motive

“These kids have no conception of their own mortality,” Jones said. “It accounts for their selfishness. All they’ll be talking about now (after the night’s killing) is pay-back.”

Poverty and the absence of jobs are often given as reasons for gang membership and frustration that leads to violence, but Dacus said the presence and activity of sophisticated drug pushers represents a greater danger.

Among other distinctions, Los Angeles is the only city where police have employed a tank-like vehicle to batter down the walls of steel-fortified homes known as “rock houses.” The homes are where drug dealers do business, protected by armed gang members. The houses got their name from their fortress-like modifications and the “rocks”--crystallized cocaine most often peddled from them.

“The gang members are not running the drug traffic,” Dacus said. “But for the pushers to operate in the area, they have to employ the gangs. We know who a lot of the dealers are. Some we don’t. There are a lot of independents and a lot who we find in the morgue.”

Task Force Needed

Studies have failed to show that more police mean less crime, but Dacus is confident that the concentrated effort in South Los Angeles helps. “We have to go in almost like an occupation (force) and run it like the old foot beat,” he said.

Solutions to the root of the problem are more elusive.

“I was at a United Way meeting and someone told me we’ve got to come up with jobs, and that may be the case,” he said. “But what we have to do first is remove a $200-a-day source of income that a young person can make in drug activity. Then those $4-an-hour jobs may mean something.”

Drug dealers in South Los Angeles use gang members as their troops, so Dacus says more narcotics enforcement is needed to weaken the gang structure. In the past, gangs were mostly the province of teen-agers, but now he says older members are staying on because of drug money.

Will Take Time

Cmdr. Lorne Kramer, assigned by Police Chief Daryl F. Gates to “eradicate” gangs in the aftermath of the 54th Street killings, does not predict a quick solution.

Kramer recently told the Police Commission that more coordination is needed with city, state and federal agencies. He added, almost as an afterthought, that more officers are needed.

Police are hopeful that the broad number of agencies working on the problem can turn the tide.

“I’ve been on 20 years and I know that to be effective, you’ve got to be persistent,” Dacus said. “I think we can win it. I’ve never before seen so many organizations focused on the problem.

“Either we’re going to do something this time or we’ll have to fold up our tents and go home.”