L.A. Black Gangs Likened to Organized Crime Groups

While Latino street gangs in Los Angeles apparently were held in check last year, black gangs have become so deeply involved in the lucrative rock cocaine trade that they now resemble organized crime more than fraternal groups, authorities told a NAACP-sponsored conference on gang problems Saturday.

Black street gangs control at least 100 so-called rock houses in the city, and hundreds--perhaps thousands--of local gang members, eager to cash in on a nationwide rock cocaine epidemic, are setting up similar operations in cities throughout the West and as far away as Louisiana, the authorities said.

“They are acting more and more like traditional organized crime groups,” said City Atty. James K. Hahn. “We have a situation where basically community terrorism is going on.”

Los Angeles police have received reports about known gang members selling rock cocaine in Phoenix; Portland, Ore.; Denver; Las Vegas and Shreveport, La., as well as in Riverside and San Diego, Lt. Bob Ruchhoft, who heads the department’s gang activities section, told the conference.

Since October, two Los Angeles police officers have been assigned to do nothing but track and try to control the flourishing network of drug trafficking outside the city by local black gangs, he said.

“We aren’t talking street gangs here,” Ruchhoft said. “We’re talking about something that in my view is the developing stages of organized crime in the city of Los Angeles.”

In contrast, Latino gangs, while still a strong force in East Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Harbor area and in the San Fernando Valley, have become relatively less menacing, the authorities said.

In East Los Angeles, for example, an unincorporated section of Los Angeles County, gang-related killings last year dropped to a 10-year low.

Success and Failure

“I want to see us find out exactly how the successes have worked and apply those as we can throughout the city, especially in South-Central Los Angeles,” Hahn said. “There we see the gangs becoming more violent. The drug sales are increasing.”

The transformation of big-city gangs into regional and even national networks similar to those run by organized crime apparently is not unique to Los Angeles. There have been reports that gangs from Chicago’s South Side are showing up in cities in Tennessee and Mississippi.

Ruchhoft said Los Angeles gangs are extending their influence beyond Southern California to take advantage of better prices for rock cocaine, and to get footholds in cities that have had little or no experience in dealing with gangs or rock trafficking.

“You could buy rock here for $10, but you go to Portland, you could sell the same rock for $25 or $35,” he said.

Hahn and Ruchhoft were among more than a dozen law enforcement officials and experts who spoke to about 300 judges, social workers, school officials and community leaders at the conference at Los Angeles City Hall. The National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, along with several law enforcement and social agencies, sponsored the conference to encourage greater cooperation among various government agencies in dealing with the city’s growing gang problem.

The message from nearly all of them was bleak.

State Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp, who as Los Angeles County district attorney established a Hardcore Gang Division, told the group that the city and state are “in serious trouble” because of gang control of the surging narcotics traffic. Van de Kamp said a series of new state laws taking effect this year will help police and prosecutors crack down on gangs, but he said the real effort will have to come from the community.

‘Touches Everyone’

“There is a strong and growing awareness that the gang problem touches everyone in some way here in this community,” he said. “Indeed, it threatens the future of this city as a safe and civilized place for families to live and raise their children.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Genelin, who heads the Hardcore Gang Division, told of a 13-year-old boy being gunned down by gang members as he hid in his bedroom closet, and of a gang member who killed a man and his wife because he believed--incorrectly--that they tipped off police about another murder he had committed.

“These are not kids who have gone astray,” he said. “These are bad people. They will rob you, they will kill you and they will burglarize your homes.”

Ruchhoft said money has become an obsession among gang members. He told the story of a 21-year-old gang member, known on the streets as “Way Out,” who owned four cars--a Rolls Royce, Corvette, BMW and a Mercedes Benz. Ruchhoft said Way Out paid cash for all of the cars, except the Rolls Royce. He could only muster a $30,000 down payment on that car--but, Ruchhoft said, Way Out hasn’t missed any of his $2,400 monthly payments.

“And Way Out is not Mr. Big,” Ruchhoft said.

Judge H. Randolph Moore, who heads a juvenile court in South-Central Los Angeles, where the city’s most notorious black gangs have their roots, said 75% of the youths who end up in his court have been arrested for cocaine-related offenses. He said much of the problem stems from parents who are also gang members.

“I have had youngsters sit down and tell me that everything goes well at home as long as they are bringing dope money home and sharing it with the family,” Moore said. “When they don’t bring the money in, they get in trouble with their mothers.”

NAACP Viewpoint

Raymond Johnson, president of the Los Angeles Chapter of the NAACP, said in an interview that the conference, while focusing on the problems in the black community, points to a citywide problem that crosses racial and ethnic boundaries.

“Blacks are not shipping the drugs into this country, nor are they smuggling them across the border,” he said. “If you focus only on the black problem, then you are really missing the problem. You have white gangs, you have Asian gangs and you have Latino gangs. The black gangs at this point in time are more organized and they are making the money. Eventually, the other gangs are going to learn the technique, and they will be doing the same thing.”

In the city of Los Angeles, there were 190 gang-related killings last year, just one shy of the record set in 1980. In 1985, there were 144 such killings. Law enforcement officials say there are at least 200 gangs with 15,000 members in the city.