Millions Spent; Hundreds Jailed : Youth Gang Wars Engulf Vast Efforts to Bring Peace

Their faces are cherubic and inquisitive, but the looks mask the inner turmoil of fifth-graders at Compton’s McKinley Elementary School.

“I’m 10, and I want to live to be 11,” a dark-eyed boy chillingly confided during a weekly class entitled Alternatives to Gang Membership.

Asked why, he replied, “Because a lot of gang things are happening now.”

His classmates spoke of relatives and neighbors shot or stabbed outside grocery stores, on the way to swap meets or down by the riverbed.

Despite their tender age, the youngsters have a firsthand view of the gang violence that continues to grow in Los Angeles County even as law enforcement agencies spend millions of dollars a year on gang suppression and social service agencies continue to offer such alternatives as summer jobs, help lines, sports programs and the opportunity to sign peace treaties.

Already this year, 70 gang-related homicides have been recorded in areas patrolled by Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies, surpassing by 11 the total for all of 1986. In the city of Los Angeles, gang homicides increased 14.9% through September to 154. At that rate, the city’s final figure could eclipse its previous bloodiest year, 1980, when 192 gang-related homicides occurred.

In spite of the depressing figures, anti-gang authorities contend that their efforts have prevented even more bloodshed. But they also concede that the success of many programs, particularly those aimed at influencing youngsters who may soon decide whether to join gangs, can only be measured over the next five or 10 years.

“We’re doing as much as we can for the resources available,” said Lt. Michael Sparks of the sheriff’s Operation Safe Streets unit. “If our programs diminished, violence would skyrocket.”

Meanwhile, officials are trying to find new weapons against the menace--such as the court action sought by City Atty. James K. Hahn last week that, in essence, would place under limited house arrest the 200-plus members of a street gang.

In that case, a Superior Court judge swiftly rejected as “too broad” Hahn’s request for a temporary restraining order against the Playboy Gangster Crips, a Westside gang allegedly involved in drug trafficking and a string of murders.

But Judge Warren H. Deering said further evidence can be presented at a Nov. 18 hearing, where he will consider Hahn’s proposal to ban gang members from associating with one another and to restrict them to their homes from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m.

On Controlled Turf

So far this year, much of the violence--including 57 of the first 67 killings in areas patrolled by sheriff’s deputies--has taken place on South-Central Los Angeles turf dominated by black gangs whose members often arm themselves with Uzis and other automatic weapons to control their burgeoning drug trade.

But gang membership--particularly among newer Asian and Latin American immigrant groups--is on the rise across Los Angeles County. Officials estimate that there are now more than 500 street gangs and more than 50,000 members from Pomona to West Los Angeles, and from the San Fernando Valley to the Los Angeles Harbor Area.

“With no sense of pride, we’re No. 1,” Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner declared. “We are the gang capital of the United States in terms of numbers, in terms of violence, in terms of its overall impact on the entire criminal justice system.

“In a mood of frustration, you feel like the only effective way to deal with street gangs is with a flame thrower. But I suppose after you get that off your chest, you have to get back to reality and figure out how you can really deal with them.”

The principal method of fighting back is still to lock up hard-core gang members as often as possible for as long as possible.

Funds Budgeted

The Los Angeles Police Department, for its part, budgets about $10 million a year on salaries and support services for the 191 sworn officers employed in its gang activities section and Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums unit. The Sheriff’s Department spends $4.6 million for its 64-officer Operation Safe Streets unit, one of several anti-gang efforts.

In addition, the county Probation Department budgets $2.3 million yearly for a 51-member specialized gang supervision program. And Reiner’s own 25-member hard-core gang unit staff--currently prosecuting 470 defendants in 342 cases, a majority of them for murder--has a $1.8-million budget.

“Our (goal) is to protect the rest of the public so they don’t become victims,” said Michael A. Genelin, head of the district attorney’s unit.

“People complain about hearing shooting every night in certain sections of the county. I think it’s unconscionable that somebody has to live with that kind of threat of violence day in and day out. And we have an inordinate number of innocent people who are victims. . . . It’s some kind of terribly tragic comedy where the innocents are the victimized.”

Instances of unforeseen tragedy are legion. Earlier this year, 9-year-old DeAndre Brown was caught in a gunfight between rival gang factions while playing in a sandbox at a public park; 10-year-old Dominique Blackshear was hit by a stray bullet while getting ready for bed, and Deloris Allen, 42, was struck by a stray bullet as she walked down the aisle of a Watts-area church after choir practice.

Many Are Not Members

According to Los Angeles police, more than half of the gang-related homicides in the city involve innocent bystanders, robbery victims and others who do not belong to gangs.

To better coordinate their efforts to combat the violence, the Sheriff’s and Police departments have received a $234,432 state grant this year to install a computerized gang information reporting system. In total, the state Office of Criminal Justice Planning funds 22 separate prosecutorial and community-based anti-gang programs in Los Angeles County--allocating $2.4 million of its entire $4.6-million statewide budget here this year.

With all the money, manpower and prosecutions, law enforcement officials still acknowledge that their role is, at best, a holding action.

“There are no magical answers,” said Cmdr. Lorne C. (Larry) Kramer, the Police Department’s top anti-gang officer. “We are deeply involved in trying to educate the community because law enforcement is not only an expensive way to deal with the problem but it is also not the answer. . . .

“For every gang member you put in jail, there are two or three replacements waiting in line to take their place. We have to deal with the social dynamics.”

Prevention and intervention efforts are most frequently handled by social service agencies such as Community Youth Gang Services, which has operated on an annual budget of about $2 million--primarily from the city and county governments--since it began operating in 1981.

Working in the Field

The East Los Angeles-based agency deploys about 50 field workers--many of them former gang members--to defuse volatile situations between gangs. Community Youth Gang Services also offers a few sports programs, summer job placements, elementary school education programs and gang mediation services. The agency claims to have spurred the signing of 21 peace agreements and nonaggression pacts involving 44 gangs in 1986--although they concede that many of the agreements were limited to the Christmas season and involved only a handful of gang members.

Other community-based agencies combating gangs include SEY YES Inc., a South-Central Los Angeles organization receiving a $123,000 state grant this year to run a hot line, a rumor control system, athletic activities and efforts to prevent gang-related confrontations on school campuses, and Soledad Enrichment Action, an East Los Angeles program with a $77,000 state grant aimed at educating parents and school staff on how to keep youngsters out of gangs.

Still, that is far from enough money or manpower, agency officials say, particularly compared to the high costs of incarcerating gang members for their criminal activity. At present, authorities say, the yearly tab for housing each prisoner at the Los Angeles County Jail runs $11,000, not including court costs. And the number of gang members in the jail is staggering--more than 700 members of the two major rival black gangs, the Crips and the Bloods, are housed in isolated quarters alone at the jail.

“No one wants to put enough money into prevention,” said V. G. Guinses, director of SEY YES, which has a total annual budget of $300,000 and a 12-member staff. “The kids haven’t been reached (enough) at the bottom. . . . We’ve got to tell kids they should be good citizens.”

Public’s Attitude

Exacerbating the problems, Community Youth Gang Services staffers say, is the relative lack of public concern about festering gang problems in poor neighborhoods.

“When whites are threatened, resources are made available,” said Ed Turley, Community Youth Gang Services’ prevention program coordinator. As an example, he cited the “immediate availability” of state funds for police overtime to combat the menace of freeway shootings last summer.

Even Reiner--who says his primary concern is not rehabilitation but “putting every one of these little murderous hoodlums in jail for as long as (he) can”--agrees that gang violence has not traditionally been a high priority for the majority of Los Angeles residents.

But Reiner added, “People are becoming frightened everywhere. A gang may be centered in South-Central Los Angeles, but there are cars and freeways and there are no safe enclaves.”

One initiative that anti-gang leaders seem to agree on is the need for state legislation proposed by Reiner and Hahn that would make it a crime to actively participate in a street gang with knowledge that its members intend to engage in criminal activity. The legislation, due to be acted upon in January, also calls for the forfeiture of property acquired through gang-related activities and authorizes victims to file civil lawsuits against gangs.

Opposing the legislation are civil liberties groups who have raised constitutional objections to punishing gang members for their associations rather than their direct involvement in crimes.

Focus on Parents

Besides legislation, anti-gang leaders stress that efforts must be redoubled to reach parents of gang members and the community at large.

Attempts to rally the community have included marches through Watts housing projects, rallies and prayer sessions in front of suspected rock houses, services to memorialize the fallen, and round-table seminars and task forces sponsored by government leaders.

Officials say community efforts, such as the formation of a Concerned Parents Organization, helped stem violence among Latino street gangs that have operated in Los Angeles for much of the century.

In East Los Angeles, authorities estimate that there are 70 gangs with 3,000 members. But gang-related killings--which reached a high of 24 in 1978--dropped to four in 1986.

While Latino gangs have become less lethal, gang activity is growing among young Asian immigrants and could eventually lead to widespread violence unless there are preventive efforts, officials say.

“We’ve got non-traditional gangs and we can’t cope with them because . . . we have language and cultural problems in terms of handling them,” said Mike Duran, who heads the specialized gang supervision program of the county Probation Department. “These are Vietnamese, Chinese, Filipino, Samoans and Koreans. They are causing us problems right now.”

‘Pretty Cute’ Idea

And in the San Fernando Valley, he added, there has also been “an upsurge of white kids that think it’s pretty cute” to begin forming their own gangs.

This year, the Sheriff’s Department has used a $62,000 state grant to provide a deputy as a full-time liaison on public school campuses in Carson--a fertile breeding ground for new gangs of Pacific Islander immigrants.

Forthcoming efforts, focused particularly at black gangs, include the targeting of specific neighborhoods for anti-gang programs by an interagency county task force of law enforcement, community and educational agencies and a Community Youth Gang Services program to provide college mentors for some elementary school students in high-risk areas.

Some initiatives prove more successful--and long-running--than others.

For example, Mayor Tom Bradley and Los Angeles City Councilman Robert Farrell jointly announced in August the formation of a task force of local mayors to combat the gang menace. But the task force has yet to meet.

Crackdown Cut Back

A Bradley press aide says, “It was Councilman Farrell’s idea,” and suggested that Farrell could explain the inactivity. Said Farrell: “Unfortunately it hasn’t gotten off the ground because shortly afterward someone filed a recall against me. . . . It just sort of got pushed on the back burner for that reason.”

Also, a highly publicized Los Angeles police crackdown, in which officers began working overtime beginning in late August to enforce the city’s longstanding 10 p.m. curfew for minors, has already been scaled back. Now, the curfew, which has led to more than 350 arrests and 800 warnings since late August, is enforced only by officers on their regular rounds of duty.

Some involved in fighting gang violence say they have limited or negligible control over many of the fundamental circumstances that breed the violence.

“The biggest reason is the cocaine problem,” Deputy City Atty. Bruce Coplen said. “The profits that are being made and the level of rivalries that result from the narcotics trade is feeding the fires of violence. There are disputes over territories, over drug transactions, and, of course, the level of usage of the drugs tends to release people’s inhibitions and lead to violence.”

“In order to curb gang violence, the social ills that fester and prompt gang violence must be addressed--such as homelessness, joblessness, the welfare mentality. . . . We must touch people at an early age,” said the Rev. Charles Mims of the Tabernacle Faith Baptist Church.

At a Turning Point

To that end, elementary school programs like the one that Dale Stewart, a Community Youth Gang Services worker, teaches at McKinley are specifically geared to influence youngsters when they are at the turning point--before they have decided whether to join gangs.

At present, such programs are available on a limited basis. Stewart teaches 35 classes weekly in Compton and Pasadena. The Paramount school system, which developed the program several years ago, also still uses it. There are similar programs in Inglewood, Long Beach and Harbor Area schools funded by the United Way and state government.

The exuberant Stewart employs a dizzying multimedia array of videotapes, poetry, posters, pop quizzes and pep squad techniques in his 15-week course.

One recent afternoon, Stewart told the class in Compton that “some of these (gang members) live right next door to us, down the street, and they may even be in this classroom.” Then he asked: “Do we have any urban terrorists in this classroom?”

The youngsters respond with a resounding, “No!”

But in the cathartic silence that followed, a girl’s hand shot up.

“If you ask a question like that,” she asserted, “do you think they’ll give you a correct answer?”

“Well, young lady,” Stewart replied, “only time will tell.”