Local News in Brief : Cranston Meets on Gangs

Citing the escalating gang homicides in Los Angeles County, leaders of a half-dozen black community groups Tuesday asked U.S. Sen. Alan Cranston for additional federal funds for gang and drug prevention.

“What we have is a modern-day Al Capone situation,” Royce Esters, president of the City of Compton’s Crime Commission, said at a Watts community forum sponsored by Cranston. “It is organized crime and we need the federal government to come in. . . . They got Al Capone on income tax evasion. But we’ve got people around here riding around in Rolls-Royces and paying no taxes.”

Government-funded job programs are also a necessity to steer youngsters away from gang activities, said Claudia Moore, a tenant leader at the Nickerson Gardens housing project.

Cranston, concluding the one-hour session, said, “I’ll try to help . . . (but) there are no magic solutions.”

In an interview afterward, Cranston, who also met with students at the Washington Preparatory High School in Southwest Los Angeles, said that “there isn’t a lot of federal funding available because of the deficit” but that there could be increased efforts to provide better educational programs.