THE POLITICS OF MURDERS : An inident of gang violence in Westwood has fueled a growing debate that is caught up in the delicate matters of race, economics and politics. The issue: In the rich neighborhoods and the poor, how does L.A. respond to the killing of its residents?

Before the Los Angeles City Council adjourned its long day of official business Tuesday afternoon, its members paused briefly to remember Karen Toshima, who became yet another innocent victim of gang violence last weekend when she was shot on a Westwood sidewalk.

It was a fleeting moment of unity in a case that, has divided council members and city residents, raising fundamental questions about how Los Angeles’ government, police force, community groups, merchants and news media respond to gang violence.

At issue in the growing debate are delicate matters of race, economics and politics, and how Los Angeles’ richest and poorest residents see themselves and each other.

In the aftermath of Miss Toshima’s death, the affluent community of Westwood reacted swiftly to protect itself and heal its trauma.

More than 30 Los Angeles police detectives were assigned to pursue leads in the case, while Capt. Maurice R. Moore, commander of the LAPD’s West Los Angeles station, announced plans to temporarily bolster his foot patrols with 14 additional officers. Merchants pledged more than $10,000 for a reward to find the killer, and Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky proposed that the city offer another $25,000. Westwood’s police, store owners and community leaders kept in close, almost-hourly contact with Yaroslavsky to ensure that the village would not suffer any further psychological and financial harm.

Compared to Machine

“It was like a well-oiled machine,” marveled Scott Regberg, executive director of the Westwood Village Merchants Assn.

But in South-Central Los Angeles, where 114 people were killed in gang violence last year, some residents, community leaders and politicians were outraged by what appeared to them to be a disproportionate response to Miss Toshima’s murder. They insist that their dead have not been accorded the same intensive police and governmental reaction.

Some have also cast blame on the city’s news organizations for concentrating too much on one senseless killing in affluent Westwood, while underplaying the tragedy of similar killings that occur much more frequently in Los Angeles’s poorest neighborhoods.

“The more exclusive areas of this city get a more responsive treatment,” said Anthony Essex, first vice president of the Los Angeles branch of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People. “That’s not a perception. That’s the reality.”

At first, Miss Toshima’s death was almost exclusively a police matter. Patrol officers secured the stretch of sidewalk where she lay. Detectives from the Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums (CRASH) bureau, experienced in gang shootings, began questioning witnesses. “We did what we have to do whenever there’s a suspected gang-related slaying,” said Moore, who before taking over command of the West Los Angeles station worked in the LAPD’s South Bureau, which patrols a vast stretch of gang-controlled territory.

Lt. Gabriel E. Ornelas, who heads the West Bureau CRASH unit, said that all 30 of his investigators were drawn into the hunt for Miss Toshima’s killer because they were needed to explore dozens of tips offered since the killing.

Ornelas said his entire unit is often assigned to a single case if the number of leads in that case require such expansive attention. As the number of leads dwindle, so does the number of officers assigned to the investigation, he said.

The strategy, which Ornelas described as a “swarm effect,” was used in several of the 20 gang-related homicides last year on the Westside, the lieutenant noted. Of those 20 murders, 12 were solved, he said.

At 1 a.m. on Sunday, about two hours after Miss Toshima was shot, Moore telephoned Yaroslavsky at his home and informed him about the incident. “It was fairly brief and factual,” Yaroslavsky said. “We didn’t get into any follow-up.”

The councilman said he has encouraged police to make such late-night calls to inform him of important cases, and police say they make similar calls in other council districts. The need in Westwood grew out of similar circumstances in the past, Yaroslavsky said, such as when a deranged motorist drove his car down a Westwood sidewalk the night before the opening of the 1984 Olympics.

‘Appropriate Response’

The councilman did not deal with the case again until Monday morning. “The Police Department already had its analysis of the situation,” Yaroslavsky said. “What I was doing was trying to come up with the appropriate response. Situations like these call for a high degree of reassurance. Eventually, time can heal the fears that can arise in a community from something like this. But in the short term it can have a devastating effect.”

On Monday morning, before answering the flood of telephone calls that waited in his office, Yaroslavsky said, he touched base again with Moore. Both men agreed that the Police Department would need to temporarily bolster its presence in Westwood, but the exact numbers were not worked out.

“Our sense was that we needed to move quickly to . . . make sure that people who might contemplate coming in and doing something like this again had to get the message that it would not be in their best interest,” Yaroslavsky said.

Moore explained later that he thought he had no choice but to increase foot patrols in Westwood. “There are thousands and thousands of people who come here from all over Southern California,” he said. “It’s my responsibility to make them feel secure.”

Those preparations were already being made, Yaroslavsky said, as he fielded the first of dozens of calls that came into his office from anxious Westwood merchants.

One of the first calls he fielded was from Regberg, who has owned a Westwood-based marketing firm for 17 years.

“I thought it was shocking and a real affront to our community,” Regberg said. Like Yaroslavsky, he had learned of the shooting the day before and girded himself for the calls to come.

“I came to work and the phone calls were fast and furious,” he said. “I have one line for the merchants association, but I had calls coming in on our business phones as well. Everyone was expressing the same thing--shock, surprise and a sense of tragedy.”

When Regberg called Yaroslavsky, he found that there was no need to press for action. “He seemed to anticipate our concerns,” Regberg said. “I got a quick update on the status of the investigation and he reaffirmed that Westwood is not an active haven for gang activity.”

To Westwood’s community leaders, what was occurring was a natural outgrowth of years of close cooperation between business groups, Yaroslavksy’s office and the police.

“We have lines of communication with every organization in the community,” said Dori Pye, executive director of the Los Angeles West Chamber of Commerce, “with the press, with the Police Department, with the government, and when a situation like this happens, you can make a phone call and get listened to. We’ve built up credibility over the years. We don’t cry wolf . . . and we only make statements when we have something to say.”

Regberg and others also acknowledge that Westwood’s importance as a regional gathering point for people from throughout the Los Angeles area may bring it extra attention. “I think Westwood is fortunate to receive the attention it does,” Regberg said.

Community leaders in South-Central Los Angeles were watching the attention Westwood was drawing. But they did not have the same admiring attitude that Regberg had.

By Tuesday, several City Council members who represent Los Angeles’ poorest communities were openly criticizing Yaroslavsky and the Police Department for what they perceived as disproportionate attention to gang violence in Westwood.

“Unfortunately,” said Councilman Robert Farrell, “there is a perception that a life lost in South L.A. or East L.A. does not measure up to a life lost somewhere else.”

Said Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores: “What’s so different about this (shooting in Westwood)? Why can’t we get this response in South-Central, where lives are lost every week? I’m getting dozens of calls from my constituents asking, ‘Are you not aware of this?’ ”

But Police Chief Daryl F. Gates denied Wednesday that his department treats poor neighborhoods any differently than it treats affluent areas, saying, “We have deployed consistently to deal with this kind of (gang) situation as it erupts and wherever it erupts in the city.”

Backing Gates, Councilman Nate Holden, whose district includes a section of South-Central, said that when 9-year-old DeAndre Brown was killed by a stray bullet in a gang shooting at a city park, a swift police response resulted in an arrest within 12 hours. And after the gang-related shootings of bystanders Oct. 16 at John Adams High School, 47 police officers responded and had a suspect within a few hours, Holden noted.

In an appearance Wednesday before the City Council, Gates also tried to answer questions raised by council members about the police response in Westwood, assuring them that the same vigorous investigation follows gang-related slayings in their neighborhoods but “don’t get a lot of media hype.”

Indeed, several leaders in the black community castigated Los Angeles’ news-gathering organizations for fueling the perception that a death in Westwood is somehow more important than scores of deaths in the poor neighborhoods of the city.

Holden, who has twice adjourned City Council meetings in memory of slain innocent bystanders since he was elected last summer, said the media cover gang deaths in South-Central Los Angeles “for the first-day news, but they never go to the roots.”

He said the City Council is also partly to blame for the imbalance in public response to gang-related deaths in minority areas. On Friday, he said, he will ask the City Council to set aside reward money for every “bystander victim” in a gang-related incident whose killer has not yet been found.

“I want the same thing for my area as what is being done for Westwood,” Holden said.

Officials of local news organizations said reporters are only accurately covering the responses of the city’s politicians and community leaders. Michael Singer, managing editor of Channel 2 News, took exception to the notion that the media ignore gang-related murders in poor areas and overplay them in affluent sections like Westwood.

“We don’t make any distinction on where one of these events happen,” he said, adding that “the media rarely push things. This event has some intrinsic meaning. The story was a tragic story.”

Times Deputy Managing Editor Noel Greenwood suggested that the Westwood shooting grew in importance compared to other gang-related murders because of its unusual context, occurring in a crowded area that is frequently visited by residents throughout the city. “When it happens in a setting with lots of other people around, the newsworthiness becomes a bit more than an episode on an isolated street corner,” he said.

Whether the crowds that flock to Westwood Village will return this weekend is uncertain, but LAPD’s Moore said he expects to have his new temporary detachment of officers patrolling the area by then.

Police officials said they are making progress on the Toshima case, but declined to elaborate. Moore said he plans to send in an additional two-man foot patrol and hopes to borrow 10 officers from Metropolitan Division, an all-purpose, 200-officer unit based downtown which carries out various task force missions citywide. But police spokesman Cmdr. William Booth said Metro personnel would remain in duty in South-Central, where they have been stationed in recent weeks to combat gangs and narcotics trafficking.

Even in the San Gabriel Valley household where Karen Toshima’s family has gathered to prepare for a Friday burial service, the controversy that her death has spawned has not gone unnoticed.

“My sister was such a quiet person,” said Kevin Toshima. “She didn’t like receiving a lot of attention. She kind of went about her own business and the fact that she’s in the center spotlight now is pretty ironic.”

Times staff writers Paul Feldman, David Freed, Jill Stewart, Ted Vollmer and Ann Wiener contributed to this story.