Police Act to Contain ‘Cancer’ of Youth Gangs

In an effort to stem gang activity in the San Fernando Valley, police are increasing their anti-gang forces, switching the focus of their narcotics officers to gangs, and attacking graffiti--considered an early symptom of gang problems.

Law enforcement officials say these steps are needed to combat the increase in recent years in gang incidents in the Valley, which authorities say have been spurred primarily by the lure of easy profits from drug dealing, changing demographics and mounting pressure on traditional gang strongholds in South-Central Los Angeles.

Officials said the Valley problems are not nearly as severe as those in South-Central, where a task force formed after a spate of violence has arrested hundreds of gang members. But they argue that they must hold the line in the Valley now to avoid severe gang problems later.

“The pickings are good in the Valley for the gangs,” said Sgt. Ray Davies, a gang expert. “We are seeing more activity here. As always, we are trying to be as aggressive as possible with our enforcement efforts.”

The pickings, for the most part, are the profits of the lucrative street drug trade. It is enough to draw gang members from all over the city to the Valley, experts said. It is also enough to spark gang violence and related crimes.

Narcotics Factor

“The gang problem has gotten worse and worse as they’ve gotten into narcotics,” said Sgt. Cary Krebs, a former gang-unit officer who now works a drug beat in Pacoima and still deals with gang members almost daily. “It is from the drug activities that the violence and everything else seems to come.”

Because of the belief that drugs are inextricably linked with the major gangs, the manpower of the Valley Narcotics Division was increased by 25% this month, and the unit will now focus most of its efforts on gangs.

Lt. Gary Rogness, head of the division, points to recent arrest statistics to explain the move, saying that, between Feb. 17 and March 16, about 25% of the 219 people arrested by the unit on drug charges were identified as gang members.

“Narcotics have become the bread and butter of the gangs’ existence,” said Rogness. “Our emphasis is now on gangs. We will be going after them in an all-out attack.”

Police said gang experts will be added to the West Valley and Devonshire divisions for the first time. Training of all police officers in gang nuances is intensifying.

“The department wants to be more aggressive,” said Lt. William Gaida, commander of detectives at West Valley. “We want every police officer to be a gang-recognition expert.”

And county officials are considering adding a deputy district attorney to a unit operating out of San Fernando Superior Court and specializing in prosecuting hard-core gang members. Now, one deputy district attorney is assigned to the Valley specifically for those prosecutions, said Michael A. Genelin, head of the district attorney’s gang division.

Although gang activities are becoming more visible, police said, authorities still can only estimate the number of gang members in the Valley.

The Police Department has anti-gang CRASH units, short for Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums, in the Foothill, Van Nuys and North Hollywood divisions, the areas with the most prevalent gang problems. Last year, more than 1,200 gang members were arrested in the three divisions for crimes ranging from public drunkenness to murder.

CRASH officers constantly add names to their intelligence files as gang members are documented. The files from the three divisions contain the names of about 6,000 gang members active in the Valley.

Measuring Stick

Nevertheless, ‘it is pretty difficult to get a true picture,” said Sgt. Jim Flavin of Van Nuys CRASH. “Our measuring stick is how many people we have documented. But there are probably a good many people who are not identified by police. There could be 25% more out there, 50% more, 100% more. But I hope not.”

Police said documenting the numbers is difficult because gang members in the Valley are mobile and not as territorial as those elsewhere.

Although most live in the Valley and operate in their own neighborhoods, others arrive every day by bus. About 2,000 students are bused to Valley schools each day. Several of them are gang members who have planted the seeds of gang organizations in their new schools, police said.

‘Like a Cancer’

“They develop their own organizations and grow like a cancer,” said one officer.

Juvenile Court Commissioner Jack Gold has criticized the Los Angeles Unified School District for not documenting students with gang histories as they move from one school to another.

As with the number of active members, documenting the number of gangs themselves is also an inexact science.

The Valley is a hodgepodge of gangs that are both home-grown and imported from everywhere else in Los Angeles County.

Most of the gangs are Latino: Central Americans, recent immigrants from Mexico and Chicanos. Pacoima alone is home to as many as 13 separate Latino gangs. Some of them grew out of the neighborhoods; others were formed by “displaced” gang members--youths who grew up in East Los Angeles and were exposed to gang traditions before their families moved to the Valley.

The rest of the gangs include black gangs with roots in the inner city, white gangs with middle-class roots and Asian gangs who have a common bond as recent immigrants.

Deciphering graffiti on walls throughout the area, county gang experts identified 96 gangs in the Valley last year, up from 88 the year before.

But that number could include any group that takes a can of spray paint to a wall as well as the several subgroupings known to exist within the larger gangs.

The Major Ones

Police estimate that there are 15 to 20 major gangs in the Valley, some with hundreds of members, that frequently engage in violence and are involved in drug dealing, burglary and robbery.

For the most part, gangs in the Valley break down along racial lines and business ones. Police said that, generally, black gangs primarily deal in rock cocaine and Latino gangs handle marijuana and PCP. Police said some Latino gang members are believed to be involved in the distribution of heroin in the West Valley.

White gangs, which are fewer and smaller in the Valley, have so far not been identified as playing a major role in street drug trade, police said. They appear to be more socially and less criminally oriented--with activities revolving around rock ‘n’ roll, punk life styles and vandalism.

One exception to this appears to have been the Reich Skins, a white gang from the Chatsworth area that ventured into hate crimes far worse than vandalism before several members were arrested last year, police said.

And police also noted that members of a racially mixed gang in Van Nuys have been involved in street dealing and that a recent search of a West Valley white gang leader’s home turned up two beepers, devices often used by members of a drug network.

The Right Time

Reinforcement of anti-gang efforts may be coming at just the right moment. Police said the movement of gangs to the Valley may increase with the recent pressure on gangs in the inner city by the so-called “hammer” task force.

At least one gang expert thinks it is already happening.

“It appears, with all the pressure that they’re putting on downtown gangs, that they’re starting to come up here,” said Detective Cliff Ruff, head of the Foothill CRASH unit. “We’re seeing more downtown gang members. It’s only a matter of time before some kind of confrontation takes place.

“That’s my biggest fear, that if rival gangs come out here and try to establish a foothold, there might be some kind of confrontation.”

Confrontations among Valley gangs are not infrequent. In 1987, gang violence was responsible for 10 murders, 16 attempted murders and 217 felonious assaults, according to police.

The experts find it hard to explain gang violence here. Confrontations are most often spontaneous and not rooted in either territorial or economic infringements. Indeed, police report that, in some areas of Pacoima, there is little friction between black gangs that sell rock cocaine in the same neighborhoods or projects where Latino gangs sell marijuana and PCP.

“There is plenty of business for everybody,” said Davies of North Hollywood CRASH. “Most of the violence is not because they are defending any kind of territory. It is just because ‘Because I don’t like you. Because I don’t like the way you look,’ stuff like that.”

Ruff added: “It’s almost all spontaneous occurrences, reactions, opportunistic-type things.”

There were three more killings in 1987 than in 1986, but the rest of the l987 figures were down slightly from the previous year, and still represented only a small amount of the gang violence countywide.

Still, the gang violence in the Valley is a serious concern for authorities. Already this year there have been four gang killings and several non-fatal shootings. Police believe that, if gangs are allowed to flourish unchecked in the Valley, either through movement from the inner city or through local youths, so, too, will the violence.

More Tactics Needed

Although increased law enforcement may be one way to break down the criminal gangs of the Valley, authorities also see the need for more community involvement and educational programs to keep gangs from replenishing their ranks.

“You are probably never going to eradicate gangs,” said Gaida of the West Valley Division. “They have traditionally been part of the city. But you can control their growth by focusing on the younger kids. You have to break the cycle by discouraging the next generation from joining.”

Many who deal with gang members say the way to do that is through school programs similar to the Police Department’s DARE, an anti-drug program in local schools.

“I think there needs to be a similar program dealing with the gangs, to educate youngsters about the alternatives to the gangs,” said Judge Morton Rochman of Sylmar Juvenile Court.

“I know many people feel there have to be alternatives for the young people to divert their attention away from the gangs. Other people feel there needs to be more employment. And others feel there needs to be more respect for the family unit. I don’t think there’s any one pat answer. It’s social, financial; it’s educational,” Rochman said.

Police said this month that they will be starting a program to remove graffiti, which is becoming prevalent throughout the Valley. Even the more affluent areas report increases of graffiti, police said. Though not always the work of gang members, graffiti are one of the first symptoms of gang problems and neighborhood decay, authorities believe.

In a recent discussion of the anti-graffiti program with a Sherman Oaks homeowners association, Capt. Charles (Rick) Dinse, commanding officer of North Hollywood Division, said the project will involve the cooperation of police and civic groups to provide the manpower to quickly remove graffiti as soon as it appears.

The program will be called the Broken Window project, Dinse said, taking its name from a police theory that, if one broken window in a home goes unrepaired, vandals will believe no one cares and will break more windows, and the degradation escalates until it pervades the neighborhood.

“It is the same with graffiti,” said Dinse.

And so, too, with gangs, police said. “If people just throw their hands up and say, ‘We give up,’ then we have lost the battle,” Gaida said.

“Look at the Valley as being 10 years in development behind South-Central Los Angeles in the intensity of its problem,” said Tony Massengale, assistant director of Community Youth Gang Services, a city- and county-financed organization based in East Los Angeles. “Not only is the number of gangs lower, but the violence of the gangs is lower.

“But, if we write it off now, all we do is buy time that in 10 years we pay for.”