1,000 Officers Stage Assault Against Violent Youth Gangs

An unprecedented strike force of 1,000 police officers hit the streets of Los Angeles Friday night in a full-scale assault on the city’s violent youth gangs.

The night-long deployment had been promised by Chief Daryl F. Gates, who said on Monday that he would put the officers into the field as often as it takes to curb gang attacks and drug trafficking.

By 10:30 p.m. at least 208 people had been arrested on suspicion of a variety of offenses--most of them in the South-Central area of the city--but complete statistics were not immediately available.

Police said that of 101 arrests in the South-Central area by 10 p.m., 42 involved suspected felonies by adults, with “many of the rest old traffic violations.” About 22 of those arrested were known gang members, officers said.

The officers were deployed into neighborhoods of high gang activity from four staging areas, the largest of which was the Los Angeles Coliseum, where the lights, the portable canteen and the crowds of officers, news people and onlookers lent an eerily festive air, “something like a Raiders game in the middle of April,” in the words of one observer.

Seriousness of Purpose

But Mayor Tom Bradley and Gates--who both addressed two roll calls--stressed the seriousness of their purpose.

“We are going to take these terrorists off the streets,” said Bradley, a former police lieutenant. “We are determined to take back the streets from these hoodlums.”

Gates stressed that Friday night’s deployment--the largest ever against the city’s gangs--was just one in a series of sweeps that began six weeks ago in the ongoing battle to curb violence and drug trafficking.

“We don’t know that we are going to accomplish any more than we have the other nights,” Gates said. “This is just one effort in the struggle to obliterate the gangs of Los Angeles. We’re going to wage a war on gangs and we’re going to continue until it’s finished.”

The commitment of the chief seemed to rub off on his officers, several of whom said arrests were being made for infractions that might normally be overlooked.

In the east San Fernando Valley, a defiant 14-year-old wearing a Fred Flintstone T-shirt--and not much else--was booked on suspicion of indecent exposure after he “mooned” a passing patrol car.

“Tonight we pick ‘em up for anything and everything,” an officer said.

Gates warned his officers to be “gentle with the citizens, so they won’t feel their neighborhood is under siege.” But nonetheless, there were complaints.

One mother said that her 33-year-old son, a construction contractor, was wrongly arrested as he was attempting to pay his employees at his home on 39th Street.

“It’s good what the police are doing, but they are harassing innocent people,” the woman said. “Just because my son is black, and had that kind of money on him, doesn’t mean he’s a drug dealer.”

Police employed their Immediate Booking and Release system to facilitate the handling of the suspects brought to the Coliseum on Friday night.

Under the IBAR system, first used against gang suspects during a smaller-scale deployment on Wednesday night, police book suspects in the field to eliminate the time officers would have to spend transporting suspected criminals to jails.

The IBAR system, which provides booking officers, desks, chairs, forms and police buses serving as “field jails” at a central location, reportedly cuts booking time by half. In the past, use of the system had been limited to crackdowns on drunk drivers and clients of prostitutes.

Before Friday night’s deployment, the department’s anti-gang sweeps had been responsible for the arrest of 1,413 people, including 1,124 gang members, during a six-week period.

But LAPD spokesman Lt. Fred Nixon said Friday night that he had no data on how many of those arrested were formally charged.

Authorities explained that those arrested by police--if not released on their own recognizance or on bail--are usually held in police jails. Only if a judge determines that they should continue to be held are they remanded to county custody.

The sweeps began Feb. 26, a few hours after a gang argument aboard an RTD bus turned into a shooting incident that wounded four people.

Until Friday, the LAPD sweeps had involved groups of 175 to 200 officers who were sent to neighborhoods known for gang violence or street drug sales. Most of the officers patrolled these neighborhoods, using the slightest reason to stop and question anyone who resembled a gang member, either from the way he dressed or acted. Other officers went to specific homes to serve warrants, looking for weapons or drugs.

Gates vowed to expand the sweeps in the wake of a drive-by shooting in South-Central Los Angeles last weekend that killed one person and injured 12.

Three days later, a City Council committee approved spending $1.3 million to intensify gang enforcement for six weeks. Gates estimated that each deployment costs about $150,000 in overtime.

The 1,000-officer sweep is being accomplished without a reduction in regular patrols elsewhere in the city, the department said. Officers will be working 12-hour shifts instead of the usual eight hours.