The biggest, baddest-looking dude assumed the position, hands on his head, feet spread.

“Boxer got rubbed out,” the police sergeant said with a sad smile as he wheeled an unmarked patrol car through a fried chicken stand in Pacoima.

Indeed Boxer did, in both the literal and slang meanings of the phrase.

On a wall beside the driveway, gang nicknames were spray-painted. “Boxer” had been painted over with an X, a mocking comment from a rival gang on Boxer’s demise, said Sgt. Tom Wilkinson.

Wilkinson, head of the anti-gang squad in the Foothill Division, was giving a tour of his world.

The chicken stand was a hangout for Boxer’s gang. He was there when a rival gang came visiting. “Boxer went out to fight them in the street, and one of them ran back to their car, got a gun and chased him around the car, shooting him,” Wilkinson said.

Wilkinson’s mental map of the territory is sprinkled with such landmarks. “Over there by the taco stand was where they got Duke. That was the first gang homicide of the year.”

Passing Paxton Park: “A 17-year-old was stabbed over there. His 16-year-old brother came out to help him and took an ice pick in the neck.” They lived.

In Branford Park he points out bushes lining the edge of the parking lot. Members of a gang from another neighborhood were standing behind them recently when members of a local gang drove in. The gunmen in the greenery shouted out the customary challenge, “Where you from?”

“Pacoima,” the arrivals replied.

The answering shotgun fire wounded one girl and one boy. They lived.

On an underpass wall a chaotic jumble of spiky graffiti, a meaningless mess to most outsiders, tells Wilkinson how one gang moved in, took over and later changed its name.

Wilkinson heads a CRASH (Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums) unit of seven officers, whose job is to learn not only gangs and turf but gang members as individuals--where they live, what drugs they take or deal, their criminal records, their love lives and where they’re likely to be at a given hour. They keep photo albums and gather information the way readers of supermarket tabloids gobble up tidbits on Burt and Loni and Liz.

In uniform, squad members sport pins on their shirts with the words “LAPD CRASH” flanking a Latin-looking figure in a baggy-coated zoot suit of the type popular with Latino gang members in the 1940s.

The squad served as scouts for the horde of officers the LAPD dropped into Pacoima on the weekend to instill respect for the law, or at the least fear of being arrested for existing in public, into the gangs.

The army of officers, many from other parts of the city, might have been lost were it not for their native guides. The CRASH homeboys posted photos of the 10 top gang members--two were wanted, one for attempted murder, but the others were simply notorious--and wrote up a list of local gangs, describing their numbers, home area and colors or fashion statements. A new gang wears high pompadours.

The CRASH members tracked down their charges in the streets like cowboys searching out stray dogies and used their radios to guide in reinforcements.

On the first day of the great pogrom, Wilkinson drove around his territory for 16 hours. His is the basic professional life of a Ping-Pong ball: As soon as he leaves, he starts back.

The sweeps arrested gang members for anything and everything, sometimes collaring first and figuring out charges later.

In north Paxton Park there were about a dozen youths. Half of them took off running when Wilkinson turned a spotlight on them. Another night they may have gotten away, but not from the swarm of officers available that night, who poured in on motorcycles through a pedestrian tunnel and chased them on foot across a football field.

The police chased because the youths ran. Once they were on their knees, chins atop a low fence, the officers looked for offenses. There were wet graffiti on a park building, and a woman from a nearby home complained that the youths had been cutting up in her yard. Away they went for vandalism and trespass.

Wilkinson checked a home where he said members of one gang often gather. Teen-agers cavorted in the driveway, listening to the radio of a parked car.

They jeered when they recognized Wilkinson’s car, a mistake.

Four patrol cars responded. Unasked, the biggest, baddest-looking dude assumed the position, hands on his head, feet spread. The others protested as they were frisked.

“Don’t you need a warrant for this?”

“Chief Gates is our warrant.”

Seven of the eight could be arrested for something, if only curfew violation. One had a drug-smoking pipe. One was on probation for three offenses, including assault on a police officer. Two girls begged to be let go, lips quivering.

“We didn’t do nothing. We’re not even from around here.”

“Where are you from?”

“North Hollywood.”

“Well, go back there.”

The officers could find no grounds to arrest the baddest-looking dude, try as they might. He stood with hands still clasped mockingly atop his head in the empty driveway as the patrol cars carried all his companions away.

Wilkinson headed off to check a carnival. The girls scuffed dejectedly up the street, heading for the bus stop by Boxer’s dismal memorial.