Police Use a Wide Broom : LAPD’s war on gangs and drugs has shifted emphasis, concentrating on South-Central L.A., with mixed reactions from residents.

Patrick Hill had just emerged from a South-Central Los Angeles liquor store with a soft drink in his hand when he spotted an old acquaintance on the corner.

No sooner did he stop to shake hands, the former teacher’s aide said, than two police officers swooped in, suspicious that he was more interested in buying coke than in sipping his 7-Up.

He was searched and warned against hanging out at a spot where street gang members frequently sell drugs. When it was over, Hill, 24, said he was of two minds about what had happened.

“They were harassing me, but they did their job, I suppose,” Hill said the day after the incident last week.

“It bothers me in a sense, but this way I know they’re out there trying to do some good, so I accept it,” he said.

Range of Emotions

Hill’s ambivalent reaction appears to encompass the wide range of emotions among South Los Angeles residents concerning the LAPD’s continuing crackdown against street gang violence and drug dealing.

Since late February, task forces made up of 150 to 1,000 officers have engaged in 11 highly publicized anti-gang sweeps, resulting in 3,879 arrests citywide, roughly 60% of them gang members. For the last two weeks, the LAPD has shifted its emphasis, instituting a nightly 160-officer anti-gang unit concentrating solely on South Los Angeles neighborhoods from the Santa Monica Freeway south to the harbor, the city’s hotbed of gang violence.

Residents interviewed in recent days overwhelmingly declared that the crackdown has resulted in a slowdown of gang activities, at least on the surface.

“We don’t hardly see them hanging out on the corners like they were,” said Alice Harris, a longtime Watts community activist. “Now we see more or less the winos hanging out . . . not the young ones.”

“The majority of gangs here are more quiet,” agreed Gary Quincy, 32, a construction worker. “They are wearing less blue and red (traditional colors of the rival Crips and Blood gangs); they’re wearing black and brown now. And they’re moving to different areas until everything dies down.”

Yet, while many residents praise police for the show of force, most quickly add that they feel no safer from the unceasing specter of random drive-by shootings and other gang-related violence.

“I just watch myself and prepare to duck any minute, day or night, even in this shopping center,” said Charles Marquez, 45, a city redevelopment loan officer, as he stood one sunny recent afternoon in the open-air Martin Luther King Shopping Center in Watts.

“The benign neglect is being peeled away at least,” said Father Paul Banet of St. Brigid’s Roman Catholic Church on Western Avenue. “It makes you feel like there’s something happening, but in reality nothing has really changed. . . . The noise of the pistols and rifles and machine guns is picking up again. . . . Sometimes you hear it all night.”

‘Jacking Up’

Many also question the efficacy and impact of police “jacking up” (stopping and searching) large numbers of black youths not affiliated with gangs, because of their age or the way they dress.

During the first week of operations, the newest anti-gang task force conducted 2,466 formal “field interviews,” putting names, addresses and gang membership--if any--on file cards. More than 1,000 of those approached were found not to be affiliated with street gangs, police statistics reveal.

“They’re not sweeping up too many people, but the wrong people,” said Del Young, 17, a Jordan High School student sporting an anti-gang button on his gym shorts. “Somebody can be walking home and get picked up even when they have their school books in their hands.”

Or while going home from church. Lakeisha Morgan, 16, a Crenshaw High School junior, said she was still wearing her church clothes a couple of Sundays ago when “they jacked me up while I was standing in front of my house talking to a friend.”

‘What to Do . . . ‘

By now, police questioning of youngsters on the streets of South Los Angeles has become so routine that the Los Angeles Sentinel, which circulates primarily in black neighborhoods, last month published what amounted to a newfangled etiquette feature on its “Young Ideas” page headlined, “What to Do When Approached by Cops.”

Noting that police “are really the good guys,” the story instructed teen-agers: “When a police officer approaches you, keep your hands in sight, do not speak rudely or talk back. . . . And, above all, listen attentively and always be honest and respectful.”

Some, such as Hill, say they have come to take such police stops in stride because “something has to be done.” During a mid-morning interview outside Crenshaw High School, Hill shifted his head back and forth--as if he were at a tennis match--at the sound of each car passing. “You never know about drive-bys,” he said, “so that’s the way it is.”

But others, such as Los Angeles NAACP President Raymond L. Johnson Jr., are outraged by the nature of the police response. By mid-April, his organization had received more than 100 harassment complaints, three times as many as last year.

‘A Blank Check’

Police “feel they just have a blank check,” Johnson said. “And they don’t know what they are doing.

“Not only innocent individuals but gang members themselves . . . have constitutional rights that must be protected,” Johnson said.

Since he instituted the sweeps, Police Chief Daryl F. Gates has been brutally frank about his intent.

While acknowledging that beefed-up federal drug enforcement and social reforms are needed as long-range solutions, Gates has repeatedly insisted that he will do whatever it takes to keep the heat on gang members, whom he refers to as “rotten little cowards.”

Indeed, on a recent Sunday morning TV interview program, the chief went so far as to conclude of the massive sweeps: “I think people believe that the only strategy we have is to put a lot of police officers on the street and harass people and make arrests for inconsequential kinds of things. That’s part of the strategy, no question about it.”

Impact on Killings

So far, the crackdown appears to have slowed a horrifying increase in gang-related murders in South Los Angeles. Last year, police reported 22 such homicides through May 4. This year, 26 had already occurred when the sweeps began in late February. Since then, 16 more homicides have been reported.

The latest police effort, funded through June, is designed as a specialized follow-up to the sweeps, which will continue to take place occasionally.

“We had the highly visible task force operation to send a message to either get out of crime or get out of Los Angeles. We threw out a big net,” Deputy Chief Bill Rathburn said. “Now we’re out there every night, focusing on specific gangs.”

By employing officers already familiar with the streets of the South-Central area, Rathburn aims to arrest and jail hard-core gang members for substantial periods. The all-encompassing sweeps, to the contrary, have been criticized in some quarters for resulting in few felony arrests and prosecutions.

Singular Agreement

Rathburn conceded, “We can’t solve the gang problem in a week, a month or maybe even a year.”

That is probably the only issue on which the LAPD and the street gangs agree.

As members of the 160-officer anti-gang unit filed into the Jordan High School auditorium for a roll call recently, a Grape Street Watts Crips gang member who identified himself as “Mr. Dracc” strolled through the schoolyard a mere 50 feet away, his clothes virtually dripping with such gang accouterments as colored shoelaces and a beeper.

Asked if the gang crackdown has proven effective, “Mr. Dracc” replied, “I don’t think nothing is changing; it’s getting worser.” Asked if he was concerned that he might be stopped for questioning because of his garb, he answered with a grin, “That’s life.”

Avoiding Police

Other gang members said they have simply avoided the police by staying indoors or spending weekends at the homes of relatives or friends outside the neighborhood.

Standing outside Jordan High School, a block east of the impoverished Jordan Downs housing project, members of the Grape Street gang stubbornly insisted that even if police arrest them, they will not change their outlook.

“Gangs are going to never die out,” said a 16-year-old who identified himself as “Little Reg.” “That’s the way of life.”

“You all going to get us jobs?” the 10th-grader asked mockingly. He said he has been arrested for dealing cocaine but never served time.

“If we ain’t got no gangs, we ain’t got no fun,” said a 17-year-old with the gang moniker “Termite Loc.” “Everybody got a recreation. Don’t you play tennis? Racquetball? Basketball?”

Termite Loc drew an analogy to an arcade game to explain his own more deadly recreation.

“We play Space Invaders with (rival gangs),” he said.