A Step Toward Gang Peace

Although the summit meeting among Los Angeles gang members produced no truce between the warring Bloods and Crips street gangs, the gatherings did allow sworn enemies to meet without a barrage of bullets. That alone may be an important step.

The summit may not stop the gang killings or the drive-by shootings this weekend, but the Rev. Carl Mims Jr. and other organizing ministers deserve credit for persuading 12 young men to put aside violence and venom for three days in Carson. Handshakes may not produce cease-fires, but they could produce more handshakes.

The war rages in Southern California and increasingly in cities across the state and nation. In Los Angeles County, 40,000 black teen-agers and men swear allegiance to factions of the two major street gangs. Some belong simply for friendship and protection; others join to sell drugs and commit vicious crimes.

Bloods and Crips kill each other along with members of other gangs and bystanders who may innocently choose to wear jackets of forbidden colors or who just happen to be in the path of a bullet. Their battle zones know few boundaries. Children have been shot in playground sand boxes, on school campuses, on public buses and at home. Parents and grandparents have died on their way to work or to a hamburger stand, on walks and in living rooms. The county death toll for the year, through June, stands at 174.

Drug dealing has attracted federal attention. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration will expand its local staff and join with local agencies in a task force to focus on the leaders and suppliers of gang-related drug trafficking. Successful federal intervention should result in quicker trials and longer sentences. With federal agents joining local law enforcement, the drug sales, easy profits and violence may drop, but the gang crisis will go on.

More jobs could help. According to several of the gang members who participated in the recent summit, gang violence often breeds in neighborhoods where young men sit around with nothing to do, getting drunk and looking for trouble. Steady work certainly could help change the pattern.

Community courage must also be part of any remedy. The managers of the Carson Ramada Inn certainly deserve credit for allowing the summit to take place there, for allowing the ministers who organized the meetings and the gang members who put aside their rivalries to try to find peace.