Study Tightly Links Gangs to Trafficking in Cocaine

State Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp on Monday released a report that strongly links black street gangs to rock cocaine trafficking and asserts that the Los Angeles-based gangs are evolving into sophisticated networks that value profit-making above traditional neighborhood and group loyalties.

The report, authored by Jerome H. Skolnick at the Center for the Study of Law and Society at UC Berkeley, bolsters the claims of law enforcement officials. It contradicts a report published in September by two USC sociologists who found that only 25% of all cocaine arrests in Los Angeles during 1984 and 1985 involved gang members.

“Our concern is that the first report minimizes the connection between gangs and drugs. . . . We believe gangs are very important in the drug trafficking business,” Van de Kamp said.

He made his comments in Ventura at the California Peace Officer’s Assn. annual training conference, and said the violence inflicted by drug-dealing gangs is “not unlike the deadly mob power struggles that we associate with the Prohibition era.”

81 Interviews

Law enforcement officials say the Skolnick study, based on 81 interviews conducted in the summer, reflects the drug-gang connection more accurately than the USC study, which looked at 741 cocaine arrests in 1984 and 1985 and was authored by Malcolm W. Klein and Cheryl L. Maxson.

“What has happened since that time definitely confirms the attorney general’s report,” said Lorne Kramer, assistant commanding officer of the Los Angeles Police Department’s gang-drug section. “There’s absolutely no question that street gangs have made a metamorphosis into drug dealing.”

USC’s Klein said he was not surprised that Skolnick’s findings differed from his. “I would expect discrepancies. There are different categories of dealers. We were dealing with low-level street dealers, and all our data are from arrests,” he said.

The Skolnick report was based on interviews with inmates in state prisons and the California Youth Authority, police officers and narcotics agents. In contrast to the USC report, which quantified gang-related drug deals, Skolnick’s report lacked figures or percentages to support its conclusions.

Instead, Skolnick relied on his interviews to describe gangs. He found that while Latino gangs are cultural organizations that go back generations and have deep community roots, “black gangs seem more individualistic, less hierarchical and more economically motivated.”

Skolnick also found that gang members are less likely to be arrested than individual drug dealers because of their elaborate network of lookouts, runners and houses, which he said may account for their low showing in the USC statistics. In addition, some gang members arrested for drug dealing may successfully conceal their gang affiliation. Law enforcement officials have identified only 50% to 60% of the estimated 70,000 members of 646 gangs in Los Angeles County.