Gangs Shed Loyalty in Drug Trade’s Spread

The Los Angeles gangs responsible for exporting cocaine to dozens of American cities in the last two years are not rank-and-file Blood or Crip street gangs but newer “instrumental” gangs, made up of older members whose loyalty is neither to a particular neighborhood or gang color but to making money, a top Los Angeles Police Department official said Friday.

Lorne Kramer, commander of the department’s Bureau of Special Investigations, told a national seminar on youth gangs here that Los Angeles gang investigators have identified 20 to 25 of these “instrumental” gangs, so named because they act as instruments between drug suppliers and street dealers in other cities.

Police in more than 40 American cities have reported that knots of Los Angeles gang members have come to their areas to sell cocaine, often undercutting the price offered by local dealers and in many cases using violence to stake their claim to new drug turf.

A Paradox

The common perception of Los Angeles County’s estimated 25,000 black gang members, as portrayed in the news media and movies, is that they fall into one category--”drug gangs.” But the fact that hundreds of gang members have cropped up dealing cocaine in so many different cities has created a paradox: How could the same kind of wild teen-agers who behaved so irrationally on the streets of Los Angeles simultaneously engage in methodical drug marketing business extending to far-flung cities?

The answer, Kramer told the seminar of about 160 police officials, prosecutors, judges and probation officers Friday, is that usually they are not the same kind of people.

Los Angeles County’s black gangs are broken into about 260 “sets” averaging about 100 members each, the majority in their teens. Each set claims a Blood or Crip affiliation but rarely coalesces with another set. Even between rival Crip sets, violence is common.

The instrumental gangs tend to have fewer members, and the members of these gangs tend to be older, in their early or mid-20s. Typically they have grown up as hard-core gang members and now want more money and power than their relatively small set will allow them.

Membership in instrumental gangs is not restricted to a particular set, nor are these gangs all-Blood or all-Crip, Kramer said in an interview.

“In a case in which we had Los Angeles gang members selling (cocaine) in the northwestern United States, one of these groups had a Blood from Compton and several Crips from South Los Angeles who had come together,” Kramer said. “They have crossed set boundaries and Blood-Crip boundaries.”

‘Bottom Line’

Members of instrumental gangs tend to be lumped in with traditional gang members because in attempting to intimidate rival drug dealers or seduce younger clients in other cities, they often use the name of their original Los Angeles Blood or Crip affiliation.

“The bottom line is selling the stuff,” Seattle Police Officer Dan Fordyce said in an interview last year. “If it means working with one another, they’ll do that. If it means shooting at one another, they’ll do that.”

Seattle recorded five gang-related murders in 1987 and two in the first half of 1988. In one six-month period, Sacramento arrested 77 known gang members from Los Angeles.

In Portland, Ore., on Thursday, a Compton gang member who authorities said operated five lucrative crack cocaine houses in that city pleaded guilty to charges of possessing and selling cocaine and marijuana. Mario Lewis, 19, who police said is a member of the Campanella Park Pirus, a Bloods gang, faces up to 80 years in prison and $4 million in fines.

In another case last May, police arrested Michael Ray Ector, 25, identified by authorities as a longtime associate of a West Los Angeles Crips gang, after finding him in a South Los Angeles house with bags of cocaine containing 132 pounds of the drug and a next-day’s airline ticket for Memphis. Police said the cocaine was the largest amount ever taken from known gang members or associates. Ector was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison earlier this week.

The instrumental gangs are taking advantage of the fact that cocaine is selling for far higher prices outside Los Angeles--as much as $1,500 an ounce elsewhere, compared to as little as $300 an ounce here. The gangs penetrate other cities by initially offering to “double down,” offering street dealers twice as much cocaine per dollar, Kramer said.

The symposium, sponsored by the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention and the National District Attorneys Assn., indicated that law enforcement is moving toward a more sophisticated understanding of street gangs, making increasing distinctions between types of gangs and the differing level of involvement of individual gang members and also acknowledging that police crackdowns alone cannot solve the problem.

Kramer noted that funding for social programs that offer children alternatives to gang membership have been cut over the years while money for law enforcement efforts has increased. This ignores the fact that many children in poor neighborhoods begin to associate with gangs out of “a sense of spiritual poverty,” he said.

“We can no longer afford to assume that putting more gang members in jail will solve the problem,” he said. “Prevention and diversion are as important as law enforcement.”

Another speaker, Michael Frazier, commander of the Phoenix Police Department’s community relations bureau, added: “The gang problem is everybody’s problem. If you think it’s just a police problem, you’re very short-sighted.”

Earlier this week, Gov. George Deukmejian’s task force on gangs issued 100 recommendations, many proposing dramatically tougher criminal statutes but several aimed at stronger gang-prevention programs. Recommendations included requiring public schools to teach gang and drug prevention programs, expanding after-school, weekend and summer youth programs to appeal to youths in the 10-18 age range, testing children in primary grades to determine psychological or physiological learning disabilities and encouraging businesses to develop training programs and work experience opportunities for youths, targeting gang members and potential gang members.

Keynote Address

In a keynote address to the gang seminar Thursday night, Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner said the criminal justice system needs to pay more attention to young offenders before they join gangs. Repeating themes he previously stated when sworn into office for a second term last year and when he announced his intention to run for state attorney general last week, Reiner said the juvenile justice system spends too much time trying to rehabilitate already hardened criminals.