BRACING FOR THE PAYBACK : Police Fear New Round of Gang-Related Bloodshed

The car cruised through a dimly lit north Pomona neighborhood known as “the Islands” on a recent Sunday night. A young gang member aimed a semi-automatic military assault rifle through an open window and pulled the trigger.

By the time the shooting stopped, five people had been injured and a sixth, 19-year-old Guadalupe Carrillo Garcia, was dead from a bullet wound to the stomach. Police don’t believe that any of the victims were gang members. They were just unlucky enough to be on the streets when a gang from elsewhere in the city came to settle a score.

The night before, Charles Bradford Thomas, 30, a suspected gang member, was killed in a drive-by shooting as he stood on the street in a northwest Pomona neighborhood known as “Sintown.” Police said the shooting was apparently the result of a dispute between two rival gangs over drug-dealing territory.

A 17-year-old suspected gang member, whose name was not released because of his age, was arrested on suspicion of murder in connection with the retaliatory shooting spree. Police said they have not identified any suspects in the shooting that triggered the violence.

Bloods or Crips

Police refused to name the gangs involved because they did not want to glorify their exploits. However, they said most black gangs are affiliated with either the Bloods or Crips, two Los Angeles-based gangs marked by their display of the colors red or blue, their involvement in the drug trade, and their violent antipathy for each other.

According to residents of northern Pomona, the Islands belong to a gang affiliated with the Bloods, while Sintown is Crips territory. And either neighborhood can be the site of bloodshed at anytime.

Both areas have been relatively peaceful since the shooting spree on Jan. 22, but police and residents are bracing for the next round of confrontations and pay-backs.

“It’s been quiet since then,” said Sgt. Gary Elofson, who heads the Pomona Police Department’s Crimes Against Persons Unit. “We don’t expect it to stay that way.”

Last month’s shootings started the year off ominously in Pomona, which had only two homicides involving black street gangs last year. Police are reluctant to describe the incidents as symptomatic of increased activity by gangs affiliated with Bloods and Crips, but others who monitor youth crime in the city are not.

“It’s really gotten out of hand,” said Joe Barbosa, a deputy probation officer with the Los Angeles County Probation Department. “They’re more aggressive right now, the Crips in particular. I have a lot of juveniles, a lot of Crips, getting busted left and right. A lot of it has to do with the dealing of crack cocaine.”

In areas where Bloods and Crips are active, residents have grown accustomed to the sound of gunfire and routinely keep children indoors when they hear rumors of an incident brewing.

“When I hear shooting, I stay in the house,” said a resident of the Islands who asked not to be quoted by name.

“What’s making it worse is all these drugs and (the gangs) trying to take over each other’s territories. . . . Don’t print my name in the newspaper. I don’t want nobody shooting us up.”

Unlike the Latino gangs that have waged turf wars in Pomona for decades, gangs in predominantly black areas are less prone to territorial violence. Instead, they are more likely to be fighting for a share of the market in the booming crack cocaine trade, police said.

And while police, working in conjunction with Catholic churches, have had some success in cooling tensions among Latino gangs through summit meetings, no such avenue to peace exists with black gangs.

‘More Traditional Gangs’

“The Hispanic gangs are the more traditional gangs, protective of turf and territory,” said Police Chief Richard Tefank. “The black gangs are also protective of turf and territory, but mainly as it relates to areas in which they sell drugs.”

The intense rivalry among drug traffickers has been exacerbated, police said, by the easy availability of semi-automatic assault rifles. Originally designed for use by the armies of the United States, Israel and the Soviet Union, the rifles have become the weapons of choice in street warfare.

“The thing that makes this violence so much more critical to a community is the weaponry that these people, who have no regard for human life, have access to,” Tefank said. “The last incident was tragic because it was an example of the firepower these individuals possess as they drive through a neighborhood.”

In light of a shooting incident last month in which a gunman fired into a crowded playground at a Stockton elementary school with an AK-47 assault rifle, killing several children, bills have been introduced in the state Legislature to restrict the sale of such weapons or ban them outright.

The Pomona City Council has drafted resolutions urging the Legislature to prohibit semi-automatic rifles and asking members of Congress to cut off foreign aid to countries in which illegal drugs are produced. However, not everyone on the council approves of a ban on assault rifles.

“I’m against that,” said Councilman C. L. (Clay) Bryant. “It’s like the (National Rifle Assn.) says: ‘Guns don’t kill people--people kill people.’ . . . The bad guys love to see the good guys being disarmed.”

Weapons Ban

Tefank argued that a ban of such weapons is a crucial first step toward controlling gang violence in Pomona.

“The ridiculousness of letting someone purchase a weapon like that across the counter immediately needs to be addressed,” Tefank said. “Then, simply the mere possession of the weapon would be an arrestable offense. You wouldn’t have to wait for someone to use it.”

But until--or if--the Legislature takes action, the weapons are readily available at gun stores. Purchasers may take assault rifles home immediately, unlike handguns, for which there is a 15-day waiting period during which authorities check the buyer’s background. And police fear some of those customers are gang members.

“It definitely makes us out-gunned,” Elofson said.

Pomona police are also overmatched. There are an estimated 1,300 gang members in the city, but the police force has only 152 sworn officers, Tefank said. Because of budget constraints, the department has increased its size by eight officers over the last 10 years. During the same time, Pomona’s population jumped from 85,000 to 119,000.

Arrest Rate Rising

Last year, Pomona police arrested 9,672 people, an increase of 26.4% over the number arrested in 1987. More than 30% of those arrests were related to gang activity or drug dealing. Police said 135 gang members were arrested for drug-related offenses last year. Arrests of juvenile offenders suspected of felonies rose 61%.

Police last weekend mounted an intensive “sweep” in an attempt to stifle gang activity in north Pomona. Officers in the department’s Major Crimes Task Force arrested 30 suspected gang members for offenses ranging from parole violation, which can include simply associating with gang members or sporting gang colors, to drug dealing and gun possession.

“The pressure’s going to continue,” said Lt. Charles Heilman, one of two detectives specializing in gang activity. “One of (the gangs’) primary functions is cocaine dealing, and the more heat we put on them, the more difficult it is for them to sell their drugs.”

Tefank has asked the City Council for funds to hire an additional 25 sworn officers and 10 “paraprofessional” officers who would fill out accident reports and perform other routine duties to free police to spend more time on the street.

However, City Administrator A. J. Wilson has advised the City Council that the expansion, with an expected cost of more than $1.4 million a year, is not feasible given Pomona’s lean budget. Wilson had suggested that the council could add some officers if it delayed a cut in the city’s unpopular 11% payroll tax, but the council declined to take this politically dangerous step.

Smith said that in light of the most recent spate of shootings, council members may now have to “bite the bullet” and take whatever measures are necessary to provide more police. But, she said, even a major increase in the number of officers would not bring gang violence to an end.

Solution Is Education

“We could put 30, 40, 50 more officers on the street and throw a lot of money at the problem and still not stop it,” Smith said. “The problem is larger than Pomona.”

Tefank agrees.

“More officers are part of the solution, but the reality is you can’t have officers everywhere 24 hours a day,” he said. “The long-term solution is education for the young people not to be involved in gangs and a job level where they won’t have to get involved with drug-dealing.”

City officials and community leaders agree that education and economics are at the root of the city’s gang and drug problems.

Gang members are often dropouts or poor students who are unqualified to work at anything but minimum-wage jobs. They are attracted to gang life by the easy money to be made selling crack.

“As long as they’re making $500 a day dealing drugs, there’s no way they’re going to take a $3.65-an-hour job,” Bryant said, repeating a truism. “There has to be more in life for them than standing on the streets dealing drugs. That’s a hell of an environment. And we’re providing that kind of environment.”

Smith said the city is working with civic organizations to provide recreation programs for younger teen-agers and is receiving help from local companies to give gang members job skills and opportunities.

‘Out of Gangs, Into Jobs’

“We’re trying to get these people out of gangs and into jobs,” she said. “We’re trying to show people that belonging to a gang is not glamorous, and if you get involved in that way of life, you’re going to pay the consequences.”

Willie White, outreach director for the Pomona YMCA, is among those who must try to persuade gang members to give up their lucrative but dangerous life styles. The proliferation of single-parent households subsisting on welfare and the dearth of job opportunities make that task all the more difficult.

“Some of the kids are supporting their families by selling drugs,” White said. “I don’t blame the kids for a lot these things. I blame the parents, I blame the elected officials and I blame the educators. Until our leaders make up their minds that they really want to do something about these drugs and weapons, we’re still going to have them.”

The task of correcting large-scale social problems of poverty and poor education, like efforts to stem the flow of drugs and arms, seem beyond the scope of community organizations, city councils and local law enforcement.

‘Fighting for Our Lives’

“As cities, we’re fighting for our lives and we’re just not getting the help and support from the higher levels of government,” Smith said. “We cannot do it alone.”

Until the answer to the gang dilemma is found, White will keep trying his sales pitch on the jaded teen-agers who earn their livelihoods while risking death on the streets of north Pomona.

Said White: “A lot of these young people try to tell me how well they’re doing and how much money they’ve got in their pockets. I turn around and tell them: ‘The guy who’s taken the minimum-wage job may be struggling, but at least he doesn’t have to look over his shoulder every time he hears a car backfire. A lot of people in your line of work don’t live past 35.’ ”