L.A. Gang-Related Killings Rise 39% in 1st 3 Months of Year

Homicides involving gang members jumped in Los Angeles by more than a third in the first three months of this year, up 39% over the same period last year, police officials said Monday.

In January, February and March, 78 people lost their lives in gang-related violence, compared with 56 in the first three months of 1988, Los Angeles Police Lt. Fred Nixon said. The carnage is increasing at a clip well ahead of the record of 257 gang-related homicides set last year.

Within the broad category of killings deemed “gang-related,” however, is a narrower group defined as “gang-motivated,” Nixon said. This category, which includes only homicides that can be directly attributed to gang affiliation, showed a slight drop: 32 in the first quarter of this year compared to 34 a year ago. Gang-motivated homicides totaled 140 last year.

“Gang-related means that either the suspect or the victim was affiliated with a gang,” Nixon said. “It’s a very liberal definition.

“Gang-motivated means that a person’s involvement in a gang had something to do with a given crime,” he continued.

The Police Department adopted the gang-motivated category last year to provide a “more meaningful, more precise definition,” he said.

The distinction between the two categories can be illustrated by two family members who become involved in a violent argument, Nixon said. If one belongs to a gang, and the argument results in a homicide, that killing is included in gang-related crime statistics. He emphasized, however, that membership in a gang had nothing to do with this hypothetical homicide.

“We still use both definitions, but we wanted to show as precisely as we could what was going on,” Nixon said. “That’s why we adopted gang-motivated.”

Overall homicides in Los Angeles jumped from 177 in the first quarter of last year to 203 in the first three months of 1989, Nixon said.