Pasadena Police Plan Crackdown on Gangs : Department Assigns More Officers and Is Ready to Prosecute Under State Law on Street Terrorists

Alarmed by a sudden increase in gang violence, particularly drive-by shootings, the Police Department has assigned more officers to deal with gangs and is preparing to issue citations to gang members, warning them that they are liable for prosecution under a new state law against street terrorism.

Police say Pasadena is averaging two or three drive-by shootings a week. Sixteen persons, including six innocent bystanders, have been hit by gunfire since the beginning of the year.

Both Sides of Town

“It’s happening at both ends of town,” said Lt. Wesley A. Rice, detective section administrator. “It’s happening with our Hispanic gangs on the east end and with our black gangs on the west end.”

Rice said the city has experienced 321 assaults in which people were hurt or weapons were used in the first three months of this year, contrasted with 124 in the same period last year. He said the city did not keep track of drive-by shootings last year, so there are no comparative figures, but police are certain that the number has increased greatly this year.

The reasons for the upswing in violence are unclear.

“There are all kinds of theories floating around,” said Lt. Donn Burwell, who heads the city’s Neighborhood Crime Task Force.

Some people say gangs are at war over turf or drug sales, Burwell said. Others suggest that the Police Department’s success in sending drug dealers to jail has had the ironic effect of creating openings in the drug trade that are being fought over.

Additional Assignments

Burwell said the Neighborhood Crime Task Force, which concentrates on combating crime in Northwest Pasadena, has always put much of its effort into the area’s drug problem, but is now giving equal attention to gangs.

Four members of the task force and two detectives have been assigned to gang activities.

Burwell said that by stopping and talking to gang members, police will increase their knowledge of gangs and also put members on notice that they are being watched. Perhaps then, he said, gang members “will be more reluctant to drive around with guns.”

Burwell said the department is planning to issue legal citations to people identified as members of gangs engaged in crime. A new state law, the Street Terrorism Enforcement and Prevention Act, provides that notified gang members can be sent to jail or prison for up to three years for a number of activities, such as loaning a car or gun used in a drive-by shooting.

Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner announced last month that the Sheriff’s Department and police departments in Pasadena, Pomona, Compton, Los Angeles and Long Beach, would participate in the gang citation program, serving notice on 3,700 gang members. Under the law, Reiner said, those who are notified and later arrested could have gang membership added as an additional charge. Gang membership by itself, however, would not be a crime.

Counseling Program

In addition, the Police Department is planning to enlarge its youth peer counseling program to try to dissuade youths from joining gangs and is asking neighborhood watch groups to inform the police about gang hangouts.

Police Chief James Robenson last week asked the Pasadena Board of Directors to add eight police positions in next fiscal year’s budget as a response to the increasing violence. Mayor William E. Thomson Jr. said Robenson should have no trouble winning approval of the enlarged police force.

Thomson said the public is alarmed at the increasing violence. Not only are people firing from passing cars, he said, but pedestrians are starting to shoot back.

“This is like Jesse James and the Old West,” Thomson said.

Innocent Victim

The mayor referred to an incident May 10 when two reputed gang members fired from a car on Fair Oaks Avenue at Washington Boulevard at a man, who reportedly fired back. The only person hit by the gunfire was a 14-year-old girl, who was wounded in the shoulder as she was walking home from a store with her 5-year-old brother.

Rice said the girl had no connection to the shooters. “She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time,” he said.

Two 17-year-old boys have been arrested and charged with attempted murder.

As of last week, no one had been killed in any of the more than 40 drive-by shootings that have occurred in Pasadena since the beginning of the year.

“We’ve been very lucky,” Rice said. “Sixteen people have been shot. It’s just a matter of luck that we haven’t had that many homicides.”

Rice said the risk to innocent bystanders is arousing concern from the public.

“Ordinary, common folks living their lives the best way they know how haven’t got time to worry about gang-bangers blowing each other away,” he said. But when “innocent people start getting injured, it gets their attention.”

And it is not just drive-by shootings that are touching outsiders with gang violence, Rice said.

Restaurant Shooting

Two months ago, he said, an 18-year-old Altadena youth was sitting in a car eating a hamburger across from a food stand on Foothill Boulevard in Pasadena. Two gang members came walking along shouting their gang name. The 18-year-old was not a gang member, but he yelled something in reply. One of the gang members came over to the car and shot the young man to death.

“It was just that cold,” Rice said. Two teen-age gang members have been arrested in connection with the murder.

Rice said that although gang violence seems to be hitting Pasadena especially hard now, the city is no worse off than many other communities in Los Angeles County.

He said Pasadena thus far has been spared some of the problems other cities are facing with assault rifles. The drive-by shootings have involved only handguns or shotguns.

And the number of homicides in the city this year totaled only six as of last week, about half the total at the same time last year.

Burwell said he sometimes tell his officers that things could be worse. “I think we should be grateful that they (gang members) don’t take target practice,” he said.

IRA REINER

DISTRICT ATTORNEY

210 West Temple Street

Los Angeles, California 90012

(213) 974-3904

IN RE: THE MATTER OF

GANG

TO: MEMBERS OF THE GANG AND ,

YOU ARE HEREBY NOTIFIED that the GANG is a criminal street gang engaging in a pattern of criminal street gang activity within the meaning of Penal Code Section 186.22. The gang has demonstrated this pattern by participating in the commission, attempted commission or solicitation of two or more crimes involving the offenses of

1) Assault with a deadly weapon, 2) Robbery, 3) Homicide or manslaughter, 4) Sale or possession for sale of narcotics and controlled substances, 5) Shooting into an inhabited dwelling or vehicle, 6) Arson, and 7) Witness intimidation with one or more of the offenses occurring after September 24, 1988, and the last of those offenses within three years after a prior offense.

YOU ARE FOR THIS REASON FURTHER NOTIFIED THAT ACTIVE PARTICIPATION IN A CRIMINAL STREET GANG COULD SUBJECT YOU TO IMPRISONMENT IN THE STATE PRISON FOR A PERIOD OF UP TO THREE YEARS PURSUANT TO THE STREET TERRORISM ENFORCEMENT ACT OF 1988.

DATED:

IRA REINER

District Attorney of

Los Angeles

NOTICE OF DETERMINATION

THAT GANG IS A CRIMINAL STREET

GANG WITHIN THE MEANING OF PENAL CODE SECTION 186.22

STREET TERRORISM ENFORCEMENT ACT

ELEMENTS OF THE OFFENSE

PENAL CODE SECTION 186.22(a)

1. Any person

2. who actively participates

3. in a criminal street gang

4. with knowledge that the gang’s members engage in or have engaged in a pattern of criminal gang activity

and

5. who willfully promotes, furthers or assists in any felonious criminal conduct by members of that gang

shall be punished by imprisonment in the county jail for a period not to exceed one year or in state prison for one, two or three years.