Brokaw, NBC News Target Gang Wars on L.A. Streets

“Gangs, Cops & Drugs” solidifies this city’s reputation as America’s Beirut. It’s a dispiriting survey of homeboys and dead boys on the streets of Los Angeles, where routine arbitrary killings and duels of “heavy weapons to the death,” Tom Brokaw notes, have turned some neighborhoods into nightmarish war zones of terror.

Airing at 10 tonight on Channels 4, 36 and 39, it’s an arresting hour, because human conflict and tragedy inevitably draw our attention and because the threat so vividly characterized here is frighteningly real.

For residents of Los Angeles and perhaps other urban centers where innocent casualties are the terrible growing legacy of street combat, however, tonight’s “Gangs, Cops & Drugs” offers far fewer revelations than affirmations. Its message of hopelessness and scenes of chaos and bloodshed, suffering guiltless and angry perpetrators are disturbingly familiar. We’ve been through this endless dark tunnel before, in newscasts and newspapers.

NBC will take a panel-discussion approach to the same set of problems in a follow-up hour at 10 p.m. Wednesday, with Brokaw moderating a live forum linking guests in several cities. Among the participants are Portland Mayor Bud Clark, who has called in the Oregon National Guard to combat gang and drug problems.

NBC called in Brokaw.

At least it seems so at times, as he rides around with police and gets down with the locals. The camera captures the bush-jacketed “NBC Nightly News” anchorman out on the pavement of South-Central Los Angeles, under a billboard advertising malt liquor, in deep dialogue with 99th Mafia gang members El Dog, Chuckie, Rat and Bitter Child.

Bitter Child: “This is me. This is where I grew up at. This is my roots right here.”

Brokaw: “But it can be dangerous. Isn’t it?”

Bitter Child: “Livin’ is dangerous.”

It’s hard putting much stock in any conversation gang members would have out in the open on national TV, especially with someone as famous and alien to their world as Brokaw. Such are the limits of TV cameras and celebrity journalists.

What “Gangs, Cops & Drugs” does best is define the roots, complexities and growing perils of gang violence on a human level, noting that there is more to the dilemma than Crips vs. Bloods.

There are the inevitable drug busts here that make good TV. And the destructiveness of that favored street weapon, the AK-47, is demonstrated in a way not to be forgotten. Far more striking, however, are the intensely personal moments: from a teacher who operates out of a library because her classroom was vandalized, from a policeman who speaks emotionally about the plight young children who may become gang members, and from a little boy who rejects gangs as “dumb.”

Will he suffer repercussions for saying that on camera? As you watch this program, worry mingles with frustration and despair.