Orange County Can Step In to Diminish Gang Violence

Our neighbors down in Orange County were stunned this month by the worst incident of gang violence in their history. That’s sad--but not surprising.

Most residents of Orange County like to think of their coastal enclave as a prosperous, conservative paradise that epitomizes all that is good about life in Southern California, without all the big-city problems that plague Los Angeles. But anyone who looks hard enough will notice the signs of festering social problems there. In the case of youth gangs, it’s as clear as the graffiti on walls all over towns like Santa Ana and Garden Grove.

Those were the two cities affected on Sept. 16 when rival Latino gangs played out the latest act in an old blood feud. According to police, a carload of gang members believed to be from Santa Ana drove down La Bonita Street in Garden Grove, firing automatic weapons at the home of a family whose sons belong to a rival gang. The young man police think was their target, Miguel Lorenzo Navarro, 17, was killed. So was 4-year-old Frank Fernandez. Six other people, including two women and another child, were wounded in the fusillade.

In Los Angeles County, where even the use of automatic weapons by street gangs has become routine, the only thing that might have set this incident apart was the fact that innocent people were caught in the cross fire. But because it happened in Orange County, the incident is getting more than the usual attention from the news media.

And while that may be bad for Orange County’s image, it is good for the people down there who have known all along about the area’s gangs and have been working to draw young people away from that self-destructive life style. They are now trying to convince the county’s movers and shakers to pay more attention to the problem.

Unfortunately, so far the reaction to the shootings has been predictable and lacking in creativity. Police in Santa Ana and Garden Grove pledged to cooperate in tracking down the gunmen and heading off retaliatory attacks. That may work, for a while. But eventually the police will have to focus their attention on other problems, and the feud will flare up again as soon as somebody gets angry enough to launch a “pay-back” strike.

Orange County officials must be careful not to confuse the Chicano street gangs that were involved in the Sept. 16 incident with the drug gangs that have caused the worst violence in Los Angeles. We have a tougher problem up here because the profits that can be made selling cocaine have given gangs something more valuable than turf to fight over.

Orange County’s Latino gangs may be easier to control. Often forgotten in the overwhelming news coverage devoted to gang violence in Los Angeles is the fact that the number of gang killings on the city’s Eastside have dropped dramatically in recent years. It was common to have 20 or more killings every year just in the Maravilla section of East Los Angeles during the 1970s, for example. In 1986, there were only four gang-related homicides there. In 1987, there were two, and none in 1988. So far this year the number is four, troubling but still better than it was in the old days.

The reason for this encouraging trend is that Los Angeles County and city officials got their act together in the early ‘80s, with some prodding from the Latino community, and came up with a coordinated strategy that tries not to eliminate the gangs (perhaps impossible) but to contain the damage they do.

Of course, a firm police response is part of the strategy. Any honest gang counselor will tell you that at the center of every gang is a hard core of troublemakers. Get these losers off the street and you reduce the odds that other members of the clique will cause trouble.

It’s the other half of the strategy that’s controversial, but seems to have worked in East Los Angeles. On an experimental basis, county officials gave money to a Community Youth Gang Services Project to train former gang members in crisis-intervention techniques. These gang workers were then sent back to their old neighborhoods to use their street smarts to help stop violence before it happens.

It looks as if Orange County’s problem is similar to that in Los Angeles’ barrios. Gangs are traditional, fighting over turf and macho pride rather than drugs or money. To get young people away from these gangs, make sure they survive long enough to mature a little. Once they do, they’ll find other interests--a girlfriend, a car, maybe a job. (if they get really lucky). Then they pull away from the gang.

The Youth Gang Services Project has given a few more Latino kids a chance to survive simply by reducing the level of violence in their barrios. Not all the violence has been stopped, to be sure, but some potential gang wars have been nipped in the bud. And that is something to be hopeful about in an otherwise bleak scenario. If community leaders in Orange County put aside their “We’re not L.A.” attitude long enough to replicate the gang services experiment, it might work for them, too.