PERSPECTIVE ON CRIME and PUNISHMENT : LAPD Proves That Muscle Works : Contrary to popular wisdom, a show of police force can help reduce crime committed by street gangs.

Ask any criminologist about how the police fit into today’s street-gang problem and the likely answer will be that strong-arm police tactics, at best, won’t accomplish anything. Recent data shows, however, that street-gang violence is, in fact, declining in targeted areas--in some cases dramatically--and that police “crackdowns” have played a significant role in bringing this about.

Experts long believed that only certain types of crimes--robbery, burglary, auto theft, for example--can be deterred by increasing the police presence. All the police officers in the world, it was also assumed, would not appreciably lessen the incidence of drug trafficking, assault, rape or homicide. Thus, it was but a short step to the general conclusion that filling a gang-ridden area with police officers would do nothing to curb crime.

If the police were incapable of defusing the gang problem, maybe businessmen, ministers and counselors could. Yet during the time “social scientific” approaches were favored, mostly in the early ‘80s, gang membership in the city grew from about 15,000 in 1980 to an estimated 27,000 by 1988, according to the Los Angeles Police Department. Worse, gang involvement in such crimes as homicide, robbery and rape rose nearly 36%. Incredibly, roughly one of every four murders in the 1980s in Los Angeles was tied to gang activity.

By 1988, Los Angeles residents were ready to turn to the police for protection. In response, the police instituted a variety of unprecedented gang-suppression programs.

The first, “Operation Hammer,” flooded gang neighborhoods in the South Bureau (mostly South Central Los Angeles) with officers responsible for detecting, identifying and arresting suspected gang felons. Most criminologists would advise that it is precisely such aggressive tactics that can aggravate an already volatile social situation without any payoff in crime reduction. But gang-related crimes in the police-saturated neighborhoods dropped an unprecedented 36% from 1989 to 1990, according to LAPD statistics. Gang homicides fell 45%. In the two other bureaus monitored for gang activity--Central and West--gang-related crime, on average, rose 26%.

A second program, “SAFE” (Secured Area Footbeat Enforcement), deployed 60 foot-patrol officers in gang neighborhoods in the Rampart District. Before SAFE was implemented in September, 1989, one long-time LAPD veteran described the drug-trafficking problem in Rampart as so bad that “first-time visitors to the U.S. would leave their plane at LAX, and immediately get a taxi to Rampart to buy narcotics from street dealers.”

When the program ended three months later, the incidence of burglary, robbery, grand-theft auto and theft from auto was down 5%; that of homicide, rape, aggravated assault 11%. Police also learned that the likelihood of a person being murdered in the Rampart District while SAFE was in effect was reduced five-fold. These positive effects, however, lasted only a month after SAFE was ended because of budget restraints.

The third, and most innovative, LAPD anti-gang program is Operation Cul-de-Sac. It targeted the Newton Street area, where 37 drive-by shootings and more than 112 assaults with a deadly weapon had occurred in just a year’s time. Operation Cul-de-Sac called for a police presence on the ground, in the air and on horseback. In addition, warning signs that read “Narcotics Enforcement Area” were posted. Roads that could serve as easy escape routes were barricaded.

Although it is too early to determine the effect of Operation Cul-de-Sac, preliminary reports are extremely encouraging. Only one homicide has occurred in the Newton area since the program began Feb. 1. Student attendence at Jefferson High School is up 30%. And residents are forming citizen patrol groups to regain control of their neighborhoods from gangs.

Still, are these seemingly small rewards worth the investment in money and manpower? Actually, the anti-gang programs may be a bargain. The programs’ average cost per month runs at about $83,000. The average reduction in gang crime is roughly 9%. Considering that gang members collectively commit about 5,500 serious crimes a year, the cost of preventing a drive-by shooting, rape, robbery and so on is thus about $2,000. By contrast, the California Youth Authority spends nearly $30,000 annually reforming a gang member. The chances of success is one in four.

Unfortunately, the effects of aggressive policing have not been systematically studied. But the data coming out of the South Bureau suggests that strong-arm police tactics may be the first, indispenable step toward cleansing a community of gang activity. By cutting into gang-related crime, Operation Hammer opened the door for community-based groups to move in and offer alternatives to gang life. Working together, the two approaches made a dent in gang crime.