Drugs Not Main Cause for Gangs, Sheriff Says : Crime: Block says it’s a misconception that narcotics sales are the biggest reason for street violence. He tells of need to focus on self-worth and self-esteem.

The misconception that the drug trade is the chief motivator for gang violence has hobbled efforts to solve an expanding problem that is killing more people across Los Angeles County every year, Sheriff Sherman Block told a gathering of 600 educators in Downey on Wednesday.

The acknowledgment, echoed by numerous gang authorities at a gang symposium sponsored by the county Office of Education, represents a public departure from statements made by some law enforcement officials and politicians since Los Angeles’ gang problems became a national story two years ago.

“The cause for the majority of the violence is pure and simple: fascination and excitement, coupled with deep-seated hatred of one gang for another,” Block said.

Although drug sales often constitute the means by which street thugs finance vehicles and sophisticated weaponry, Block said, “the time has come for the newly enlightened in our community to start looking at the gang situation realistically.

“To effectively compete with gangs for the hearts, minds and bodies of potential gang members,” Block said, “we must focus on enhancing their self-worth and self-esteem so that they do not seek out and need the gang to satisfy these most basic human needs.”

It is an attitude somewhat at variance with thinking among some law enforcement officials and politicians.

As the spread of crack cocaine has ravaged neighborhood after neighborhood, police have routinely blamed most gang problems on drugs. Leading the assault against the so-called “gang-drug tie-in” has been Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates, who once said local gangs had turned into “significant organized crime units” perfectly structured to be drug distribution networks.

This theory, widely repeated in local and national news reports, holds that drive-by shootings and other attacks grew out of competition between street gangs for drug-selling turf or new markets.

However, “the general impression put forth by the media today that gangs are fighting each other primarily over drug dealing turf is really an oversimplification of the problem,” Block said. “Street gangs are really mortal enemies and will not hesitate to kill each other on sight whether drugs are an issue or not.”

County Juvenile Court Judge Jaime Corral agreed, saying, “It is too easy to say that drugs are fostering this gang violence. . . . It’s a cop-out.”

“Gangs were here long before drugs,” added Sheriff’s Capt. Raymond Gott, who attended the symposium, “and if we excluded the drug problem today, the hatred of one gang for another would still be there.”

Many gang members and community-based organizations have long derided the notion that gang violence is directly related to the drug trade. In fact, they said, the two problems, while connected, were often separate.

Much of the gang killing, they said, grew out of longtime rivalries shaped by the simple intrusion of one gang member into another’s territory. An endless cycle of “payback” attacks, motivated by nothing more than revenge, ensued.

Meanwhile, dozens of gangs composed primarily of older members who cared more about money than turf rivalries took their entrepreneurial skills and access to rock cocaine across the country. Los Angeles gang members showing up in cities from Seattle to Boston seemed to suggest that Los Angeles-based gangs were highly organized, almost “Mafia-like” drug dealing operations, gang authorities said.

Gates could not be reached for comment. But Police Cmdr. William Booth insisted that “drugs in our view are a major factor” in gang violence.

Police figures show that 55% of homicides are drug-related, “directly or indirectly,” said Booth, and 38% of homicides are gang-related. “We think there is crossover there.”

Steve Valdivia, executive director of Community Youth Gang Services, however, argued, “The simple answer is to say these people use drugs.”

“Gangs are everywhere now, but they started in areas of high unemployment and welfare, poor schools and deteriorating neighborhoods,” Valdivia said. “Add to that a government that did not address those issues, a government that saw it as a minority problem and not ‘our problem,’ meaning a white problem.”