Gang Wars Leave 9 Dead in Northeast Area in 1991 : Crime: The Foothill Division had only eight such killings in all of last year. Experts at a forum say arrests and raids are likely to quell the violence.

As of Tuesday, this year’s body count in the longtime war on the streets of the northeast San Fernando Valley was nine, mostly casualties of rivalries among established Chicano gangs and Central American and Mexican-born newcomers, according to gang experts.

The nine gang-related homicides in 3 1/2 months in the area patrolled by the Los Angeles Police Department’s Foothill Division, surpasses that area’s total of eight for all of 1990.

Although police say the violence is likely to diminish because of a series of raids and arrests of warring gang members last month, community leaders attending a conference in Pacoima on Tuesday called the numbers alarming.

The increase comes after a relatively peaceful 1990, when anti-gang efforts by law enforcement and the community contributed to a 17% drop in gang-related incidents in the division, officials said.

The Valley as a whole has experienced 15 gang-related homicides so far this year, five more than during the same period last year, according to Detective Bill Humphrey of the Valley anti-gang squad, the Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums unit.

Much of the gang conflict in the area grows out of a traditional turf dispute between Chicano gangs in Pacoima and a Chicano gang in the city of San Fernando with barrio roots going back to the 1940s, said Capt. Tim McBride, the station commander.

An explosive new factor, however, is conflict between the Pacoima gangs and a gang based in Sun Valley and North Hollywood whose members include Mexican and Central American immigrant teen-agers, some of them hardened by civil wars in their countries, police and community gang experts said.

“Part of it is interracial rivalry and racism among Latinos,” said Manuel Velazquez, a counselor for Community Youth Gang Services who attended Tuesday’s community meeting hosted by the Boys & Girls Club of the San Fernando Valley.

The San Fernando gang reportedly joined forces with the Sun Valley gang in a small war that began when gunfire from a car killed a bystander and wounded three youths in Sun Valley in January, Velazquez said.

Four more killings ensued before the March police crackdown appeared to quiet the conflict, police said.

“Several people went to jail,” said Humphrey, who declined to name the gangs because he does not want to add to their notoriety. “The pace is definitely not going to continue.”

But last weekend in Pacoima, a drive-by shooting wounded two teen-agers at the San Fernando Gardens housing project and brought out armed gang members who prowled the housing project in case of another attack, Velazquez said. That shooting may be connected to the conflict earlier this year, he said.

“We are trying to determine what’s going to happen,” he said.

Among the speakers Tuesday was Los Angeles County Sheriff Sherman Block, who called for more programs to prevent children from falling into crime. “We must inoculate all of our young people against gang violence and drug use with the vaccine of prevention,” Block said.

Other speakers drew parallels between the urban combat and the recent U.S. military victory abroad.

“If we can win a war in the Persian Gulf, I’m sure we can win the street back in this great country,” said LeRoy Chase, executive director of the Boys & Girls Club.