Lungren Urges Residents’ Help to End Gangs

State Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren warned Friday that gang violence is on the rise statewide and said there is little people can do to escape it.

“We are seeing an increase in the strength, mobility and influence of gangs,” Lungren said after speaking to county law enforcement officials. “The message to people is that gangs are everywhere, you cannot escape them by moving somewhere else.”

Lungren appealed to county residents to become active and cooperate with police to drive gangs out.

“It impacts all of us,” he said. “You need communities open to law enforcement.”

Lungren’s remarks came at a press conference during a meeting and awards ceremony for Orange County and Los Angeles County law enforcement personnel at the Westin South Coast Plaza hotel in Costa Mesa.

The attorney general added that police chiefs in the county are aware of the importance of sound community relations, but that the public must reciprocate.

He said the public should realize that police officers work to serve and protect and can be trusted despite recent publicity surrounding incidents of police brutality.

Publicity about police brutality “is a distortion of what the average police officer is doing out there,” he said. “Our training, our expertise and character of officer is second to none, but having said that, we can do better.”

He said that heavier emphasis on law enforcement ethics is one way to minimize brutality cases.

“In regard to training (of police officer recruits), ethics are required at the initial stage and then after that not required,” he said. He said that a police chief at the closed-door meeting suggested that ethics be stressed more thoroughly during training.

Lungren also honored four members of a narcotics lab enforcement team in Orange County, who, while concluding a surveillance operation last June, saw a car explode. They rushed to the wreckage and pulled the driver, who survived, from the flames.