Meeting Discusses Stampede by Youths

Activists, police, educators and church leaders met in the Crenshaw district Friday to devise a strategy to prevent incidents similar to one this week in which scores of teen-agers stormed the Crenshaw-Baldwin Hills Plaza, frightening shoppers and starting a stampede by other youngsters inside.

Most of about 50 people who attended the meeting at the office of state Sen. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles) agreed that the lack of recreational activities for young people in the area around the mall contributed to the incident.

They vowed to create programs that will keep teen-agers under greater adult supervision. Among the suggestions offered were establishing recreation or entertainment for teen-agers at the mall and working with area businesses to create jobs for the youths.

The Rev. Cecil (Chip) Murray, pastor of First African Methodist Church, promised to send hundreds of adult role models into nearby Leimert Park, which has become a hangout for large groups of youngsters who have been blamed for an increase in graffiti in the area--especially on city buses--and other crimes.

The tiny park has no organized recreation program, and the mostly middle-class area around it has no movie theaters, no recreation centers and no regularly organized sports programs outside of schools.

“The concern goes beyond the plaza,” Watson said of the mall. “We see children on Crenshaw (Boulevard) and on side streets with nothing to do and no adult supervision.”

Omar Pitts, 17, who hangs out at Leimert Park and who came to the meeting, said many youths in the area travel in numbers as protection against gangs. As a result, he said, police and others mistake them for gangs and “harass us.”

Later, at Leimert Park, he and friends said they will take a wait-and-see attitude about Watson’s efforts. The group she brought together Friday has scheduled a workshop to hammer out proposals in greater detail and plan to meet with more young people and their parents next month.

“We don’t mind working with” the adults, said one young man at the park, calling himself Risme. “But we don’t want them turning (the park) into a day-care center.”

Leo Ray Lynch, a representative of Crenshaw-Baldwin Hills Plaza management, said the sight of large groups in the neighborhood frightens some adults.

He said that fear compounded the problem at the mall Monday. Lynch said that someone called police about a crowd of 50 youths who gathered outside the mall after a Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade. As patrol cars neared, he said, the youths, for unknown reasons, bolted inside the complex.

“There were about 100 other kids inside,” Lynch said, “and when they saw all these people running, they panicked and ran, too.”