ANAHEIM : Cooperation Sought in Anti-Gang Effort

Previewing a presentation he will make before the City Council today, Police Chief Joseph T. Molloy on Monday said further efforts are needed to coordinate the city’s various anti-gang efforts and promote more community activism aimed at gang prevention.

Molloy, other police officers, community leaders and city department heads will detail that conclusion and other findings of a citizen committee’s preliminary report on the growing gang and drug problem at a public City Council study session at 3 p.m.

The study, given to the council last week by the Gang/Drug Citizen Advisory Committee, said that there are now 35 gangs and more than 700 gang members in Anaheim. In 1980, there were five longstanding gangs with about 100 members in the city.

The report identifies 11 issues that need to be addressed, including the lack of communication among groups impacted by gangs and the lack of programs aimed at the “root causes” of gang and drug problems.

“We have some very effective specific operations working against gangs in this city, but what we have been lacking, I believe, is communication with each other,” Molloy said Monday. He also said that residents in neighborhoods plagued by gangs need to take a stand and not allow gangs to flourish. He pointed to the city’s Chevy Chase and Jeffrey-Lynne neighborhoods, which were once dominated by gangs and drug dealers, but were cleaned up through citizen cooperation with the police.

The Police Department “is very good at stopping criminal activity in a neighborhood, but unless the community comes together and says we are not going to let the gangs take back our neighborhood, the gang members come back and re-establish themselves,” he said.

The council meeting is at City Hall, 200 S. Anaheim Blvd.