Crackdown on Gangs Pays Off as Deaths Fall

Seven people died as the result of gang violence in Pomona in 1991.

Sadly, this is good news, statistically. The seven deaths--among 24 criminal homicides reported in the city last year--represent a sharp reduction from 1990, when 23 of 34 homicides were gang-related.

Police Capt. Chuck Heilman said the reduction is, at least partially, a product of tough law enforcement and harsher sentences made possible by a relatively new state law.

Last year, the Police Department increased its gang unit from two officers to 12 and began working closely with parole and probation officers to monitor gang members, often making surprise visits to their homes.

“We do sweeps,” Heilman said. “We spend a day looking through their rooms, their houses. Those that we find in violation go to jail. Those that we don’t . . . are left with the thought that we’re coming back. We’ll announce when--when we knock at the door.

“Our attitude is that they’re special, and we’re going to treat them special--by putting them in the system and arresting them when we can.”

Heilman said he has no illusion that such tough action alone will eradicate gangs.

“Law enforcement just kind of deals with the mess,” the captain said. “People have to get away from the mentality that criminal justice is the fix. . . . The fix is in social services, rehabilitation.

“If you go into a gang neighborhood, you’ll find lots of problems. From the time he’s born until the time he’s pulling a trigger on somebody, (a gang member) is not getting any parenting the way parenting is intended to make good citizens. . . . Unless you change a number of things, from parenting to education, the problem is going to be around for a long time.”

But aggressive law enforcement has reduced gang violence in Pomona, at least temporarily, Heilman said. The effort has involved police, the Los Angeles County Probation Department and district attorney’s office, and the state Parole Department.

The most serious gang cases land on the desks of Deputy Dist. Attys. Dennis E. Ferris and Thomas C. Falls, who prosecute gang members for crimes--mostly murders and attempted murders--in Pomona and nearby communities.

“We try to identify guys who are shooters, or are likely to be shooters, and take them off the streets,” said Ferris, who takes a hard line toward “gangbangers.”

“In my opinion, if a kid has been caught with a gun two or three times and has one or two dope cases, he ought to be put to sleep when he turns 18,” he said, cynically.

But Ferris’ disgust is real, coming from prosecuting dozens of gang members who have committed terrible crimes--often shooting innocent children--and have shown no regret.

“I don’t see remorse,” he said of the defendants. “I see sorrow for getting caught.”

The pattern, Ferris said, is illustrated by the case of Eddie (Casper) Linnett, a Pomona gang member whose repeated difficulties with the law escalated from sniffing glue and truancy over the years to attempted murder. In 1985, Linnett participated in a drive-by shooting that was intended to harm members of a rival gang but resulted in wounds to two innocent 12-year-olds.

In 1986, Linnett--nicknamed after Casper, the comics’ “friendly ghost,” because he was one of his gang’s few white, non-Latino members--was sentenced to seven years in prison.

But while on parole five years later, Linnett was arrested for a nearly identical crime. Ferris said Linnett, now 36, was apparently teaching a 15-year-old relative how to do a drive-by shooting. Linnett and his companion were looking for rival gang members but mistakenly shot at a group of people preparing to go on a camping trip. An 18-year-old man was shot in an eye.

The second shooting, though similar to the first, led to a different sentence. Pomona Superior Court Judge Gregory C. O’Brien last November ordered Linnett to serve three consecutive life terms, plus 11 years, which means that he will not be eligible for parole until he is in his mid-80s.

Ferris said the lengthy term was made possible by a 1988 state law on street terrorism that allows enhancement of criminal penalties for gang members. Under the law, a gang member sentenced to life must serve at least 15 years before being eligible for parole.

Ferris said judges are giving such lengthy sentences that gang members are beginning to take notice. And even if the longer sentences do not deter others, the veteran prosecutor said, at least those imprisoned will not be harming anyone for a long time.

Pomona Detective Dexter Cole said the city has 15 gangs, totaling about 1,800 members. So far this year, he said, police have classified one murder, the drive-by shooting of a 15-year-old boy, as gang-related.

Contrary to popular belief, Cole said, gang members are not just shooting each other. Of the 30 gang-related homicides in Pomona in the last two years, only eight victims were gang members.

Drive-by shootings involving gang members took the lives last year of a 14-year-old junior high school student, who was talking to friends in front of his house, and an 18-year-old Pomona High School student, who was in a car returning home from a trip to a market. Neither victim was a gang member.

The 18-year-old, described by the school principal as an “all-American boy” and an outstanding student, was working to help support his family.

Cole has amassed a collection of snapshots of gang members posing with guns, letters written by gang members, often from prison, and scrapbooks kept by gang members to record their exploits, such as news stories of drive-by shootings.

It is this compulsion by gang members to document their lives that makes the sweeps especially useful, providing authorities with information about gang members and their associates, the detective said.

Sometimes the searches, which do not require warrants because they are conducted under the conditions of parole and probation, turn up guns or narcotics, which can put an individual back behind bars.

“If we do a probation sweep and hit 10 houses and don’t arrest one person,” Cole said, “that doesn’t mean we came up empty.”

Just getting a probationer and his friends to act more cautiously; to forgo retaliation at the next gang insult, might be enough, he said. Maybe, the detective added, the probationer and his friends will think: “They’re on us right now, we’d better calm it down.”

Police work with county probation officers Marco Otero and Joseph Barbosa, who are part of a specialized gang unit. Instead of the 300 cases he used to oversee, Otero said, he and his partner have just 50 cases each--all Pomona gang members, most of them juveniles.

On a recent sweep, Otero, Barbosa and two Pomona detectives, visited four houses. At the first, the probationer was not home, but cocaine was found in a search of his room. Officers urged the mother to advise her son to voluntarily come in and talk to police. A week later, police were still waiting.

At the second home, police learned that the probationer, who is supposed to be home at night, had not returned until morning.

In the third house, the probationer was away, but his brother, who had just been released from prison, was there, along with his mother. Officers found tools of the type a burglar might use, and items associated with narcotics use--such as “roach” clips and bong pipes. They confiscated the narcotics paraphernalia and a calendar and other items with gang names on them, warning the mother that her son was in danger of going back to jail if they found similar items in the future.

The mother said she worries about her sons and frequently warns them about gangs. But, she said, police do not need to tell her about the conditions of probation, because she is on parole herself for a burglary conviction.

The morning sweep ended at a house where a youth who had been active in an East Los Angeles gang lives. Otero said the family moved to Pomona to escape the gang environment, but the youth had reportedly hooked up with a local gang.

The boy was not home, but two sisters and a cousin were. They told officers that no one else was present, but when officers searched the probationer’s room, they found three boys hiding in the closet.

Uncertain what was going on, police drew their guns, brought the boys out, one by one, to search them and, later, found a dozen other youths hiding in another bedroom. The teen-agers said they were there for a birthday party. Officers called school district police, who transported them back to their campuses and called parents.

Police and probation officers said family members are usually cooperative during searches.

But Fabian Nunez, a former director of a Pomona center that assists immigrants, said he has heard complaints about the sweeps from residents who believe they do more harm than good. Parents who are “trying to get their kids back on track” are having police officers invade their homes, interrogate them and harass them, creating friction, Nunez said.

Officers should “keep an eye on” parolees but not make their lives more difficult, Nunez said.

Heilman said “less than one-half of 1%” of the searches result in complaints. “With all the violence that society is suffering, we’re obligated to keep the parolees in line,” the captain said.

In addition to their aggressive approach, Heilman said police also encourage the community to do more about the gang problem.

“A lot of people come home and read about the 5-year-old kid who gets shot by gang violence and they think it’s horrible and then go about their business,” the captain said. “They think there’s nothing they can do.”

But there are programs in Pomona, Heilman said, that are encouraging youngsters to stay out of gangs. A number of police officers volunteer time to an education and sports program run by Sister Leticia Gomez on Monday nights at the Pomona Boys and Girls Club, he said. And there are other efforts.

“There are community programs to educate gang members, teach values and social skills,” Heilman said, adding that he and his officers would be happy to direct any interested parties to such programs.