Doubts Cast on Data in Gang Report

Flaws in law enforcement databases may have led Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner to overestimate the number of gang members in Los Angeles County in his recent highly publicized report on gang activity in the county.

Among other things, the computerized gang tracking system on which the report was based includes the names of people who are dead, officials said.

Moreover, the merging of separate databases used by the Los Angeles Police Department and the Sheriff’s Department led to thousands of redundancies, a problem scheduled to be corrected this summer when the databases are purged of duplicated and outdated names.

That purge--which will also expunge the files of those who have died or left gang life--could substantially lower the number of people in the county identified as gang members, but officials cannot accurately predict by how much.

The duplicates alone are expected to involve at least 15,000 names, an official said Thursday. No one knows how many dead people are listed in the system, but a sheriff’s investigator said hundreds of names of suspected gang members killed in gang warfare are purposely kept in the system for a year after their deaths for investigative purposes.

The gang report, released by Reiner last week, estimated that there are 150,000 gang members and 1,000 gangs in the county. It concluded that nearly half of the black men in the county between 21 and 24 years old have been identified by police as gang members.

Critics of the report say it was based on outdated and imprecise information, and wrongly identifies thousands of African-American and Latino men as gang members. Others have complained that it should have not been released until after the purge this summer and accused Reiner of trying to use it to promote a tough image two weeks before the June 2 primary, in which he faces a tough battle for reelection.

But an aide to Reiner defended the report’s accuracy this week, saying it was adjusted before its release to reflect the number of names expected to be eliminated.

The estimate of gang members took the purge into account, said Fred Register, a special assistant to Reiner. But he acknowledged that the figure is no more than a guess. He expects the proportion of young black men in the database to remain high, even though the number of names may be lower.

“We don’t want to mislead anybody, but these (figures in the report) are by far the best estimates,” said Register, who authored the report, titled “Gangs, Crime and Violence in Los Angeles.”

Register denied that the release of the 236-page report last Thursday was in any way linked to Reiner’s reelection bid.

“I can understand people who might say maybe we should have waited,” Register said, “but the timing had nothing to do with the election. That was totally accidental.”

Reiner could not be reached for comment, but Register said the district attorney did not wait for more precise figures to emerge after the system is purged this summer because the revision has been repeatedly delayed and there is no assurance it will be performed as scheduled.

Meanwhile, questions continue about the integrity of the database and how it is used.

The gang tracking system was created five years ago with a $234,000 grant from the state, said Sgt. Wes McBride, a supervisor in the Sheriff’s Department gang unit.

The database began with 14,000 files and now has 150,000, but it has never been systematically purged of names of inactive or dead gang members.

Part of the plan when it was created was that it would not be purged for five years, McBride said, adding that many, if not all, of the first 14,000 files are probably still in the system.

The database lists names, nicknames, addresses, friends and physical descriptions of people who police believe are associated with gangs, although many have never been convicted of a crime or even arrested. Some are included on the basis of appearance, including clothing and tattoos.

At least 5,000 duplications are known to exist in the system as the result of an ongoing effort to merge it with a gang database operated by the Los Angeles Police Department.

Among the 12,000 LAPD files already entered into the database, 42% are duplicates of names already in the Sheriff Department’s computer system, Register said. Another 30,000 names in the LAPD system have yet to be entered into the Sheriff Department’s database, and a similar duplication rate is expected, he said.

The purge, he said, will be done over several months by investigators familiar with the activities of gang members in their areas, “who will remove names they know should not be there,” Register said.

Files will be removed, he said, if the person is known to be dead or has not had contact with the criminal justice system for five years.

Critics of the gang tracking system welcomed the purge, but expressed concerns that the computer database will be misused to bolster law enforcement demands for higher budgets and increased levels of sophisticated crime-fighting equipment.

Police “inflate the gang numbers and gang-related crimes because . . . they have to justify the need for more money,” said Chilton Alphonse, director of the Community Youth Sports and Arts Foundation, a Crenshaw district anti-gang agency. “This has always been a paper game in law enforcement.”

Paul Hoffman, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Southern California branch, agreed, adding that the definition of what is gang-related is too broad and vague.

The gang database, he said, could be used to justify harassment of young black men, unfairly increase the sentences of people convicted of crimes or deny employment to men identified as gang members upon their release from prison.

“It’s obviously a good thing that they are purging the system,” Hoffman said. “But I’m not sure that solves the problem. They haven’t dealt with the problem of how people get in.”

The release of the gang report last week provoked outrage among some activists, residents, clergy and others in the African-American community who complained that police based their decisions about gang membership on racial fears, a misunderstanding of certain clothing styles and a predisposition of officers to consider anyone in certain neighborhoods to be part of a gang.

McBride denied that deputies and police officers indiscriminately enter names in the gang database. “We don’t have to create gang members,” he said. “Even if the number drops by 10,000, we still have a serious problem.”