Police, Gangs Blame Each Other for Party Melees : Violence: Officers believe Crips-Bloods truce is a plot to attack law enforcement. Revelers say they are holding peaceful get-togethers.

The weekly parties that are bringing Bloods and Crips together for nights of beer and brotherhood in South Los Angeles are also opening a new arena of conflict with a Police Department that has little tolerance for the festivities.

Both law enforcement and the newly united street gangs, which clashed violently last weekend at the Jordan Downs and Imperial Courts housing projects in Watts, contend that they are the ones struggling to maintain peace while the other is provoking the melees.

This much seems clear: Baton-wielding cops, inebriated gang members and lingering post-riot hostilities have created a volatile mix that is not helping to bring the two sides toward common ground.

“If the gangbangers are serious about what they’re trying to do, they should be sensitive to the residents they’re disturbing,” said James P. Smith, director of the community center at the nearby Nickerson Gardens housing project. “But for the police to be insensitive to the gangbangers is also a downer. The way they’re responding doesn’t do nothing but incite more things to happen.”

On Monday, at an emotionally charged meeting at Jordan Downs, leaders of the project’s tenant advisory council said they wanted their 911 calls in the future to be handled first by Housing Authority police officers, who some residents believe are more in tune with life in the development.

With fewer than 60 sworn officers to cover 21 city-run projects, however, such a proposal could be unworkable. A Los Angeles Police Department spokesman said the LAPD will continue patrolling the projects and has no plans to reconsider its approach to breaking up gang parties.

“I think we’ve tried to be extremely understanding of the circumstances,” said Cmdr. Robert Gil, the department’s top spokesman. “But when things become violent and laws are broken, we take appropriate action. We’re not breaking up parties just to break up parties.”

Los Angeles police, who fear the gangs’ newfound togetherness is little more than a plot to attack law enforcement, said they tried to break up the two parties only after residents complained that the late-night rap music and exploding firecrackers had become too much to bear.

After several hundred revelers ignored orders to disperse, the officers moved in with helmets, shields and batons. On Saturday night at Jordan Downs, police said they were pelted by bottles, bricks and stones. Thirty officers were reported injured; five were hospitalized. Three people were arrested.

“Most gatherings are acceptable until people get liquored up and then, with all that liquid courage, they have to take their anxieties out on somebody, and we’re usually the ones,” said Sgt. Don Keith of the department’s Southeast Division. “If they want to obey all laws, they can have their parties, but they don’t seem to want to do that.”

Gang members, while acknowledging that their frequent bashes have at times been loud and drunken, contend that the celebrations are rooted in a desire for peace and that any rowdiness is a lesser evil than the cycle of bloodshed that has been tearing apart their neighborhoods.

They say police stormed the barbecue, clubbing revelers and scattering food that the neighborhood mothers had helped prepare for the party-goers.

“Here we are really trying to stop the violence, getting to know each other and channel this energy into something more positive,” said Charles (Chopper) Harris, 25, a former gang member who attended Saturday’s party. “There’s an open invitation for the police to come see and learn what’s happening, but instead they use this as an excuse to provoke more violence.”

Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores, whose district includes the Watts housing projects, said she supports the unity meetings if the result is less killing. “But if the result is that you have one larger gang instead of two smaller gangs . . . I’m not so sure that’s a plus,” she said.

“The police’s responsibility is to protect others and enforce the law,” she added. “I can’t condone any group that’s breaking the law even in the exercise of having a good time.”

However, Ed Turley, a manager for Community Youth Gang Services, said the coming together of the Crips and the Bloods is a “phenomenal” event that should be rewarded with positive reinforcement, not challenged with police muscle.

“For years we’ve been asking them to stop the killing,” Turley said. “Now they’ve come together. They’re waiting for us to respond.”

At least earlier in the day, the Jordan Downs picnic was a feel-good affair in which former enemies from three Watts housing projects shared a feast of barbecued chicken, dancing, baseball and the ubiquitous 40-ounce bottles of malt liquor, which one man was selling for $3 from a garbage can filled with ice.

In an extraordinary twist to two decades of warfare, some Crips--who have tended to identify themselves by wearing blue--were dressed in red shorts and caps--the color preferred by their rivals, the Bloods. Other gang members sported red and blue rags dangling from their back pockets. One man wore a custom-made T-shirt bearing the names of both gangs, followed by the word PEACE.

“This is just brothers trying to chill and get used to each other and find our blackness among ourselves,” said a young man dressed in a black Los Angeles Kings sweat shirt. “This right here is love, this is straight love.”

The party would have wound itself down without incident, witnesses said, had officers not shined a floodlight on participants from a hovering helicopter and stormed the gathering shortly before midnight. They said representatives from each gang had been appointed to provide security, and that bottle rockets and a dice game were the most serious infractions witnessed.

“It wasn’t about gang activity, it was about uniting and trying to get along with our neighbors,” said Martha Clark, one of seven members on the Jordan Downs Resident Management Corp.’s board of directors. “Even if it was loud, I’d much rather have them doing that than going out and killing each other.”

Officers said the party-goers were hostile and that there were reports of gunfire. Some gang members blocked a nearby street, preventing patrol cars from coming through.

Keith, the LAPD sergeant, said the barrage of rocks and glass was so sudden that police suspected the revelers had been preparing for the chance to attack.