Basketball Game Between Gangs, LAPD Is Canceled : Recreation: Promoters say there was not enough time to get word out about Sports Arena face-off between Crips and Bloods and police team. Both sides express disappointment.

It was to have been a basketball game that transcended mere sports, bringing together three groups of traditional enemies in a contest to benefit job programs for South-Central Los Angeles youths.

One team would feature members of the Crips and Bloods street gangs, playing side by side to show that their tenuous truce was holding. And their opponents in the game, scheduled Sunday at the 15,956-seat Sports Arena, were to be none other than a team from the Los Angeles Police Department.

But the plans apparently were a little too ambitious.

With only 38 tickets having been sold since the game was announced Aug. 14, the event’s promoters said Friday that they had canceled the game.

“I’m pretty disappointed,” said Anthony Pie, 21, a member of the Crips-Bloods team, which has been practicing at the South Park gym the last two weeks. “This wasn’t just a game. We were doing it to help the community. This game would have changed the (public’s) whole outlook of Crips and Bloods.”

The promoters and Sports Arena management attributed the game’s demise to the quick planning and the changing focus of an event that originally was to have been a June contest of celebrity teams.

“They had changed the nature of the event three times,” said George Gonzalez, general manager of the Sports Arena.

The promoters, Lester Jackson and Russell Peterson, confirmed that they initially planned to stage the celebrity game featuring the cast of “White Men Can’t Jump” pitted against actors from “Boyz ‘N The Hood.” They then came up with the idea of adding a second contest, matching an untried squad of gang members against the Police Department’s experienced basketball team.

The Rev. E. V. Hill, a longtime community activist, put up a $56,000 deposit with the Sports Arena in hopes that the games would raise money for various job programs. Many of the gang members who were to play worked at his church during the summer.

“We thought it would be a game to bring the city together, a peace game,” Jackson said.

But the promoters never got the corporate sponsors they had hoped for and by the time the contract had been signed and security arranged for the Sports Arena, only two weeks remained to promote the event. Warren Lanier, a publicist hired by the promoters, said “it was too short notice” to sell enough tickets.

Gonzalez said he spoke with Hill this week and suggested that he cancel the event, enabling him to get his deposit back.

Members of both teams said they hoped that some type of game could be salvaged, perhaps at a school or other location.

“We’d play at a park,” said Officer Darryl Butler, a member of the LAPD team.

Although the event was given the blessing of a top police official, many in the rank and file did not approve.

“Personally, I didn’t get a lot of flak, but there was talk around: ‘Why are you playing a bunch of killers?’ ” Butler said.

Like members of both teams, Butler--a member of the anti-gang CRASH unit--was disappointed that the game was canceled. “The community needs to see us out of uniform, to show we are human,” he said.