Concern Grows Over Girls’ More Deadly Role in Gangs : Crime: A fatal shooting shows some are stepping beyond passive status to take part in violence, police say.

A 15-year-old girl has surrendered to police in connection with the drive-by shooting death of a 7-year-old boy in Boyle Heights, sparking new concerns Thursday among detectives who are already worried about the growing role of females in the gang world.

The girl, who was not identified because of her age, is said to be a member of a predominantly male gang on the Eastside. Officers believe she was shooting at male rivals standing near Arnulfo Contreras, a second-grader who was struck in the chest by a bullet Oct. 3 as he played next to a McDonald’s parking lot.

“It makes you feel like we’ve hit rock bottom,” said Los Angeles Police Detective Larry Martinez, who took the teen-age girl into custody. “What’s next? If this is a trend, then boy, we’ve got big problems out there.”

Teen-age girls historically have been a sideshow in the male-dominated gang scene, according to gang workers, police and probation officers. But just as women have taken on more assertive roles throughout society, girls who belong to gangs are gradually shedding their subservient image and earning the same respect, attention and fear as their male counterparts.

“Equal rights have hit even the gang subculture,” said probation officer Mary Ridgeway, who in the last few years has supervised two male gang members who were wounded by female rivals. “This sort of thing is still unusual. It’s not the norm. But it’s been an increasing phenomenon.”

Youth workers say that teen-age girls have always been accepted around gang members, who have tended to view them merely as sexual and financial providers--for their companionship and the money that some bring in as welfare recipients. They also have been used for transporting weapons because they can travel more easily across gang boundaries and are less likely to be thoroughly searched by police.

But with increased access to guns, cars and drugs, female gang members have discovered they need not be dependent on male gang members.

“Times change,” said Gene Mendoza, a field supervisor for Community Youth Gang Services. “Everywhere you look, women want to show they can do the same things as men.”

Although officials have identified about 1,000 gangs in Los Angeles County, few are considered autonomous female groups. Many women, however, have formed cliques under the auspices of traditional male gangs, claiming the same neighborhood turf and defending it, at times, just as fiercely.

There are 7,709 women among the more than 112,000 people who are listed in law enforcement computers as probable gang members.

Police say the 15-year-old girl arrested in connection with Arnulfo’s murder was one of several youths who were in a car that drove past the McDonald’s in the 200 block of North Soto Street two weeks ago.

As the car drove by, some of them flashed gang signs at two young men who stood a few feet away from the children, witnesses said. A girl leaned out the passenger’s window and fired several rounds from a handgun, striking Arnulfo once in the chest.

“If I didn’t have kids, I would go kill that person, then kill myself,” said Arnulfo’s mother, Angela Contreras, who has four other children. “Except for them, what’s left to live for?”

On Monday, detectives arrested a 19-year-old Bellfower woman who they said had gang connections. But she was released Tuesday after the 15-year-old suspect, apparently concerned that the wrong person was in custody, surrendered to Hollenbeck Division detectives. She is being held without bail at Eastlake Juvenile Hall. Charges are pending.

“There was lots of remorse in her,” said Martinez, the homicide investigator. “She felt pretty darn bad about everything.”

Arnulfo’s mother was a member of an East Los Angeles gang more than two decades ago. Now 37, she regrets the decay of the gang ethic that she says once ruled her neighborhood.

Back then, she fought rival girls, “but it was hands, pulling hair, scratching,” Contreras said as she sat in her one-room apartment at the Hotel Antonio, a rooming house next to the McDonald’s.

These days, she said, everyone, including the women, seems to have guns. Instead of respecting the sanctity of family and home, they fire bullets without regard for who might be in the way, Contreras said.

“Women are getting just like men,” she said. “They don’t care who they shoot.”

Despite young women’s increasing criminal activities, shootings by gang girls have remained fairly rare, law enforcement officials say. Of the 1,346 gang-related homicides committed since 1979 in territory patrolled by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, women were suspects in 26 cases, according to Sgt. Wes McBride of the sheriff’s Operation Safe Streets Bureau, an anti-gang detail.

Moreover, McBride said, it did not appear that the female suspects in any of those incidents had actually pulled the trigger. Mostly, they served as accomplices, getaway drivers or instigators, urging a male companion to kill the victim.

“They will support the guys and sometimes drive the cars and sometimes hold the guns,” McBride said. “But it’s still mostly males that kill one another.”