Neighborhoods, Businesses Seek Gang Solutions : Crime: Private sector groups try to work around City Hall, which they say has failed to act effectively.

As a wave of gang violence sweeps over Long Beach, groups of neighborhood, business and minority leaders have been meeting to try to find solutions--but these are not the first concerned citizens to tackle the problem.

Five years ago, a city task force on gangs came up with a list of 192 recommendations, many of which emphasized a concept discussed at recent meetings: enlisting local businesses and the schools in a citywide effort.

Member Andy Andrews recalls with some bitterness the result of working on that first task force for over a year: “Absolutely nothing was done.”

Now the groups meeting are trying to work out solutions without City Hall, said Andrews, president of the Alamitos Heights Improvement Assn. and one of the leaders of an East Side coalition of neighborhood groups.

“We don’t want city government involved,” he said. “They haven’t done anything.”

Andrews said his fight against gangs dates back to 1987, when he headed a subcommittee of the Mayor and City Council Task Force on Substance Abuse and Gangs. The city spent $22,000 to hire a consultant to help the group. But their recommendations went nowhere.

Finally, last year, a second committee met to decide which of the first committee’s recommendations should be enacted, Andrews said.

In August, the committee made 13 suggestions that would cost about $3.8 million, including expanding recreational activities for youths and creating youth centers in city parks. The committee also suggested hiring a consultant to evaluate the recommendations.

The City Council--noting that Long Beach is financially strapped--agreed to only one recommendation, which came without a price tag: hiring a consultant, said Thomas White, the city’s gang prevention coordinator.

So far, no consultant has been hired.

Since 1987, the number of gangs has increased from 22 to 70 and the number of gang members from about 2,700 to at least 9,000, according to police. Twelve of the gangs have been linked to major crimes, including drive-by shootings and slayings, police said.

White said, however, that some progress has been made in dealing with gangs.

During the 1991-92 fiscal year, for example, the city spent $7.6 million on programs and services related to gang prevention, intervention and suppression, according to the second committee’s report.

“The city is acting based on its resources,” said White, whose office was created in 1990.

While conceding that “a lot of bureaucrats are only interested in a Band-Aid approach,” White argues that Long Beach is not alone in the problem. The city, he said, cannot get rid of its gang problem without federal, state and local agencies first eliminating the social and economic problems that lead youths to join gangs.

“No city has adequately addressed the problem. Long Beach is not unique,” White said.

But Andrews and others say the gang problem in Long Beach grew because of a lack of response from city and school officials.

In 1987, the year the task force started meeting, four people were killed in gang-related incidents, according to Long Beach Police Department statistics. Last year, that number had increased to 53.

This year, police had linked 45 deaths to gangs by Dec. 17.

Andrews and other residents say an increase of more than 1,000% in gang-related slayings in four years is unacceptable.

“There’s no question in my mind that, if we had acted five years ago when we had the money, we could have prevented some of these problems,” Andrews said. “And many of our recommendations cost no money--getting into the schools, talking to the students, setting up peer groups . . . having businesses become involved.”

Sitha Sum, executive director of the Cambodian Assn. Coalition of Long Beach, said local Cambodians live in fear because of crime, and he blames police and politicians for not doing enough.

“Cambodians are really afraid of police because, back in our country, police could not be trusted. But the police here did not go to people to explain who they are and what they can do,” said Sum, one of several Cambodian leaders who have met in recent months with other concerned people and police officials to discuss gang violence.

Olivia A. Herrera, who has helped coordinate meetings this month between Latino and Cambodian leaders, complained that politicians articulate concerns about crime and the need to do more for youths, but then do little about it. “I don’t think they’ve tackled it at all. They’ve mouthed a lot of things . . . (but) nothing ever comes of it,” she said

“It’s only through grass-roots that we’ll get some changes. It’s gotten to the point where people won’t step out into the streets,” said Herrera, director of Centro Shalom, a social service agency serving Latinos.

In the past month, while Latino and Asian leaders have been meeting at Centro Shalom, leaders from more affluent neighborhoods, such as Naples and Belmont Shore, also have gathered in unprecedented meetings to seek an end to gang violence.

City officials said they welcome the input--even if they weren’t aware at first of the various meetings.

“I think it’s great. We need all the help we can get,” said Mayor Ernie Kell, who said he wasn’t invited to the gatherings. “I didn’t even know about them until I read about them in the paper.”

Kell said he did not know whether the council adopted any of the recommendations his task force made in 1987. But he disputed an often-voiced criticism that city officials have been slow to acknowledge that gangs were growing in Long Beach.

“Would I have put together a task force on gangs and substance abuse if I didn’t believe there were gangs? I don’t think so,” Kell said.

But Councilman Ray Grabinski, long an advocate of creating programs for youths, said he pushed for that initial task force shortly after joining the council. “And the mayor and the City Council were not too thrilled at the time, because they didn’t think they had a gang problem.”

Grabinski said he, too, feels frustrated by a lack of progress.

“The complaints about us are valid. You can never do enough,” Grabinski said. “We don’t have a shared vision of where we’re going with young people in this city.”