Asian Gang Problem Increasing : Crime: Senate investigators find that the groups are expanding in California and call for changes in police tactics to deal with the threat.

Asian crime groups now rank as “a problem of dramatic proportions” in the United States and abroad, particularly in California, and steps by law enforcement to counter the threat are largely inadequate, Senate investigators said Monday.

In a report to be issued today after a 15-month investigation, the Senate Government Affairs permanent investigations subcommittee said operations by the groups in California are expanding and it proposed sweeping changes in police tactics to turn back the crime wave.

The report noted, however, that the “vast majority of Asian-Americans are hard-working, law-abiding citizens,” and that only a small fraction are involved in organized crime. Moreover, the report said, most victims of Asian organized crime groups are Asians, reflecting a distrust of law enforcement authorities, language barriers and perceived lack of interest by police.

The groups’ illegal activities range from narcotics trafficking, money-laundering, bribery and business extortion to alien smuggling, home invasion robberies, computer chip theft and credit card counterfeiting, said Sen. William V. Roth Jr. (R-Del.), the ranking minority member who directed the investigation that led to the report.

The report, provided to The Times, contained no statistics to support its conclusions but was based on anecdotal evidence supplied by local police and the FBI.

Much of the activity is violent, with highly mobile Vietnamese street gangs specializing in home invasion robberies and ethnic Chinese criminal groups dominating heroin smuggling, according to the report. At the same time, Japanese groups have been laundering illicit funds in the United States, often through the purchase of real estate.

Federal law enforcement agencies are hampered in their fight against the escalating threat by a lack of foreign language skills, an inadequate knowledge of Asian cultures and a failure to gather and share criminal intelligence, the report said.

Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), chairman of the subcommittee, called for improved international law enforcement cooperation. “While the rhetoric is often positive, in reality too often information is not shared, documents are not accessible and efforts to locate criminals do not receive international assistance.”

The report also noted that Asian gang activity in Southern California “appears to be in a state of turmoil,” affected by gang warfare in the northern part of the state and by the emergence of “more independent Vietnamese and Viet-Ching groups in Southern California.”

The Wah Ching gang, which the subcommittee said is involved in criminal activity in Los Angeles’ Chinatown and, to a lesser extent, in Monterey Park and nearby San Gabriel Valley cities, is also active in semi-legitimate aspects of entertainment promotion and bulk leasing of videocassettes.

The report named Tony (Sweet Plum) Young as the leader of the Wah Ching gang in Southern California. Young had been a lieutenant of leader Vincent Jew, who headed Wah Ching when it was the dominant Asian organized crime group in Northern California. Jew has since emigrated to Taiwan under law enforcement pressure.