Carjackings and Gangs

Your aptly headlined editorial, “One More Urban Nightmare” (April 8), sets forth the assertion that some street gangs now require new members to perform carjackings as an initiation “rite.”

How much more are we going to take as a society and as a country from these thugs? It seems to me that it goes beyond the individual heinous carjackings themselves. You apparently have evidence of substantial conspiracies to commit these terrible crimes. It seems this alone, should cause the gangs themselves to be illegal before the crimes are committed.

I’ll venture even further: These gangs now appear to be combatants in a guerrilla-style civil war, which is being waged against this area of the United States and its individual citizens. Law-abiding citizens are now afraid to even travel the streets of much of urban Southern California because of what may reasonably be viewed as something much more than mere random criminal activity.

These growing bands of murderous thugs have lost their fear of the police; they have no regard for either human life or the tenets of democracy. Thus, they are evermore quickly taking our freedoms.

Far better for the military to enter the war sooner than later. I wonder whether Washington is yet really listening and watching? It’s obvious that our local and state leaders can’t see the forest for the trees, for they are still doing nothing more than moving chairs around the deck of the Titanic.

W. B. ROBERTS

San Clemente