All Our Sons

I don’t like gang members. I don’t like the way they dress, I don’t like the way they talk and I don’t like the way they destroy lives.

I also don’t like lying politicians. I don’t like the way they promise, I don’t like the way they manipulate and I don’t like the way they destroy societies.

If it were clear to me that a kid could positively be identified as a gang member and was headed for a park to cause serious mischief, I would say ban him from that park.

And if a person could positively be identified as a lying politician on his way to a podium to dazzle and deceive, I would say ban him from that podium.

Therein lies a problem.

In neither case can one establish with certainty the intent of either a kid in baggy pants and turned-around Raiders cap or a politician neatly wrapped in a smile, a handshake and a blue suit.

I use the parallel only to point out a serious flaw in the current wave of sentiment seeking to prohibit gang members with felonious intent from gathering in certain public places: You can’t tell who they are.

God didn’t grant us the power to determine what evil lies crouched in the confused hearts of those who pass us by or who among them might do us harm.

If he had, it would be a lot easier to know who’s a gang member and who’s just a neighborhood kid in cholo chic with absolutely nothing more serious on his mind than pepperoni pizza.

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I write today of gangs because the L.A. City Council, in an awkward bow to public sentiment, attempted to address the problem by muscling through an ordinance that would have banned gangbangers from city parks and beaches.

Less muddled heads prevailed at the last minute and the action was shelved until next month, after the voters decide which political gang should occupy the mayor’s office for the next four years.

At any other time, the proposed ordinance might be dismissed as just another witless effort to shape and define our lives while stealing our souls. But that isn’t so.

The action fits into a growing mood of outrage directed at those who have made life increasingly more difficult for anyone caught in the cross-fire of their violence.

That rage was fed most recently when battling gangs forced the closure of Venice Beach, the last great mingling place of tourists and free spirits in the L.A. area.

Police in riot gear and on horseback swept across the beach like a Roman legion, chasing out the good with the bad in order to restore order in an environment where disorder had rarely been a problem.

Gangs once more had disrupted a playful Sunday by introducing a turf mentality into a turfless climate, and the result was chaos.

As if that weren’t enough, young thugs had taken to bringing dogs to the beach and terrorizing waterfront habitues by letting the dogs lunge at them and pulling them back in the nick of time.

As a result, the council did adopt an ordinance that made it illegal to use the animals to menace or attack anyone in public places.

Where we couldn’t get the gang members, at least we could get their dogs.

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I’m schizophrenic about the gang problem. We are a city held hostage by gangs, and I’ll be damned if I’m ready to accept that as a way of life.

But the price of outrage must never be a suppression of anyone’s rights, because the cost to one will ultimately be paid by all.

In response to that ill-conceived notion to ban gang members from parks and beaches, members of the LAPD wisely requested a foolproof means of both identifying them and gauging their intentions.

They point out that cholo chic has become a style among pubescent youths who, thank God, wouldn’t know a bullet from a pimple. Do we just ban everyone over the age of 10 and thereby assume gang members are among them?

And why stop at parks and beaches? Gang members are known to congregate on street corners. Do we ban them from using the sidewalks?

Do we similarly prohibit their presence in schools, churches, restaurants, markets, airports, hospitals and barber shops? Them and their damned dogs?

When the ordinance was first introduced, a mother in East L.A. explained that they don’t look upon the young men as gang members. She said, “They’re our sons.”

In that sense, they’re all our sons, even those who might do us harm, and raising sons is never easy. I don’t have an answer on how to deal with them, but I do know that stomping on even a gangbanger’s rights by forbidding his presence in public places won’t do it.

Ultimately, we’ve got to find ways not to keep them out of parks, but to keep them out of morgues, and that may be a problem the L.A. City Council just isn’t equipped to handle.