Cops, Gangs: ‘More Alike Than Different’ : Probation worker: Jim Galipeau sees ‘the guys in blue’ coming to terms with his South-Central subjects.

Bearded, bald and sporting a gold earring, Los Angeles County probation officer Jim Galipeau projects a swashbuckling image as he moves through South-Central Los Angeles supervising some of the hardest of hard-core gang members. A New Hampshire native whose ancestry is French Canadian, Galipeau, 51, typically hits the streets with a 9-mm pistol in his belt and wearing all black--cowboy boots, jeans, T-shirt, leather jacket.

Galipeau has molded his speech to the cadences resonating from the South-Central streets he has worked since 1965, and he relishes his role as a loose cannon in the probation department--”not the kind of probation officer who gets promoted.” He and a ghost writer are finishing a book on his life with street gangsters, and he recently discussed some of his views with Times Staff Writer Edward J. Boyer.

Question: Gang members worked out a truce before the riots in 1992. Is it still holding, or is it becoming too fragile to survive?

Answer: There are three levels for gangs in South-Central. First, there’s the peace, and that’s only in Watts and Compton. That’s a true peace. The next level is a truce, meaning you could come through each other’s neighborhood with the understanding that we won’t shoot at each other, but don’t stop. The third level is a cease fire--don’t come in our neighborhood and we won’t go in yours.

The peace didn’t take in some areas because some gangsters are unwilling to bury their dead homeboys. They got to be able to say: “We killed you, you killed us, it’s a wash. Forget it even though one was my brother, my mother, my cousin.

Q: What has been the law-enforcement reaction to the truce?

A: They sincerely believed gangs were calling the truce to fight the LAPD. That was always ridiculous because the gang members know they can’t beat LAPD. Police said gangs were hitting gun shops and stockpiling weapons. I never found any evidence of that. Then police were embarrassed because black on black killings went down so dramatically, and have stayed down--particularly in Watts and Compton. There have been virtually no gang killings. It is almost an embarrassment to the cops that they had nothing to do with it. But What the blacks have dropped, the Hispanics have picked up and then some. So we may very well have 700 gang killings again this year, but it’s going to be predominantly Hispanic.

Cops and gang members are much more alike than they are different. If you could get them together, they can relate to each other. LAPD is the baddest gang in L.A. We gotta have dialogue. The only way we’re going to have dialogue is to get guys from the street in blue.

Q: What has happened with promises made after the riots about finding jobs for reformed gang members?

A: There really haven’t been any jobs. Nothing materialized.

Q: Have organizations and leaders in the African American community been involved in helping to find jobs?

A: They have not. All that I get is rhetoric. They think the truce is wonderful, and they say they’re going to do something. Maybe some of the organizations don’t have resources, but their individual members do. What I want is a guy who’ll call and say he can take three guys in his construction company, or someone else to take three guys to be trained as typesetters.

Q: What can you do for a gang member who comes to you and says he’s tired, that he wants to get out of the madness and make a life for himself?

A: Up until about two months ago, I could have put him in the California Impact Program--six weeks, eight hours a day, five days a week at a military center where they’ve got the best Three R’s type teachers I’ve ever seen. The program was run by the California National Guard and the state Employment Development Department. Gov. Wilson went into an austerity program and closed down the only program that could get a kid a job and a GED in six weeks. Now there is basically nothing.

Q: What do you think was behind the recent rash of shooting directed at police officers?

A: Frustration. I would really like to get with Chief Williams, but I’ve never had the opportunity. We need cops who have grown up in these neighborhoods and understand what’s going on down here. Right now you have to be so squeaky clean to get hired by the sheriff’s department or LAPD that they’re getting guys who couldn’t possibly know anything about the streets. But there are these guys out in the streets who would do anything to be a deputy or LAPD officer. Once you have people from the neighborhood who are policing the neighborhood, you’re really going to have what you call community-based policing.

Q: Has your being an Anglo working with black gangs ever presented a problem for you?

A: Not really. I just don’t deal with it. People like to believe I’m black. I have the complexion and the kind of conversation to make a lot of people think I’m black. I have never thought in racial terms.