Gang-Related Prosecutions at Record High : Crime: D.A.’s office lists 550 charged with violent offenses in 1994, an 18% increase. But policing is reported improving.

A record 550 suspected gang members were charged last year in Orange County with violent crimes including murder, robbery and drive-by shootings, according to an annual report released Thursday by the Orange County district attorney’s office.

The prosecutions, up 18% over the previous year’s, parallel the growing gang population, which totals 18,672 members in 320 gangs, said Assistant Dist. Atty. John Conley. That is double the number in 1990, he said.

But Conley also attributed the jump in prosecutions to increased aggressiveness by law enforcement. Just who is winning this battle, however, is hard to predict, he said.

“It’s like 1943 during World War II,” he said. “We’re doing as many things as we can, but we’re in mid-battle.

“The bad news is that the numbers are going up in certain areas, but the good news is that new police programs seem to be successful. Law enforcement is united better than ever before.”

In all, prosecutors brought 4,140 cases against suspected gang members in 1994. Of those defendants, 3,230 went to prison, jail or the California Youth Authority.

The district attorney’s 46-page report found a few positive signs. The number of gang-related murders decreased from 74 to 66 last year, the first such decline since 1989.

Also, a program known as TARGET, or the Tri-Agency Resources Gang Enforcement Team, seems to be making a difference, the report says. The program dispatches prosecutors, investigators and probation officers to help police in gang-troubled neighborhoods. It singles out the most violent gang members for investigation and prosecution.

The report credits TARGET with reducing gang-related crime in Westminster by 60% in 1993 and by 50% in 1994. Last year, the county began seven more TARGET programs, including two in Santa Ana and others in Garden Grove, Orange, Anaheim, Costa Mesa and South County. The areas were the home turf of 88% of the gang members identified by authorities at the time.

In all, the teams arrested 1,317 suspected gang members last year, the report says.

“Our emphasis is on concentrating on hard-core gang members,” said Sgt. Jack Davidson, who is in charge of the TARGET program in Westminster. “The theory is that if you take the leaders out of the group, the other members have no one to look up to, and the group disintegrates,” he said.

Community groups have sometimes criticized police as being too quick to label some incidents as gang-related and some youths as gang members. But Davidson said police classify a crime as gang-related based on a number of ground rules.

Those included whether a suspect has been identified as a gang member by a reliable informant or exhibits behaviors associated with gangs such as using gang hand signals, sporting tattoos with gang names or dressing like a gang member.

According to the report, 10% of gang members were females and only 22% were juveniles. The prime years, Conley said, are ages 15 to 25.

Of those who were prosecuted, 67% were Latino, 11% were Asian, 2% black, 2% multiethnic and 1% white. The rest were identified in the report by type rather than ethnicity, such as taggers or out-of-towners.

Davidson and Conley said it was difficult to pinpoint why gangs in Orange County are attracting more and more members. Conley pointed to a number of possible reasons.

“Gangs are still an attractive thing for young people, and so is violence,” he said. “They fulfill a need in kids for prestige and protection.

“It’s a family for kids with broken families,” he said. “It’s being something when otherwise a kid feels like he’s nothing. It’s the thrill of a drive-by shooting for lives that are otherwise dull.”

Davidson said police recognize that solving the gang problem will take more than making hundreds of arrests.

“We’re trying to get the community involved,” he said. “We’re contacting community leaders, apartment managers, schools, to try to work together to take care of the problem.

“We need people to call the police, have meetings with us, give us feedback.”

A report by the Orange County Chiefs’ and Sheriff’s Assn. last September concluded that serious crimes by gang members, such as robberies and assaults, most often victimize people who are not gang members.

Murder, however, was the exception. Rival gang members were the victims in all but four of the 22 homicides involving gang members during the first six months of 1994.

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Gang Report The Orange County district attorney’s office prosecuted 550 gang-related violent crime cases in 1994, an 18% increase over the previous year and an all-time high. Gang-related murders did take a slight dip. A look at the escalating gang population and gang-related crimes:

Gangs ‘94: 320 Gang Members ‘94: 18,672 *

Gang Activity

1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 Cases filed by D.A. 2,285 3,050 2,900 3,067 4,140 Violent felony charges 268 436 372 465 550 Solved/unsolved murders* 28 31 43 74 66

* Unsolved murders determined to be gang-related by police agency in whose jurisdiction they occurred and by district attorney’s office.Source: Orange County district attorney