As Gang Truce Wanes, Valley Slayings Rise

By most accounts, it was the Mexican Mafia that ordered a Latino gang truce two years ago, exerting the authority of imprisoned leaders to bring peace to the streets of Los Angeles.

Now, the Mafia is in trouble--and so is the gang truce it spawned.

Aggressive enforcement against the powerful network in the state prison system has weakened the Mafia’s influence on the streets, triggering an outburst of killings in the San Fernando Valley this summer, say police officials and gang sources.

Some believe the syndicate has even washed its hands of the truce altogether.

“There is a full-out war between some gangs,” said Los Angeles Police Detective Mark Aragon, a gang investigator with the North Hollywood Division. “To the gangs in North Hollywood and Pacoima, the truce is over.”

Aiming to tighten its grip on the local drug trade, La EME--as the organization is known--told the gangs to curb their violence because it was disrupting the syndicate’s trafficking. For more than a year, gang killings declined in the Valley as an uneasy peace took hold.

Since then, however, nearly two dozen alleged Mafia members have been indicted on federal racketeering charges. Last spring, some alleged Mafia leaders were jailed. Others already in state prison were transferred into federal custody, plucking them out of their power base.

Adding to pressure on the truce, exhaustion and division have seeped into the leadership of the Valley Unity Peace Treaty, sources say.

At least 40 alleged gang members have been killed in the Valley already this year--compared to 29 for all of 1994. Most belonged to Latino gangs, police say.

“There’s no more unity, no more peace, no more truce, no more nothing,” said one person familiar with the treaty.

The truce was called on Halloween of 1993, following an order by the Mexican Mafia, which controls narcotics distribution, gambling and prostitution in the state penal system. The syndicate wanted to clamp down on the violence--especially drive-by shootings--that threatened to disrupt street drug sales, authorities say.

Also on that day, several hundred Latino gang members attended a meeting organized by two lay ministers from the Valley, who exhorted them to stop the bloodshed.

In its first year, the truce reduced Valley gang slayings from 44 in 1993 to 29 in 1994, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.

But by June of this year, 27 lives had already been claimed by gang violence. Overall, gang-related crimes were up 23% in the Valley over the previous year.

Police officials and gang truce leaders this spring contended vehemently that the truce was still intact and blamed the rise in violence on the growing presence of African-American and Asian gangs. The gang-related killings, they noted, did not involve Latinos and lacked the element of retaliation--gang members seeking revenge against rivals.

But in recent weeks, that has changed.

Two shootings last month in the northeast Valley, in which both the victims and suspected shooters were Latino men, roused the fears of police that the Latino gang truce was unraveling.

Last weekend, Narciso Gurrola and Maria Ortega were gunned down outside a party in Reseda after two Latino men approached them, asking if they belonged to a gang.

When Gurrola said yes, one of the men called back the name of a rival gang, then opened fire, fatally wounding Gurrola and Ortega in their backs.

A friend of Gurrola’s said the shooting reflected a shift in the Mexican Mafia’s agenda.

“The word out on the street is that the Mafia called off the truce. They figured we didn’t need it no more . . . that we had learned our lesson, but I guess not,” said the friend, who asked not to be identified.

“When the truce was on, if you shot someone, it was open season on your life. But that doesn’t seem to be the case anymore.”

The friend speculated that the gunman may have killed Gurrola and Ortega as part of a gang initiation rite. Police label the shooting a possible act of retaliation--another signal that the truce is over.

“Retaliations seem to be a big part of the recent gang shootings,” said LAPD Detective Frank Bishop, who heads the Foothill Division’s homicide team.

Gang crimes in the northeast section of the Valley covered by the division had increased 77% by the end of June, compared to the first six months of 1994. In August, there were six fatal, gang-related shootings in Foothill, where much of the Valley’s gang violence has been concentrated this year.

In an example of the escalation of gang violence, Bishop’s investigators this week arrested a Pacoima 16-year-old accused of shooting a rival gang member--an act that sparked a deadly retaliation.

Bishop said the youth shot Jose Garcia on Aug. 28 at a Pacoima street corner. Two days later, according to Bishop, Garcia’s gang struck back, prompting a gunfight at Hubert H. Humphrey Memorial Park that left one teen-ager dead and two injured.

To quell the growing violence in their area, additional officers have been assigned to patrol the Foothill Division.

“We are addressing the issue,” said Lt. Fred Tuller, head of the Valley Bureau’s gang unit.

Tuller, who declined to comment on the beefed-up operation, agreed that the arrests of Mexican Mafia members this spring may have contributed to the recent surge in violence.

“I think it has disrupted the truce for a while,” he said. “But to what degree I don’t know.”

Said North Hollywood Division investigator Aragon: “In the beginning, only some incidents were sanctioned by the EME. But as time went on, more and more people got the green light from them, and there was no reason to have the truce. . . . First it was people jumping each other, and then drive-by shootings with no hits. A lot of little things happened. Too many to turn a blind eye to.”

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Sgt. Wes McBride, who works in the agency’s gang detail, said the Mafia’s decree had mixed effects throughout the region. Its success in the Valley makes the current outbreak of violence all the more dramatic.

In addition, the local increase in killings may simply stem from the cyclical nature of gang crime, McBride said.

“Gang activity tends to be cyclical, and we’re on an upswing at the moment,” he said. “You can track this back for years.”

Others say the truce has also fallen victim to exhaustion and dissension among those who have tried to hold it together for two years.

At the heart of the peace effort is an inner circle of leaders, including former gang members who juggle full-time jobs, their families and the tightrope work of easing tensions between rival street factions.

Burnout has forced members of the inner council to draw back and regroup, including Donald Garcia and William (Blinky) Rodriguez, the two lay ministers who convened the Halloween peace summit. The council’s weekly meetings have been shelved for the past four months. So far this summer, only two meetings have been held.

And disagreement over the direction of the peace effort has led Garcia this week to say he will resign.

Garcia is disturbed by what he believes is the politicization of the gang treaty. A reformed gang member who served a prison term for murder, Garcia said that too much emphasis now rests on official and bureaucratic efforts--such as applying for government and private grants--rather than on time spent with the young men whose lives depend on the truce.

“Meetings are tiring. We need our energy to be out there on the streets with the gangs.”

Garcia also sees a shift away from the Christian underpinnings he believes the armistice was based on when he and Rodriguez called for an end to street violence.

“The peace treaty was founded on the Lord Jesus Christ. It worked for 15 months,” Garcia said. “But then the political elements came in, with people who wanted to be associated with a successful gang treaty. . . . The treaty changed in its direction. I feel the Lord was pushed aside, to second place.”

Said another source close to the peace process: “Where is the focus? Is it still on keeping the peace out there, or is it turning to other agendas, trying to get grants for this and that? . . . It doesn’t take that much money to take care of what needs to be taken care of out there.”

Rodriguez disputes that. “We’ve never stopped being out on the streets. That work has never ceased.”

He noted that funding is imperative for elements of the peace effort, such as mentoring programs and the kick-boxing classes offered as an alternative to hanging out on city streets.

This week, Los Angeles city officials gave preliminary approval to an $80,000 grant to the peace effort, double last year’s award.

But “think about what $80,000 is by today’s standards,” Rodriguez said. “It’s nothing.”

The activist acknowledged that stress has taken a toll on treaty leaders and that the time has come to reassess strategies for keeping the peace.

“It’s been a roller-coaster ride from the beginning,” he said. “We are weather-beaten. We’ve been running around on this for so long. . . .

“I’m just soul-searching myself. We’re at that fork in the road now.”

Times staff writer Jeannette DeSantis contributed to this story.