PERSPECTIVE ON THE MEXICAN MAFIA : End the Reign of the King Rats : More support for anti-gang programs and federal/local initiatives targeting the thugs will offer kids an alternative.

And the strongest was always the king . . . among the rats.

--from James Clavell’s “King Rat”

The murder of 3-year-old Stephanie Kuhen has generated public anger all the way to the White House against the street gangs we Angelenos often take for granted as an unpleasant fact of local life, like earthquakes.

The child was killed when alleged gang members shot up the car she was riding in after the driver took a wrong turn onto a street the gang considered its turf. No one with a heart could help but be appalled. And no one with a brain would argue against the proposition that every street punk involved in that awful crime should be punished. But all this outrage could be misdirected and dissipate if our only response is a harsh, but inevitably temporary, crackdown on gangs.

We need an anti-gang strategy that has more vision than having the police pick up every kid who happens to violate curfew, hoping the experience will scare him or her straight. We already have the people and programs that could carry out such a strategy. They include Father Greg Boyle at Dolores Mission, Brother Modesto Leon in East Los Angeles and the staff of the Community Youth Gang Services Project. Neither they nor other courageous gang workers ever get enough political and financial support.

Local business and government should also focus on providing alternatives to gangs. Experts agree that up to 90% of the estimated 150,000 gang members in Los Angeles County are marginal and could be deterred from gang life with a modicum of guidance or opportunity. We should support programs that provide it, like the Hope in Youth campaign launched by Cardinal Roger Mahony and other area church leaders.

Law enforcement can target the hard-core gangsters--the born losers who cause most of the serious crime associated with gangs, like street drug sales. But even here we have a hopeful precedent in a recent law-enforcement crackdown on the so-called Mexican Mafia, a notorious California prison gang created by some Los Angeles-area prison inmates in the 1950s, which periodically tries to assert its influence on the streets.

The police identified the first suspect arrested in Kuhen’s killing as an ex-con “associated” with the Mexican Mafia, or EME as it is also known. (He has since been released but remains a suspect, according to investigators.) According to law-enforcement sources, gang experts and community activists, EME is linked to a recent upsurge in gang-related shootings in Cypress Park, where Stephanie Kuhen was killed, and nearby areas like Lincoln Heights.

The scenario is this: EME has embarked on another effort to expand its influence outside the prisons, first ordering local Latino gangs to stop drive-by shootings, then “taxing” them for a share of any profits they make from criminal activities. Some Eastside gangs have refused to cooperate and must now defend their turf against EME enforcers. The result has been increased paranoia about strangers in the barrios and an upsurge in violence.

The last time EME tried to assert itself outside prison was in the 1970s. EME members were able to take control of a handful of anti-poverty programs aimed at rehabilitating ex-cons and drug addicts. But those programs soon collapsed from the corruption and sheer incompetence of the thugs who tried to run them. In fact, one possible explanation for the recent upsurge in EME activity is that some of the gang’s members who were jailed or took it on the lam after that debacle have returned to the streets.

But this time they have been met head-on by a special task force of federal and state agents that last May got indictments against 22 EME leaders and associates under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. It has been a slow, methodical investigation, and the suspects won’t come to trial until next year. But if convicted, EME’s leaders will be scattered throughout the federal prison system, far from their California prison base. Anyone who doubts that strategy can work should ponder the moral of “King Rat.”

James Clavell’s wartime novel is set in a prison camp near Singapore. The title character is an American corporal. By dint of cunning and wile, “the King,” as he is called, is able to lord it over his British counterparts, most of them officers. But “the King” gets his comeuppance when the war ends and he is reduced to again being ordered about by his many superiors.

The parallels between that novel and the Mexican Mafia’s all-too-real history was pointed out to me 20 years ago by a criminal investigator who had tracked the evolution of EME. He called it “the King Rat syndrome,” meaning that the thugs affiliated with EME were brutally effective leaders behind bars. But in the real world, they are at best mere corporals.

If the feds put EME’s leaders deeper in the holes where they belong while we on the outside do all we can to redirect the misguided youngsters who find such gangs attractive, it could finally break the back of EME. But it will require patience, persistence and perspective. The violent corporals of this city’s barrios are dangerous, but they can be beaten.