Have We Hit the Breaking Point?

There are no cheap deaths for Mary Ridgeway. A 25-year veteran of gang probation work in East Los Angeles, Ridgeway has seen a nurse killed for target practice, toddlers mistakenly killed in the line of fire, a baby born wounded with two bullet holes. In January, four of the 50 gang members she monitors were killed.

Each time, she said, “Another piece of your heart goes away”--not only for the victims, but also for the perpetrators and perhaps for herself. “You get the sickening feeling that there have been incidents like this before and they will be replicated again and again.”

In a way, the death of Stephanie Kuhen was no different. The 3-year-old girl was slain in the wee hours of Sept. 17 on a dark, dead-end street in Cypress Park after the driver of the car she was in had apparently done little else but take a wrong turn; six teen-agers and men have been charged in the case. “You spend a lifetime career helping people, and people have to say, ‘For what? What did you accomplish? Where are the rules? What has happened to all of us?’ ” Ridgeway asked.

Among those who work on the streets of the city’s poorest neighborhoods--social workers, gang experts, the clergy--a certain weariness has moved in, along with soul-searching and debate over race and violence since widely publicized accounts of the crime brought national attention and outrage. Behind the headlines and the trauma, they are discussing a way of thinking about such horrors.

To some at the end of their rope, this craven shooting clearly announced that the barbarians are at the gate. “It’s almost as though this is the demarcation line between what is tolerated and what cannot be tolerated,” said one social worker from the San Fernando Valley, who only recently noticed gunshots in her own neighborhood.

“It puts it into a perspective that doesn’t allow for explaining away behavior and blaming society. We’ve had a 30-year abdication of parental and personal responsibility that’s been gradual and insidious and now we’re seeing the anarchy.”

“I think it certainly has an emotional effect on all of us. You can just keep your head in the sand so long,” said another veteran social worker who has treated addicts and violent criminals.

“I had compassion for all my clients. I was able to establish a relationship with them and help them alleviate their acting out behavior. I don’t think I could do that today,” she said. “There are times when I want to put them away and lock the door and throw away the key.”

Ron Wakabayashi, executive director of the Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations, echoed that sentiment: “I heard people say, ‘I wasn’t for the death penalty, but it’s brought me over the line.’ ”

Yet, in a dozen interviews, more voices were heard complaining that one allegedly gang-related incident involving a young white child has elicited more publicity and outrage than the more frequent ones that have victimized innocent minority children in poor neighborhoods. They blame an inflammatory media spin that they say perpetuates false and dangerous distinctions between “them” and “us.” These people stressed that the death of Stephanie Kuhen should lead to redoubled efforts to attack the underlying causes of youth violence.

Father Gregory J. Boyle, the celebrated Boyle Heights youth leader, said, “I had some TV reporter ask, ‘Isn’t it true this is considered a trophy, to kill a 3-year-old girl?’ Obviously not. Where does a question like that come from?”

Many drew parallels to the 1988 death of Karen Toshima, a 27-year-old graphic artist killed in gang cross-fire in Westwood, because of the similar speedy calls for action, official vows to get tough on gangs and requests for rewards leading to the arrest of the assailant. (Durrel DeWitt Collins, a gang member, is serving a sentence of 27 years to life for the killing.)

Said Boyle: “I’ve buried 51 kids and we haven’t gotten more police, never had more detectives assigned and never had a reward offered for anything. I think it tells you a life in Westwood is worth more than 51 in my barrio.”

On Sept. 9, Selissa Gasca, 16, who worked in Boyle’s office at Dolores Mission, was killed walking down the street when gang members shot her for ignoring their demands to identify her gang affiliation. Her death didn’t make the papers, Boyle noted. No arrests have been made.

The passion over the killing of Stephanie Kuhen reached such a fever pitch that Boyle said he became a target of threats and rage for his work in trying to change attitudes about gang members and help them with education and jobs.

“I’m identified with an approach that would insist human beings are involved and because they are, we need to respond in a way that’s human, that understands where violence comes from, not ever to excuse it, but to explain it, to take enough measures that are effective, to see that things like this never happen again,” he said.

The solution his opponents most often seek--more prisons--is as effective an approach as building more cemeteries to solve the AIDS crisis, Boyle believes.

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Similarly, Brother Modesto Leon, who runs 18 continuation schools for high-risk youth in Los Angeles County, attends two funerals a week. “Sometimes people say, ‘Well, that one’s OK. It’s among each other.’ Then the violence comes and hits the rest of the community. People can’t say it’s OK as long as gang members are killing each other,” he said. He wonders whether such attitudes create the distance and inattention that prevent realistic solutions.

Although urban crime rates have been falling for the past three years, authorities say youth crime has become more prevalent and more vicious.

Responding to the criticism, Los Angeles Police Cmdr. Tim McBride said, “It was the media that determined the response, not us.” The community affairs commander said there was a “maelstrom of interest” in what was clearly different from “a standard gang shooting” in which “they tend to go after each other.” Moreover, he said heightened media interest in the LAPD and its chief, due partly to the O.J. Simpson trial, means that crimes in Los Angeles get more coverage than similar crimes in surrounding cities.

USC professor Malcolm Klein, author of “The American Street Gang,” (Oxford University Press, 1995) suggested that the media blitz surrounding this particular crime could be the result of beleaguered public officials jumping at the chance to make their work appear valuable. “The LAPD is feeding the media, as is [Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Gil] Garcetti. Not that they shouldn’t, [but] there’s not enough about this particular killing to separate it out from a number of others that would merit this kind of attention except that it would have enormous public appeal. She’s no more dead than the others. There’s no larger family of bereaved than the others. It’s not a nice picture of the way in which we handle these issues.”

He does not believe there is such a thing as “random, senseless” killings. “You have to know why the [gang] members were there at that time, what they thought that car represented when it came down the alley, were they drinking, was there good lighting? Not to blame the victim, but if the driver had a panic reaction, that may have contributed to that situation.”

Klein said gang violence has proven to be intractable and despite the best intentions has grown appreciably worse. “There is nothing to suggest this is going to change as long as we have inner cities, racism, poverty, youth unemployment, weakened family structures, ignorance about the factors that contribute to gang development and as long as we don’t put gang problems on the front burner of our public policies.”

Many in the media unwittingly fanned the flames of public outrage by erroneously translating Spanish-language graffiti on the street to the dramatic “Street of Killers” when in fact “Avenidas . . . Assecinos” refers to a local gang (the Avenues) and one of its branches (the Assassins), he said.

Many gang members were as appalled by the crime as the rest of the community, some gang workers said. “Other gang members are calling the Avenues ‘baby killers,’ ” said Dennis Galindo, a deputy probation officer in East Los Angeles. Another gang planned a carwash with proceeds to go to Stephanie Kuhen’s family, he said.

Galindo said police detectives treated this crime no differently from any other and argued that complaints of discrimination may sometimes distract a community from its own problems.

Indeed, the city’s pockets of poverty have become frightening places over the last 30 years, said anthropologist James Diego Vigil, associate director of UCLA’s Center for the Study of Urban Poverty. Gangs have increased tenfold. Once benign mixed neighborhoods have become literal and symbolic dumps, he said. Their torn-out apartment houses, narrow streets and dead-end alleys make even police officers feel vulnerable, he said.

After several generations of reduced attention and joblessness, families have lost their ability to accomplish the basic tasks of urban living. “A lot of people are crazy there, caught up in locura, “ a Spanish word for “playing with being crazy,” Vigil said. Outsiders who venture in can get caught in their web of sickness. The preeminent challenge is to re-educate the poor in the most troubled areas on how to raise families and to guide them into the job market.

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Ridgeway, the gang probation worker, said the most alarming trend is the increasing youth of armed gang members. Two decades ago, the shooting was done by 16- to 19-year-olds. Now, more shootings are committed by 13- to 15-year-olds--early adolescents who in other circumstances might be considered merely geeky or awkward.

“These kids have the same process of maturation, yet they are running around with high-powered guns trying to earn their stripes and show how important they are. A significant factor in indiscriminate shootings is that they don’t have the maturity,” she said.

The would-be helpers cite a familiar list of basic problems the neighborhoods face: middle-class flight, the lack of involved mentors, a dearth of all-night recreation centers, too few and too fragmented prevention and intervention programs, and a lack of practical law enforcement, such as witness protection programs.

Advocates acknowledge that in the current climate, the political will to assist the poor has dissipated. Social programs such as welfare and Medicare, which have been in place for decades, are on the verge of being slashed under a philosophy that assumes the poor are largely responsible for their own problems.

Meanwhile, feeling the strain, some organizations are moving out.

The Eastern Los Angeles Regional Center, a 100-employee organization catering to families with developmentally disabled children, is moving from Lincoln Heights to Alhambra when its lease expires in June. “Rather than renew that lease, we are choosing to move because of gangs and safety reasons,” said Lynn Love, manager of human resources.

Rudy Samora, executive director of Fiesta Educativa, a Lincoln Heights organization that helps families with disabilities, said, “People who still have the gumption to deal with the issues here find it difficult. Some feel their staff is in danger and they had better find a safer location to operate. Their presence is missed in the community.”

Some who stay find solace in individual, seemingly heroic victories. Some fall back on their spiritual convictions.

Most, having seen public outcries before, believe this one, too, will quickly fade. Said Vigil: “It’s going to be a temporary passing moment of public outcry and moral panic, but then it will subside. There’s not enough money and people will go back to more tired solutions, more prisons, putting people away, making people feel safe. Business as usual.”