Yearlong Anti-Violence Drive Lifts Off : Rally: As balloons inscribed with murder victims’ names are released, groups announce plans for a march and a 10-K ‘run for peace.’

A bouquet of pink, blue, orange and red balloons, inscribed with the names of more than 100 murder victims from the lesser-known to the indelible Nicole Brown Simpson, was released Wednesday morning into a sunny sky Downtown to kick off a yearlong violence awareness and prevention campaign.

Leaders of anti-violence groups, family members of murder victims, politicians and Police Chief Willie L. Williams helped the Inglewood-based Stop the Violence Increase the Peace Foundation announce plans for a march and a 10-K “run for peace” in 1996.

Without mentioning the Simpson case, Williams forcefully told a crowd gathered in the broad plaza outside the Hall of Administration that there needs to be more outrage throughout all of Los Angeles about the level of violence in the community.

“What does it take to stop the violence?” he asked. “It means that we won’t accept violent crime in our communities. We won’t accept it if it’s done by husbands against wives. We won’t accept it if it’s young people against their parents or their grandparents.

“It means we won’t accept violence simply because it occurs on the south side or the Eastside of our city or county and we look at it differently--and that is a reality in some quarters--than if it occurs in other parts of our city or county. . . . We . . . cannot have a certain amount that are everyday, that are just accepted as a way of life.”

The highly publicized wrong-turn killing of 3-year-old Stephanie Kuhen last month “was an outrage,” he said. “But that weekend there were 13 homicides and six people under the age of 21 who died in the city of Los Angeles. And there was not outrage for most of those other homicides.”

The names on the balloons sent aloft Wednesday ranged from the once-famous--for example, Latasha Harlins, whose death at the hands of a shopkeeper in 1991 is regarded as a significant event leading to the 1992 riots--to names that received little public attention: Jackson Singleton, Guadalupe Aguilar, Donald Barres, Guillermo Barajas, Adell Carier.

“We are tired and we are sick and the victims have finally seen their day,” said one of the rally’s organizers, Lorna Hawkins, who founded her own group, Drive-By Agony, after losing two sons to street violence.

Five other such rallies took place simultaneously Wednesday throughout Los Angeles County to begin publicizing the march and walk, and to bring together the region’s many anti-violence groups to work as a team.

Williams, who has tried to expand the LAPD’s use of community-based policing, said a stronger partnership between police and citizens is needed to stop violence. Officers, he said, must “understand what it is like to live in the various neighborhoods. And the only way you can do that is to have agencies all across our city, our county and our country that reflect the diversity and reflect the values and the mores and the norms that exist in our communities. Because understanding starts from the day you are born, not when you pin on a badge.”

Acknowledging that more social spending to deter repeat offenders is politically unpopular, Williams said: “We have to understand that we have to spend some money on treatment, rehabilitation and education of our folks, whether in youth facilities or whether they are in jail. Because if you don’t, when the folks come out, they are going to be worse off.”

Khalid Shah, executive director of Stop the Violence, said the rally--in the works for several weeks--had been planned in part to quell anger people felt about the Simpson verdict, whichever way it turned out.

“We have different people in our coalition, black and white, Jews and Catholics--people across the board--and whatever happened, we were going to use our influence to make sure our city was not torn apart,” Shah said.

Times staff writer Jeffrey L. Rabin contributed to this story.