Gang Crimes Continue to Rise, but Rate Has Slowed

Crime by Orange County gangs--including murder--continued to increase during 1995, although not as dramatically as in the previous two years, according to a county report on gangs released Monday.

“There are signs of a lot of activity and signs of a lot of success, but we’re far from out of the woods,” said Assistant Dist. Atty. John D. Conley. “We are not saying that the war on gang crime is anywhere nearing the end.”

The district attorney’s annual report credited the county’s nine special enforcement teams targeting gangs with aiding prosecution of gang members, who were sent to state prison in record numbers last year.

In 1995, 222 gang members or associates were sentenced to state prison--an increase of 18% over 1994 and of 174% over 1993, when Westminster was the only city with a Tri-Agency Resource Gang Enforcement team (known as TARGET) in place, the report said.

Juveniles also were sent to the California Youth Authority in record numbers: 176 gang youths were sentenced to the state facility in 1995, a 100% increase over 1994.

The report tracked prosecutions by the District Attorney’s Gang Unit, established in 1988, and monitored the impact of the county’s nine TARGET teams, which are made up of police, prosecutors, district attorney’s investigators and probation officers in seven cities.

Authorities say the teams focus on gang leaders who tend to be repeat offenders, hoping that elimination of the most active members will curb violent crime.

The report cited a number of accomplishments by the TARGET teams:

* Westminster reported a 67% decrease in gang activity in 1995 compared with 1991, before the team was in place.

* Santa Ana, through its anti-gang team, arrested 74 of the 102 suspects identified by authorities as the most active gang members in 1995.

* Garden Grove reported a 40% decrease in gang shootings after setting up a multi-agency team to battle street gangs.

* Orange authorities arrested eight members of a group identified as the city’s oldest and largest street gang after a team was set up there.

Despite successes in combating street violence, the report noted that gang membership and the number of gang-related homicides in Orange County continue to increase. And there was a slight dip in the number of gang murders solved, the report showed.

“There’s a mixed picture,” Conley said. “We’re pleased with the activities of our units. On the other hand, the [crime] numbers keep going up.”

Orange County Public Defender Ronald Butler declined to comment on the report, saying he had not seen the figures.

There were 70 gang-related murders in 1995, up from 66 in 1994 but lower than the record 74 gang homicides in 1993, according to the report.

In 1995, only 20 of the 70 gang murders--or 29%--were solved. That’s down from 30% solved in 1994 and 34% in 1993.

While the decrease in solved cases was statistically small, “the number itself is bad,” Conley said.

“No one’s happy that we only solve 29% of gang homicides,” he said.

The number of gang members charged with violent felonies also crept upward, to 565 in 1995 from 560 the previous year.

The district attorney reported that the number of gangs in the county increased to 341, which is 21 more than were identified in 1994, and that there were 21,328 gang members in the county, 2,600 more than the previous year.

The membership numbers are the highest since the Orange County Police Chiefs and Sheriff’s Assn. set up a computer system to track gang activity in 1991. At that time, there were 12,000 people identified as gang members in the county.

Butler said that at times he disagrees with the district attorney’s gang designations.

“Their criteria to have something fall within a ‘gang-related ‘ crime or arrest category could be different from how defense agencies might characterize them,” he said.

Times staff writer Thao Hua contributed to this report.