The Fight Against Crime: Notes From The Front : Bombers Often Become Their Own Victims

It was a military officer’s nightmare: a group of gang members in the Navy caught with a crate of hand grenades they had whisked off their ship.

And five of the grenades were missing.

The sailors-turned-gangsters said they sold the missing grenades to members of the Los Angeles Crips gang. To this day they haven’t been found. And that, said Los Angeles Police Lt. Steven Allen, is how explosives meant for military combat can drift onto the streets of Los Angeles.

As the supervisor of the LAPD’s bomb squad, Allen has seen all sorts of explosives used in nearly every conceivable scenario. Most are pipe or other homemade bombs, detonated by thrill-seeking youths.

But a disconcerting minority of the explosives, made to government specifications to destroy enemy troops, wind up in the hands of street or motorcycle gangs, or paramilitary groups, he said. Last November, a piece of a cluster bomb mysteriously appeared at the Van Nuys Salvation Army depot. Also last year, gang members followed up a drive-by shooting on a South-Central house by lobbing in a hand grenade.

Neither device exploded.

Allen says right-wing paramilitary groups are the most common purchasers of military explosives on the black market because “they’ve got more money.”

Bombs and grenades are still rare in street gang warfare. “Right now they’re just content shooting each other with high-powered weapons,” Allen said.

In the San Fernando Valley, Allen said, graying biker gangs occasionally carry military explosives. Rumor has it that one such Valley gang has about 10 grenades, looking to hurl them at rivals, Allen said.

Allen said only a small fraction of the bomb squad calls involve military explosives, because although there is an active black market for the devices, there is a limited pool of customers. Most stolen explosives are smuggled out by opportunistic military personnel and peddled to well-connected parties, Allen said.

“The normal citizen is not going to have someone approach him on the street, open his coat and say ‘How much for these five cluster bombs?’ ”

Like the Unabomber and the bomber who blew up the Oklahoma City federal building, most criminals choose homemade explosives, Allen said. Frequently, they become victims when the improvised devices blow up.

“A lot are kids playing around,” Allen said. “Our typical bomber is between 12 and 17 and he’s never been arrested before, and he’s just experimenting.”

“And our typical victim,” he added, “is the bomber.”

Many of the teenagers spot bomb-making instructions on the Internet or in underground handbooks, Allen said.

Occasionally, they get help from elsewhere. One 15-year-old Los Angeles teen made five bombs using supplies given to him by his supportive mother, Allen said, adding: “Sometimes the parents don’t show a whole lot of common sense.”

The bomb squad deactivated those bombs, but others have exploded prematurely and blown out their makers’ eyes and shredded limbs.

Even ideological bombers are as likely to hurt themselves as their targets, Allen said.

He recalled one 19-year-old last year who made a pipe bomb at home, planning to detonate it inside a sales box for a pornographic newspaper. The bomb blew up in the man’s face, blinding him and blowing off his arms.