Seeking Solutions

Experts propose solutions to the rise in gang homicides:

“If I was king for a day, I’d pull about 12 city blocks in South-Central Los Angeles and build a GM plant down there and put all these people to work. So you develop a middle class, you develop people that can say, ‘Hey, I can hold a job. I can support a family. And if you won’t let me do that, then I’m gonna go out and do stickups and I’m gonna gangbang.’ Ask them. They’ll tell you that. And society has failed horribly about addressing the problems in that community that give rise to gangs.”

--Deputy Police Chief John D. White, LAPD

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“My feeling is that we ought to increase the penalty for jury tampering [and witness intimidation]. . . . Otherwise it is a win-win situation [for those who interfere with proceedings]. If a guy is successful in intimidating a witness or . . . jury tampering, the worst they are looking at is a couple of years [incarceration]. So the rational calculus in an amoral or immoral mind is to take their chances with jury tampering or witness intimidation.”

--California Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren

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“We have to start creating programs to address the needs and concerns of young people who have been excluded, who have been pushed out from the mainstream. . . . The people who are really concerned about the killings and the crime . . . need to get together with . . . individuals out there in the community and try to find out [the] root causes of the problem. . . . Just locking people up is not going to solve the fact that we have a problem in our society. . . . You can lock up every gang member in the world right now and within a few years, you will have a whole new generation.”

--Community organizer DeWayne Holmes, former member of the PJ Crips