Assault on Gangs Stalled 16 Months After Slaying

It was one of those galvanizing Los Angeles moments, forged by a heinous eruption of gang crime that jolted political leaders toward decisive action.

The “wrong way” killing of 3-year-old Stephanie Kuhen--slain by gun-wielding gangsters when her family steered onto a dead-end street in the Cypress Park neighborhood--pierced to the heart of fears about random urban violence.

After President Clinton’s expression of anguish lifted the tragedy to the national stage, Mayor Richard Riordan hastily summoned top political, law enforcement and criminal justice leaders to City Hall. He vowed, among other things, to wage a forceful, countywide assault on gangs and to name a regional gang czar to coordinate disjointed anti-gang efforts.

“The public is crying out for action, not talk,” Riordan told the assembled leaders. “We owe it to the public to do something--now.”

Sixteen months later, there is still more talk than results.

The high-level “working group,” for example, met only once. The full-time gang czar notion was quietly discarded. Law enforcement officials have launched just one task-force crackdown on the gang linked to Stephanie’s death. Other ideas remain works in progress.

Now, Los Angeles officials again are sounding calls for action. This time it is in response to news of the growing terror of the 18th Street gang, the region’s largest. The revived debate over gang violence comes as the issue moves to the forefront of the mayor’s race, and Clinton has pledged to make street gangs a top crime-fighting priority in his second term.

But if the anti-gang fervor after Stephanie’s killing is any guide, the prospect of quick relief from gang violence is remote.

“We don’t know what works,” said Judith Steele, a City Hall public safety analyst. “It’s like trying to catch Niagara Falls in a teacup.”

The Stephanie Kuhen tragedy--like other high-profile gang killings before it--launched a new round of experimentation in combating gangs, a quest for a bigger and better teacup to contain the reign of violence. Although the effectiveness of the latest initiatives remain to be seen, many gang experts say the effort has provided a lesson in the kinds of mistakes to avoid.

Among them: swift answers that lack sufficient resources and thoughtful planning; cumbersome federal grants that can delay and even undercut sustainable solutions, and the political impulse by elected officials to carve up fledgling programs to ensure their constituents get a share.

One of Riordan’s most tantalizing pledges after Stephanie’s killing was that a regional gang czar would be quickly appointed.

“We want someone with access to leaders . . . who can spend 100% of their time on this,” Riordan told reporters after his summit.

The czar was to coordinate and evaluate anti-gang efforts across the county. Currently, no one in law enforcement or in the prevention field tracks which programs are most effective.

But almost immediately, the czar idea encountered familiar obstacles: turf considerations, politics and funding. Although conceptually appealing, the proposal failed to take into account how different agencies jealously guard their autonomy.

Behind the scenes, the commitment to having a gang czar working on the issue 100% of the time was downgraded to a 50% position, records show. Ultimately, with funds short, it became a 25% “gang-intervention coordinator,” primarily charged with overseeing the new task force zeroing in on the gang tied to Stephanie’s killing.

“It was one of those issues that sounded good at the time, but they didn’t follow up on it,” said Councilman Mike Hernandez, who represents the area where Stephanie was killed. “That’s why we have not solved these problems.”

The failure to deliver the gang czar exposed the mayor’s summit as “a bunch of politicians pontificating how they were tough on crime,” said County Supervisor Gloria Molina, who attended the session and represents the Cypress Park area.

Riordan said he has been talked out of the gang czar idea, for now. “People who know government better than me say it will fail,” he said.

Perhaps Riordan’s chief success is the task force targeting the 1,000-member Avenues gang, which is linked to Stephanie’s killing and blamed for much of the violence in Northeast Los Angeles.

The task force, by many accounts, holds promise as a new model of multi-agency cooperation.

A squad of 10 LAPD anti-gang officers has joined a Sheriff’s Department homicide and crime analysis team. The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms will provide weapons-tracking expertise. More uniquely, specially assigned attorneys from the city and county will prosecute everything from vandalism, probation violations and nuisance complaints to violent crime.

The goals: cripple the Avenues gang; reduce violent crime in the area by 20%; free the community of intimidation, and develop a model that can be duplicated in gang hot spots across the county.

To gauge what’s working--unlike most other anti-gang programs--outside researchers will be contracted to evaluate the results.

In addition, residents have been recruited to help identify neighborhood problem areas and help devise long-term intervention and prevention strategies.

Although a novel approach, the task force is a far cry from what Riordan and other officials envisioned. Initial hopes for an aggressive multicommunity assault on gangs fell victim to funding realities.

The mayor had pinned his hopes on obtaining a $5-million grant from Clinton’s anti-crime package. Simply preparing and processing the application consumed nearly half a year. Intense competition from other municipalities reduced Los Angeles’ share to $1 million, and final city approval of the funds came only in August.

As the expectation of new funds dwindled, a decision was made to focus the initial task force within the city of Los Angeles. As a result, the Sheriff’s Department’s contribution to the project was cut back.

The remaining program now is being funded largely out of local government budgets.

The delayed and downscaled financing scheme highlights a recurring problem: allowing uncertain and often short-term state and federal grants to define and drive innovative anti-gang efforts.

“One million dollars and going after one gang is a drop in the bucket,” said Councilwoman Laura Chick, chairwoman of the city’s Public Safety Committee. “Why [do] we need federal programs to get us to work together? Why isn’t that happening as a natural matter of course?”

Riordan conceded that such programs often are too dependent on a sluggish federal grant process.

“In government,” he said, “things aren’t implemented as fast as you like.”

At his summit, Riordan said he expected one important program to be unveiled within a few months. A new, countywide computer system feeding all patrol units was to identify whether gang members were violating probation, giving officers another tool to get repeat offenders off the streets.

But it too dragged on for months while officials awaited a $1-million federal grant. The program remains at least five months from being operational.

The mayor also promised to implement an enhanced model curfew program that would round up loitering teenagers, issue them citations and require parents to attend counseling sessions.

Initially to be tested in five police divisions, the program was rejected last spring by the City Council, in part because it feared that Latinos and blacks would be singled out.

But later the council reversed itself and expanded the program across the city--without providing additional resources to make it fully effective.

Most of the LAPD’s 18 divisions now operate some form of expanded curfew enforcement, but manpower has had to be shifted from routine patrol and other tasks. About 2,000 curfew citations have been written citywide in recent months, perhaps doubling previous levels. But that is a tiny part of the problem and the program has not yet put a major dent in crime, authorities say.

“A lot of curfew violators out here are not being apprehended or cited,” said LAPD Cmdr. Eric Lillo, who is overseeing the program.

It was a familiar case of politicians grasping for a piece of an anti-gang program pie before it was given a chance to develop, some observers said.

“Everyone is so desperate that when it comes into the political realm . . . everyone wants some of it,” said Steele, the public safety analyst. “So it gets pulled apart and diluted.”

As often happens at City Hall, political rivalries entered the equation and council members pushed off in their own direction after the mayor’s summit. Forming an ad hoc committee on juvenile violence, they recently approved a greatly expanded anti-gang intervention program.

Like the curfew program, the intervention effort was spread to communities across the city because of political considerations, before its effectiveness could be gauged.

Council members say they took action because clear leadership on the many facets of the gang issue have been lacking from the mayor and criminal justice officials.

“You have to have the political will to stay with something and to stay focused,” Chick said.

“It basically needs a point person to make sure that happens. [No one has] taken on that role.”

Most surprising to some council members and criminal justice officials was the fact that Riordan never reconvened his high-powered group.

The mayor said there was no reason to meet again. Staff members from his office and selected agencies, he said, have continued to work on the details of his working group’s initiatives.

Overall, Riordan defends his efforts and the progress made, noting that he personally lobbied Clinton for the federal money.

“I feel very good,” he said. “I think a lot’s come out of it.”

Not everyone agrees.

Councilman Mike Feuer and others say the group should have reconvened to track the progress made and resolve problems needing high-level attention.

“The bottom line is there are some good steps forward,” he said.

“[But] we have not even come close to fulfilling the potential that I think would exist with all those players sitting around the table, working as a team.”