City Hall Cool to Feinstein’s Anti-Gang Bill

Underscoring deep divisions over how best to counter gang violence, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s bid for Los Angeles City Council backing of a sweeping anti-gang bill bogged down Wednesday amid concerns that it tilts too heavily toward tough law enforcement.

Feinstein (D-Calif.), who has made gangs a top crime-fighting priority, came to City Hall expecting strong support from the elected leaders in the nation’s gang capital. Instead, during an emotional and often testy joint hearing of two key council committees, the senator was sharply questioned by some members and openly criticized by community workers, who accused her of ignoring the root causes of gang violence.

Feinstein, angrily confronted by one anti-gang worker outside the council chamber, left surprised and disappointed when a motion to support a bill she is co-sponsoring was tabled. Instead, council members said they will examine the measure in detail, seek more public input and send it to the full council for a vote in three weeks.

“It’s almost an ostrich approach to what’s happening out there--a nonrecognition of what’s happening,” said Feinstein, who moments earlier testified that 7,300 people have died during the city’s gang warfare in 16 years. “All those killings should get the message across.”

The encounter came at a sensitive juncture in the city’s long, frustrating debate over the gang problem: Several innocent children have been gunned down in recent weeks, and officials have been groping for new tools to confront sprawling gangs such as 18th Street, the region’s largest.

In a period of shrinking resources and public demands for tangible action, Feinstein’s venture to City Hall spotlighted growing tensions over how to balance long-term prevention efforts with a need for rapid relief in neighborhoods suffering rampant street violence.

Surrounded by charts showing the interstate spread of gangs, Feinstein said tougher laws are needed to deal with 18th Street and other large gangs that are evolving into syndicates engaged in “very sophisticated criminal activity.”

Among the bill’s main provisions: doubling federal penalties for gang crime; tougher penalties for interstate gang activity and recruiting minors into gangs, and expansion of racketeering statutes to include weapons trafficking, immigrant smuggling and using juveniles to commit violent crime. A similar bill died last year. But Feinstein thinks the chances of passage have improved, partly because of increased awareness of the gang problem and bipartisan support from the White House and Republicans.

Joining the senator was Loretta Thomas-Davis, mother of 17-year-old Corrie Williams. The teenager’s slaying one afternoon last month on an MTA bus became one of the latest benchmarks of random gang violence. Struggling to maintain her composure, Thomas-Davis brought the chamber to silence as she pleaded with the lawmakers to get behind the bill.

“I am begging the council to back this legislation. There are children dying . . . every single day. I can’t bear it. Other parents can’t bear it. I hope and pray that this works,” she said.

Two ministers from gang-plagued South Los Angeles neighborhoods joined Laura Chick, chairwoman of the council’s Public Safety Committee, the LAPD and City Atty. James Hahn in strongly endorsing the Feinstein bill.

But audience members loudly applauded when longtime Eastside gang worker Father Gregory J. Boyle attacked Feinstein’s gang bill as “wrongheaded.” Gang members and the young people they seek to recruit need hope and jobs, he said, not misguided laws designed solely to scare them. “There is not a [person] who works with gangs . . . who thinks this will stop gangs,” he told council members.

Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg said key parts of the bill are vague and could go overboard in sending youngsters to prison. “What we’re doing is going to put more children in custody for a long time,” she said.

Others said the bill lacks adequate funding to be truly effective and fails to include an equal measure of money and programs for intervention and prevention.

Feinstein noted that she had supported earlier bills emphasizing prevention programs, but cited several shootings of young people in recent days and said stronger law enforcement efforts are essential. “These are not wayward youth. . . . I want to put them away, make no mistake,” she said.

The conflict spilled into a hallway outside, where Feinstein was confronted by Darren “Bo” Taylor, a former gang member and president of Unity One, a grass-roots gang intervention organization. “We can’t even meet with you. We’re tired of playing games,” Taylor told the senator, complaining that Corrie Williams’ mother had been misused to garner support for legislation that would exacerbate the problem by funneling more youths through jails.

Feinstein shot back that only those involved in federal crime need worry. “I’m not trying to throw everyone in jail,” she said. Taylor later was promised a meeting with a Feinstein aide.

Afterward, some lawmakers said the effort to fast-track an endorsement of the bill was unnecessary and misread the council’s sensitivity to the issue.

“It sounded like another political Band-Aid to me,” said Councilman Mike Hernandez, who urged his colleagues to weigh various anti-gang bills pending in Congress before throwing their support behind any measure.