Victims, Activists Call for Gang Crackdown

Nancy Diaz unfortunately knows what it’s like to be a victim in the current, and what officials concede is worrisome, upsurge of gang violence in South Los Angeles.

She had just gotten off work at a day-care center and was standing on her front porch Monday with family and friends waiting for a pizza delivery when shots rang out.

A shower of bullets, apparently intended for alleged gang members hanging out on the sidewalk nearby, pierced Diaz’s back and hit her sister-in-law, Sonia Medina, in the head.

Diaz is now joining other victims and community leaders in calling for police to crack down on gang violence. Police officials Tuesday pledged to address the situation before the Democratic National Convention comes to town this summer.

“I feel bad, because when you go out, you don’t know if you will come back,” Diaz, 22, said Tuesday as her 7-year-old daughter held in her small hand the mangled bullet that tore through her mother’s back. Diaz was treated at a local hospital and released, and Medina was expected to be released soon.

LAPD officials acknowledged during Tuesday’s Police Commission meeting that overall violent crime has jumped 7% in the city so far this year over the same period last year. Citywide, homicides have risen 17.4% compared with the same 1999 period--from 172 to 202.

The sharpest spikes in homicides have occurred in the department’s South and Central bureaus, where gangs have been at war in recent months, according to gang experts.

The Sheriff’s Department, which patrols unincorporated areas and 40 cities in the county, reported a similar trend: Homicides have increased 7.5% this year over the first five months last year--from 107 homicides to 115.

The statistics are unsettling, because for five years Los Angeles County enjoyed one of the steepest declines in crime rates in recent memory.

Whether the new surge in violence signals a larger trend is a matter of debate among police and gang experts. But South Los Angeles activists insist that police and city leaders must crack down on the violence before more people are killed or wounded.

Najee Ali, director of Project Islamic H.O.P.E., held a news conference Tuesday near Diaz’s front porch, calling on Mayor Richard Riordan and other elected officials to convene a gang summit in hopes of securing a truce among the rival factions.

Ali, a former gang member who grew up in Diaz’s neighborhood on East 73rd Street, warned that violence could mar the Democratic convention if gang troubles continue.

“What happens if a delegate gets shot?” he asked.

A spokesman for Riordan said the mayor is willing to listen to all crime-fighting ideas from the community but feels confident that LAPD Chief Bernard C. Parks “is on top of this issue.”

Riordan spokesman Peter Hidalgo also said the mayor believes that the recent rise in violence is only “a blip” in an overall decrease in crime.

Police Commission President Gerald L. Chaleff said he has been assured by the department’s leadership that officers are addressing the gang violence. He pointed to a department report that listed several strategies for reducing violent crime, such as increasing narcotics enforcement, dispatching more teams to investigate unsolved homicides and using more special enforcement units, among other tactics.

“I don’t think anyone is ignoring any of these issues,” he said.

Chaleff added that the department is taking steps to ensure that it is prepared for the convention.

County Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, whose district includes most of South Los Angeles, said she would support a gang summit but believes it needs to be initiated by gang members.

“The basis for so much of this warfare is something we cannot control,” she said.

USC sociology professor Malcolm Klein, author of several books on gang violence, said it is too soon to tell whether the recent increased violence represents a new trend throughout Southern California. “This is very cyclical,” he said.

Kahlid Shah, executive director of Stop the Violence, Increase the Peace Foundation, said he believes that Los Angeles is on the verge of a new cycle of gang violence, because of turf battles within a new generation of gang members.

He also placed some of the blame for the problem on the current scandal in the LAPD’s Rampart Division, which he said may have emboldened gangs. In addition, Shah criticized what he called the glorification of the gang lifestyle in movies and music.

“We are a society that has legitimized the gangster culture,” he said. “We have put a rubber stamp on it to say it’s OK to live that lifestyle.”

Shah urged city leaders and others to increase support for job training, leadership classes and other inner-city programs for at-risk youths.

The increase in violence seems to have begun last month and included the fatal shooting of Lori Gonzalez, the 20-year-old granddaughter of Chief Parks on May 28. She was shot in her car outside a Southwest Los Angeles restaurant, allegedly by a gunman who was aiming at a member of a rival gang in the passenger seat.

Other recent shootings and murders include:

* A woman who had been shot three times in the back was found dead in the street early Monday morning in a residential area off East Imperial Highway, Los Angeles police said.

* A 67-year-old man was killed and six others were wounded in an apparent gang drive-by shooting early Sunday morning outside a nightclub in the 4400 block of South Broadway. Police believe the shooting was in retaliation for a prior incident.

* A 17-year-old boy was shot and killed May 18 in front of his apartment complex on South Avalon Boulevard near 109th Street. Police believe that gang members mistook him for a rival and shot him from a passing car.

* One of the nine people wounded June 22 in a drive-by assault-rifle shooting at Athens Park died over the weekend, authorities said Monday.

The victims were at the park when a white truck pulled into the parking lot and two men leaned out firing assault rifles. Authorities said that the attack was gang-related and that most of the victims were members of the Athens Park Bloods.

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Times staff writer Elise Gee contributed to this story.