Price of Flagging Attention

Violence tends to spike in hot weather, and Los Angeles during the last month suffered the gangland equivalent of global warming: triple-digit highs and 50 homicides. As of Monday, the body count for the year was 407, up 22% from this time last year. The killings don’t stop at the city border. Homicides in unincorporated areas and cities patrolled by the county Sheriff’s Department stand at 217. The victims include 2-month-old Teiana English, who died on a hot night in Compton after thugs fired into her father’s car.

Although L.A. city homicides are well below the record 1,092 set in 1992, the proportion attributed to gangs has doubled since then, to almost 60%. Crime researchers blame the rising violence on the stalled economy, the wave of inmates jailed in the 1990s who have served their time and are returning to the streets and a population bulge of crime-prone adolescents.

They also point to neglect. The history of anti-gang programs is a story of high-profile starts that peter out unnoticed. Take the response in 1988 when rival Crips gangs brought their feud to upscale Westwood Village and killed Karen Toshima, a 27-year-old graphic artist caught in crossfire. Or in 1995 when gang members shot 3-year-old Stephanie Kuhen after her family made a wrong turn in Cypress Park. Both killings sparked public outrage but not sustained action. Attention waned when the mayhem stayed within poor neighborhoods.

It’s not too late to learn from our lapses. Two years ago, the state Legislature passed the Schiff-Cardenas Crime Prevention Act, which allocated money for anti-gang policing and an equal amount for mentoring, job training and other preventive programs. But today what was supposed to be an annual source of funding languishes in the budget impasse between the Legislature and Gov. Gray Davis.

In May, L.A. Mayor James K. Hahn announced an anti-gang plan that redeployed cops from desk work to street patrol and matched at-risk kids with summer jobs. Hahn also has improved lighting and installed police drop-in centers at besieged city parks. Now the mayor needs to appoint someone to lead the city’s anti-gang efforts and link them to federal, state, county and private programs.

Gang violence is a complex, deeply rooted problem with no quick fix. But research and experience show that a broad approach, combining law enforcement and social services and coordinating federal, state and local programs, is effective--as long as cops, social workers, community leaders and politicians keep at it, day after day, year after year.

The cost for not doing so adds up to more than the numbers killed. Ask Meichelle Isrel, who stepped out of a car in front of her grandmother’s house in Compton, heard shots and turned to see her baby, Teiana, covered with blood. She became one of 624 city and county homicide victims so far this year. But how do you measure the heartache she leaves behind?