Leadership Vacuum Consigns Bratton to Waging War Alone

A beast is on the loose in Los Angeles, and the new chief of police is chasing it with one hand on his six-shooter and the other on his megaphone.

One day Bill Bratton compared local gangs to the New York Mafia, fishing for federal help in rounding up the bad guys. The next day Broadway Bill took us to Dodge City, saying “hang ‘em high” in reference to a car chase that left a child with a severed arm.

It’s too soon to know if these daily scoldings -- part psychological warfare and part ego -- can lead to results. But Bratton is no dummy, and at the very least, he seems to have brought hope to thousands of folks who are afraid to let their children out of the house.

Here’s the problem: Bratton needs loads of help from public officials who don’t wear badges. And when it comes to leadership and imagination, we are in the drought of the century.

I could be wrong, but I don’t think L.A.’s surge in gang crime is a blip. I think it’s the shake before the quake, and no matter which side of the fault line we might live on in the city of riches -- the have side or the have-not side -- we may all get rattled.

In the 10 years ending in 1999, South Los Angeles lost more than 50,000 jobs. It now has roughly seven residents per available job, as opposed to fewer than three residents per job citywide, according to Dan Flaming of the Economic Roundtable.

“It’s kind of a Rust Belt along the Alameda Corridor now,” says Flaming, referring to the good-paying industrial jobs that used to feed families and nourish neighborhoods.

When American corporations chased cheap labor and higher profits overseas, we were all supposed to celebrate the new economy at Target, where foreign-made goods would cost peanuts and we’d all find work rounding up the shopping carts in the parking lot.

Well, guess what. The second-rate jobs of the new economy don’t pay the bills, and you don’t have to take my word for it.

This year’s “Tale of Two Cities” report from the United Way said 23% of L.A. County’s households earn less than $20,000 a year, 18% live in poverty, and 30% of adults over 25 didn’t make it through high school. All this is happening within a few miles of the hillside moguls who reap fortunes on entertainment that make us dumber and cruder by the minute.

Are you beginning to get the picture?

Of course there’s blood in the streets. We’ve got schools that don’t work, jobs that don’t pay, dads in jail, drugs on the corner, guns on the street, and a pop culture that glorifies the whole mess.

And the problem goes beyond the baggy-pantsed thug on a corner in South or East L.A., acting the fool. We’re in the midst of a national breakdown that’s economic and social, north and south, black and white and everything in between.

When the city of Oakland hit the 100-homicide mark for the year, Mayor and former Gov. Jerry Brown was asked whom to blame.

“Bad schools, bad parents, the bad economy, a bad media, gangsta rap and bad values,” he said, adding that it would take “almost a moral revolution” to solve the problem.

I never thought I’d see the day when Jerry Brown sounded so much like Dan Quayle, let alone Bill Bratton. Then again, he’s the mayor who started his own military academy to drill discipline into Oakland youth.

Has the culture gotten worse, I asked Brown? Or are we just getting older?

It’s gotten worse, he said. The 5% of students who are bad apples now control the schools, negative cultural influences make it harder to build character and the new economy is destructive to families.

“The government has to ensure a living wage for everyone who works full time, and that would bolster families and create counter-incentives to the druggies on the corner,” Brown said. “But that’s not politically acceptable in today’s world. It’s more acceptable to reduce taxes on billionaires and multimillionaires.”

Speaking of mayors, where’s ours? Is he still shopping for pandas in China, or was that him standing in Bratton’s shadow when the chief declared war on gangs?

If Slim Jim Hahn had half as much to say about boosting the economy in South L.A. as Bratton does about crime, we might get something going.

And where’s L.A. schools boss Roy Romer? Guess what, Roy. Belmont ain’t the problem, so give it a rest. Washington Prep in South L.A.’s got robbery, drugs and sex in the halls, and nobody’s been fired?

At least shake a fist. Blow a gasket. Come up with a fresh idea.

That wasn’t a Santa Ana condition that hit Los Angeles a couple of weeks ago. It was a gale force created by a leadership vacuum that has never been more obvious. Bill “Hang ‘Em High” Bratton might turn out to be all bluster, but at least he’s got everyone’s attention.

I’m telling you he can’t do it alone. Would somebody please help him?

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Steve Lopez writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at steve.lopez@latimes.com