No Vacation From Violence

Dennis Weathersby, a highly rated National Football League prospect, survived a drive-by shooting Sunday that could have turned a hometown success story into a tragedy. Home for Easter, the 22-year-old Oregon State University cornerback and Duarte High School alumnus was getting into his car when someone in a white SUV opened fire. A bullet entered his back, exited and struck his left arm. Police believe that the shooter was a gang member. Weathersby’s agent says the athlete is expected to fully recover and should be out of the hospital by Wednesday -- three days before the NFL draft gets underway.

Violence didn’t take an Easter holiday elsewhere in the region either. Rival gangs clashed Sunday at a Pacific Palisades gas station near the Pacific Coast Highway and Sunset Boulevard, police say, leaving one man shot in the neck. A 22-year-old man was shot nine times on a Hyde Park street, and a 17-year-old girl was shot, then set afire, in a South Los Angeles alley.

The Easter weekend tally lends urgency to meetings such as the one Monday night between a network of 45 African American churches and Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton. The churches want federal housing and social service agencies to pitch in against gang violence, especially to help ex-convicts find a way back into society without rejoining gangs.

Others are also catching on to the crisis and offering solutions. City Councilman Ed Reyes wants city contracts, particularly for construction projects, to favor bidders who promise to hire a percentage of people between the ages of 18 and 24, much as the city now gives special consideration to contractors who hire minorities and women. And Assemblyman Mark Ridley-Thomas (D-Los Angeles) is sponsoring a bill that would require state Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer to establish a youth gang task force that would not simply study the problem to death but push programs that have worked elsewhere.

All this is good. To stop gangs’ mayhem, Californians must do far more to prevent kids from joining them, to intervene with those who can be helped and to bust and incarcerate the truly incorrigible.

It’s a sad commentary on how bad things are, however, that another Ridley-Thomas bill is also needed. This legislation imposes a 10-cent fee on each round of ammunition sold in California to provide money for trauma centers and emergency rooms statewide. If California can’t keep young sociopaths from blasting away at the dreams of a young man who has worked hard in school and on the field, the least it can do is make sure someone’s there to patch up the bullet holes.