Fresh Voices in Tough Fight

On the day more than two dozen police officers and federal marshals captured a notorious Los Angeles gangster in Bullhead City, Ariz., speakers at a USC symposium on gangs took turns swinging at Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton. There was lots of familiar fretting about how the police and media sow needless panic by “demonizing” gangs. And not a word about how convicted criminals like Timothy Joseph McGhee terrorize neighborhoods.

Instead, that conversation took place in Atwater Village the day before, as hard-working activists won certification as Los Angeles’ 62nd neighborhood council. Their biggest challenge in getting people involved, they said, was the number of residents who were too flat-out scared to leave their homes.

At the USC symposium last Wednesday, panelist Tom Hayden, a longtime activist and former state senator, dissed Bratton’s tough stand against gangs and graffiti as an effort to placate “people in their gated communities.”

Atwater Village, tucked against Interstate 5 and the Los Angeles River, is no gated community. Stories in this newspaper have described its $300,000 homes, but many of the people who live in those modest, two-bedroom cottages bought them decades ago, or they rent. And they -- like the people of Highland Park and Watts and Pacoima and Venice and El Sereno -- are tired.

They’re tired of being awakened by gunshots and police helicopters. They’re tired of giving up weekends to spruce up pocket parks with stone walls that gangsters then cavalierly spray-paint. They’re tired of being frightened, not by press reports or the police but by the likes of 29-year-old McGhee, arrested last week because police suspect him in a dozen murders.

Where were the city’s Tom Haydens when McGhee allegedly blasted the life from a 16-year-old whose sole crime was to use the same street moniker? Why do so many activists express more sympathy for the shooters than for those shot?

Not all young people with gang ties are criminals, let alone the psychopathic killers who make the news. And, yes, for a long time more than a few LAPD officers brutalized the people in gang-dominated neighborhoods. So it will take more than talk from Bratton to rebuild trust. But the city’s Haydens are so infatuated with their own tired rants that they don’t even hear what the chief is saying.

Here’s what a couple of the fresh voices at the symposium had to offer: The L.A. Police Department’s new gang czar, Deputy Chief Mike Hillmann, wants corporate L.A. to offer jobs and mentoring -- not just to still eager 14-year-olds but to 25-year-old veteranos sincerely looking to change. And civil rights attorney Connie Rice, who has sued more cops than most people have met, sees a sea change in the making. She’s not wasting time on old battles, but planning a revolution to turn neglected communities into the sort of real villages needed to raise children. And she’s recruiting Bratton and L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca to lead the charge.