Breaking a Cycle of Distrust

High homicide rates are the norm worldwide in societies where courts and cops fail to resolve conflicts, according to scholars interviewed by Times reporters Jill Leovy and Doug Smith. To Los Angeles’ disgrace, that holds true in South L.A., where the well-grounded fear of retribution from criminals far outweighs faith in cops to do anything about crime. So witnesses remain silent and killers remain free. Young people join gangs to protect themselves and settle scores.

South L.A. drives Los Angeles homicide statistics. With a murder rate five times the national average, it led the city in homicides in 2003. But the number killed dropped enough from 2002 to fuel a 23% decline citywide. One of Police Chief William J. Bratton’s challenges in the new year will be to keep the extra officers he assigned to the high-crime South Bureau there despite an already thinly stretched Police Department.

But cops, however key to solving South L.A.’s homicide ills, are not the sole cure. Other civic leaders face an equally daunting challenge: ending the culture of despair and distrust that sustains the cycle of crime.

More cops solving more cases would help build trust and break the cycle -- but would require cooperation from a still distrustful community. A story in the Sunday Los Angeles Times Magazine underscores how hard it will be to bridge that rift. Reporter Michael Krikorian chronicled two years in the life of a South L.A. teenager, during which teachers, counselors, probation officers, the boy’s mother and even two nonfatal bullets to the head could not compete with the gang he had joined at 11. They could not counter the culture of distrust and despair. What can?

Changing a Culture

Two decades ago, a small group of grieving mothers whose children had died in car crashes caused by drunk drivers set out to change society’s tolerance of drinking and driving. Mothers Against Drunk Driving raised public awareness about the dangers of driving while intoxicated and helped strengthen laws against it.

Los Angeles has no shortage of mothers heartbroken over losing their children to homicide. Many have rallied to support each other and speak out against violence. But in the poorest neighborhoods where much of the killing is concentrated, many others lack the resources -- not to mention the leisure time -- that organizing and sustaining such a campaign requires. Many are too scared to speak up.

We hope that is about to change with the help of some grass-roots organizing by black leaders here. Turf battles that inevitably pop up in routine matters -- which politician gets the credit -- should not be tolerated and have no place in this matter of life and death.

The 2003 toll of just over 500 dead is unacceptably high. Ten times that number were wounded last year, and hundreds more live with grief or fear. The city must continue its efforts to hire more cops as well as to promote the creation of jobs and to help parolees fit back into families and communities without returning to crime. But ordinary people can’t leave everything to government, and not just because of the state and local budget crises.

Three years ago, the Harvard public health school launched a national campaign against gang violence aimed at people who live outside the killing zones. The project encourages adults to volunteer, through local programs in their cities, as mentors to young people from poor, single-parent households and high-crime neighborhoods.

A Multifaceted Approach

Even an army of mentors, of course, won’t halt homicides in Los Angeles -- or save every Joe Jones, the 15-year-old gang member profiled in Sunday’s magazine. For all its success, MADD hasn’t ended drunk-driving deaths, nor have deaths declined simply because of anti-drunk-driving campaigns. They have dropped because of a multifaceted approach that includes seat belts, air bags, better highway design and other safety improvements. The designated-driver campaign is only one tool. But as such it is a model, a counterweight to despair.

Far too few anti-gang programs are backed up by research and results, but studies show that a stable mentoring relationship helps kids stay in school and reduces drug use and violence -- not for every young person, but for a significant number. Mentoring aims to help young people walk away from trouble by giving them something to walk toward.

The homicide toll is not, after all, South L.A.’s problem. It is Los Angeles’ shame.

To Take Action: To learn more about mentoring or to volunteer, call the Los Angeles Mentoring Partnership at (213) 630-2141, or go to the National Mentoring Project website www.mentoring.org, which has links to local programs.