Policy reduced gang murder rate
Re “Big drop in L.A. homicides,” Sept 28
The new policy of the Los Angeles Police Department requiring “captains to call the gang interventionists, give them the word on the shooting and get out there and avert another homicide” is not new at all.
In 2001, now-retired LAPD Cmdr. Valentino Paniccia and I, with the help of Communities in Schools founder William “Blinky” Rodriguez, formed the San Fernando Valley Coalition on Gangs. Part of our strategy was to involve ex-gang member interventionists in the response to Valley gang homicides. The first full year after we required our captains to call Communities in Schools after a gang shooting, gang homicides dropped 42%.
The coalition received accolades from the California attorney general’s office and was held out as the model for gang crime reduction by the L.A. County Interagency Gang Task Force. Unfortunately, I could never get the rest of the department to embrace the ideas and strategies we were using in the Valley. It appears that it just took two years beyond my retirement.
Ronald W. Bergmann
Winnetka
The writer is a retired deputy chief of the LAPD.
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