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Officials Turn Out for Harbor Gateway Anti-Gang Rally
LOS ANGELES, January 13, 2007 - Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Harbor-area Councilwoman Janice Hahn turned out Saturday for an anti-gang rally in the Harbor Gateway neighborhood where a 14-year-old black girl was shot to death, supposedly for crossing a turf line at 206th Street.

About 300 people turned out for the rally in the racially mixed neighborhood.
The rally in the Harbor Gateway area called for the end of gang violence and the racial divide between Latinos and blacks, an aide said.

City Councilwoman Janice Hahn, Los Angeles Police Department Deputy Chief Earl Paysinger, officials with the Los Angeles County and Los Angeles Human Relations commissions, members of the Stop the Violence, Increase the Peace Foundation, community leaders and community activists also participated in the "End Violence Now Community Rally."

Saturday's rally was the latest in a series of marches by multi-ethnic groups of activists across 206th Street, the "forbidden line" Latino gang members have warned blacks not to cross under threat of attack.

The protests were sparked by the Dec. 15 alleged hate-crime killing of Cheryl Green, a 14-year-old black girl. Ernesto Alcarez, a Latino gang member, has been charged with one count of premeditated murder and six counts of attempted premeditated murder, with the special circumstances of murder to further a gang and murder based on race, in connection with the killing.

The killing of the teen -- an eighth-grader at Stephen M. White Middle School in Carson -- was believed to be the latest evidence of escalating warfare between blacks and a Latino gang in the area. Police said Green was not involved with gangs and was shot because she was black.

Harbor Gateway residents have told the Los Angeles Times the 204th Street gang has terrorized their neighborhood for years and, in some cases, forced them to change where they shop, how they commute, even how and when they go outside. They say they seem surrounded and confined to a three-street area, stretching south from 207th to 209th streets, between Western and Denker avenues.

Last month, Earl Ofari Hutchinson, president of the Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable, challenged Villaraigosa and city officials to increase Los Angeles Police Department patrols in Harbor Gateway and called for an emergency summit to address the issue of hate crime in the city.

According to statistics released last week, interracial gang-related attacks in Los Angeles rose in 2006, despite a citywide reduction in crime for the fifth consecutive year.

Of Los Angeles's 478 homicides reported in 2006, about 56 percent were gang-related, LAPD Chief William Bratton said.

Villaraigosa has made several attempts recently to address the gang problem, including meeting with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in Washington last week to discuss opportunities for local and federal enforcement agencies to coordinate gang suppression strategies.

The march came one day after the issuing of a report that found the city's scattered gang prevention and intervention programs lack accountability and should come under the direction of a single gang "czar" to become more effective.

"There is no question that we must attack the gang crisis from every angle of the problem," Villaraigosa said. "I am currently working with Chief Bratton and members of the City Council, and over the course of the next several weeks we will lay out a strategy to do just that."