Thread: L.A. vows gang crackdown after kids die

L.A. vows gang crackdown after kids die
By JEREMIAH MARQUEZ, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 25 minutes ago



LOS ANGELES - A 14-year-old girl was killed by Hispanic gang members who police say were targeting blacks. A 9-year-old girl died after being hit by a stray bullet as gang members exchanged shots near her home. A cop was wounded in a gunbattle with a suspected gangster.


The soaring violence is prompting police and politicians to promise one of the toughest crackdowns against gangs in city history.

"This is the monster, this is what drives people's fears," said Deputy Chief Charles Beck, who oversees a South Los Angeles district where gang-related crime jumped 24 percent during the year ending in November.

However, the effort has met skepticism in the city that has an estimated 700 gangs with 40,000 members — about four for every police officer — and that gave birth to some of the nation's most notorious gangs, including the Crips, Bloods and Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13.

"It's too big, it's too entrenched, it's too intimately connected with the urban setup here," Malcolm Klein, a gang expert at the University of Southern California, said of the gang problem. "You can reduce it. But the idea you can somehow eliminate it is ridiculous."

Gangs have thrived for generations in Los Angeles, but the especially violent past year caught police brass off guard. Citywide crime rates fell in 2006 but gang-related offenses increased 14 percent — the first hike in four years. In the San Fernando Valley, gang murders, assaults, robberies and other crimes jumped 42 percent.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has appealed to U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez for millions of dollars in anti-gang funds and for more federal prosecutors to pursue racketeering and other charges mostly used in the past against organized crime.

FBI Director Robert Mueller has assigned agents to an anti-gang task force in the San Fernando Valley to work alongside police deputized as federal officers.

Authorities promise to increase enforcement in afflicted neighborhoods. The officers will be armed with injunctions forbidding gang members from assembling in certain areas, lawsuits aimed at shutting down gang hangouts as nuisances and probation orders barring gang members from returning to their neighborhoods after their release from prison.

In some ways, the approach mirrors a multi-agency Boston campaign in the 1990s, known as the Boston Miracle, that resulted in a dramatic decline in gun violence and murder rates.

Past efforts in Los Angeles, however, have produced mixed results.

"We've seen this movie before," said Mario Corona, a former member of the Pacoima Criminals gang in the San Fernando Valley who now works to rehabilitate gang members.

The city has been hampered in the past by a lack of resources and changing department priorities, according to a city-funded report by civil rights attorney Connie Rice.

And a 1980s anti-gang unit known as Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums, or CRASH, was disbanded after allegations of police corruption. Few of the thousands of suspected gang members in South Los Angeles were ever charged.

Residents are demanding renewed action while trying to stay out of the line of fire.

Esteban Martinez, 41, hears gunshots at night in the San Fernando Valley, where he lives with his wife and four small children.

"Everybody is afraid, but they don't speak (to police) because they are afraid to get into trouble with the gang members," Martinez said. "I'm worried about my family."

Two weeks ago, an officer searching a house in the area for wanted gang members was wounded in the leg when a gang-banger fired through a closed bedroom door.

Nothing has outraged the city more than the gang slayings of children. Last month, 9-year-old Charupha Wongwisetsiri was standing in her family's kitchen when she was struck by a stray round from gang crossfire in Angelino Heights near downtown.

That came just five days after the shooting death of Cheryl Green, a 14-year-old black girl, who was talking to friends in the Harbor Gateway area. Two Hispanic gang members, who police said were intent on killing blacks, were arrested.

Alex Sanchez, a former MS-13 member who now runs a gang intervention program, said police moves to identify the worst gangs could instead lead to more crime.

"It's feeding the egos of gang members," Sanchez said. "They're all going to want to be on the top 10."

Others said nothing will change without more jobs and better education.

"Until we get those gangsters into real jobs, we are going to have a lethal ongoing problem, pure and simple," said Jorja Leap, a social welfare professor and gang expert at the University of California, Los Angeles, who advises the mayor. "It will never change."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070121/ap_ ... s/la_gangs

"Until we get those gangsters into real jobs, we are going to have a lethal ongoing problem, pure and simple," said Jorja Leap, a social welfare professor and gang expert at the University of California, Los Angeles, who advises the mayor. "It will never change."

Until we lock these goons up in a cell that does not allow them access to other people, or even to sunlight, this will continue to be a problem. A cell with a blanket, a hole in the ground for a toilet...that's what I'm talkin' 'bout. Come by once a day with a firehose to wash the goons down. Make them as miserable as possible. No good time. No laughing. No talking. You speak when spoken to. No more cable TV. Pink underwear. Bologna sandwiches. Chain gangs. Oh wait, I could be violating their civil rights. I think that's the ACLU on the phone.

These hispanic gangs, whether the Latin Kings or MS-13, are the military wing of the Reconquista movement.

If you have seen how these gang people are housed in prison you will see that the the most dangerous ones are outside in cages like dog pens. Prisons have a hell of a time dealing with them as make weapons and get into fights using them. I think the L.A. racial gang killings is the product of the two groups fighting each other in prison. In fact in California prisons the various Hispanic gangs unite as do the African American ones in order to survive their racial war as that is what it is. Every time they fight it is a risk for the prison guards who have to break them up until the specialty unit that deals with the stuff comes in.

Make them stay in their cells. Don't let them interact. That's the problem in Guantanamo. The terrorists and others there on the base are allowed to interact, thus they can plot, plan, and scheme, putting our men in danger.

TyRANTosaur wrote:

Make them stay in their cells. Don't let them interact.

Sound like the only solution to me as well.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has appealed to U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez for millions of dollars in anti-gang funds and for more federal prosecutors to pursue racketeering and other charges mostly used in the past against organized crime.

This is a good example of Raza talking to Raza. I am sure that Antonio will funnel that money right to the Raza Charter schools.

They are also going after gangs in Miami as well. If the Hispanics didn't bring their drugs here in the first place there would be very few if any gangs here as they all deal in drugs! Not only did they bring their drugs but illegals brought their kids from countries where gangs ran the country and now try to rule our streets. This is what we got and are getting because some people want power at any cost. Maybe they should see innocent bystanders of gang violence in person especially the young children such as the 18 month old that was shot last year and they might change their mind. But then it is not their kid so you never know.

http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/pubs/states/ne ... 1707a.html

News Release [print friendly page]
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 17, 2007

Department of Justice Highlights Efforts to Combat Gang Violence

High ranking members of the Department of Justice held a roundtable discussion, in south Florida, with members of the press to highlight the Department of Justice’s activities to combat gangs. In this regard, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, R. Alexander Acosta, announced that his Office has been working with Mark. R. Trouville, Special Agent in Charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Miami Field Division, Julie Torres, Special Agent in Charge of the Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms, Tobacco and Explosives (ATF), Jonathan I. Solomon, Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Miami Field Office, along with other federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies, in a concerted effort to rid the south Florida community of the crime and violence associated with gang activity. In south Florida, as in other parts of the nation, drug distribution rings and other criminal gangs have historically conducted their business through fear, intimidation and violence. All too often, this has resulted in fear and violence neighborhoods and communities, as gang members, their associates, and rivals, battled over turf, money, and power. Such violence inevitably leads to death – not only of gang members, but also of innocent victims living in these embattled communities.

The United States Attorney’s Office and its federal law enforcement partners are determined to help reduce this cycle of violence. To this end, over the past several months, the U.S. Attorney’s Office and federal and state law enforcement have cooperated in a number of joint investigations and prosecutions aimed at bringing the most violent of these criminal gangs to justice. One example of the success of this cooperative multi-agency approach to reducing gang violence is Operation Lightning Bolt, a two-year investigation of drug rings operating in Miami's Overtown area. This multi-agency effort, which included the DEA, ATF, the United States Marshals Service, the City of Miami Police Department, the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office has led to the filing of criminal charges against 85 individuals, of whom 79 have been arrested (6 remain fugitives). Of these 85, 53 defendants were prosecuted federally, of which 50 have already been convicted. In addition, 31 firearms and $67,000 USD were seized.

In a further effort to reduce gang activity, the U.S. Attorney’s Office and its federal law enforcement partners are involved in district-wide Multi-Agency Gang Task Force Units (MAGTAF), working with the FBI and other federal agencies through the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) Task Force.

But prosecution and punishment alone will not end gangs and the violence they breed. Hence, a large part of the Department’s gang-reduction efforts focuses on gang resistance education. To this end, the U.S. Attorney’s Office participates and supports crime prevention summer camps, after-school programs, and youth leadership activities through Project Safe Neighborhoods, the Public Housing Safety Initiative, Weed and Seed, and similar community-based programs. In Broward County, for example, Weed and Seed and Project Safe Neighborhoods recently co-sponsored a Youth Summit in Hallandale Beach, attended by over 300 youths and adults, focusing on the need to end gang activity and gang involvement in our communities and schools. The Department of Justice also funds several gang education and prevention programs throughout the District, including G.R.E.A.T, a Gang Resistance Education and Training program in local schools, and the PAN ZOU anti-gang project in North Miami Beach.

“Drugs and violence often go hand-in-hand in our communities. DEA is committed to working with our federal, state and local law enforcement partners to combat drug-related gang violence and improve the quality of life in our neighborhoods,” said DEA Special Agent in Charge Mark R. Trouville.

U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta stated, “We will continue to work with our state and local law enforcement partners, and with community-based gang resistance organizations, to make our streets safer and to insulate and protect our neighborhoods from the lifestyle of violence and death associated with gang activity.”

“Gangs prey on our communities without regard to the damage they cause or the lives they ruin,” said ATF SAC Julie Torres. “We will not tolerate gang activity and the resulting gun-related cycle of violence and death. Our message is simple: federal law enforcement, and the ATF in particular, will not go away; we will continue to investigate and prosecute gang members to the fullest extent of the law. As a team – law enforcement, prosecutors, and concerned citizens – we will regain our streets.”

FBI Special Agent in Charge Jonathan Solomon stated, "Citizens have a right to live in a safe community. The FBI recognizes that violent crime in South Florida is on the upswing and has devoted additional manpower to combat gang violence to ensure that our streets are safe."

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has appealed to U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez for millions of dollars in anti-gang funds and for more federal prosecutors to pursue racketeering and other charges mostly used in the past against organized crime.

Write.

No Dollars for illegal alien sanctuary cities

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me ... 8697.story

Activists walk area beset by violence
Residents of Harbor Gateway talk about their fear and despair after another shooting occurs Saturday.
By Jessica Garrison, Times Staff Writer
January 22, 2007

Three days after police and federal agents promised a crackdown on racial attacks by gangs in the Harbor Gateway area, African American activists returned to the neighborhood Sunday to talk to residents about how to end the violence and to decry what they say is a "race war."

To residents' dismay, another attack occurred Saturday morning. A 34-year-old African American man was shot without provocation by a Latino as he waited for his daughters to pick up a friend for a birthday sleepover, police said.

As the activists walked the quiet streets, police watched from their cars and a helicopter. African Americans, Latinos and whites came out of their homes and described their despair at living in a neighborhood where, they said, the crack of gunshots was an almost nightly occurrence. Neighbors also complained that, despite the heavy police presence Sunday morning, they were not seeing enough routine patrols in their neighborhood.

"I'm scared," said Linda McIntosh, as her children clustered around her beneath the bullet-pocked facade of her apartment building. "This is the third weekend in a row of gunfire."

A few feet from where McIntosh stood on Plaza Del Amo, broken glass lay scattered in the street — left over, she said, from Saturday's shooting.

Ten yards away, in front of the house of McIntosh's neighbor, was a small shrine adorned with a crucifix and dried roses cracked from the sun — a memorial to a 23-year-old Latino man, Arturo Zaragoza, who neighbors said was shot in his driveway without provocation late last year.

The Harbor Gateway area, a strip of Los Angeles connecting South Los Angeles to the port, has experienced racial tensions for more than a decade as African Americans have moved from a nearby housing project to the predominantly Latino neighborhood, officials said.

In recent weeks law enforcement officers and political leaders have expressed concerns that interracial gang violence is rising across the city.

The Harbor Gateway neighborhood burst into the news last month when Cheryl Green, a 14-year-old African American, was shot to death in midafternoon in what police said was a racially motivated attack because she had crossed into an area claimed by a Latino gang.

The latest shooting was about a mile south of where she was killed. Neighbors said an African American man, his wife and two daughters had driven to the corner of Del Amo Plaza and Harvard Boulevard after a children's party at a bowling alley to pick up a friend for a birthday sleepover.

The girls had gone to the door of the friend's apartment building to ring for her, as their parents waited in the car.

Several Latino men approached the car, neighbors said. One shot the father. The mother screamed for her children to run, and then drove away to escape the hail of bullets.

She took her husband to a hospital. Her girls ran five blocks as gang members chased them, then hid and called a relative from their cellphone to pick them up, neighbors said. Police confirmed that the girls had been chased, but had no further details. They did not release any of the family members' names, but said the father survived the shooting.

McIntosh and other neighbors said they heard their account of the shooting from the mother of the girl the family was picking up.

Standing nearby, Sharon Braggs, who lives in the same building as McIntosh, said the city needs to do more to stem the violence.

Braggs, who has lived in the neighborhood for nine years with her three children and nephew, said she was terrified to let her children out of the house, or to invite her mother over after dark.

"I used to sit on the porch," she said. "I don't do that anymore."

Najee Ali, an activist who runs Project Islamic Hope and has been trying to negotiate a truce among gangs in the area, vowed to return to the neighborhood Saturday to hold a community meeting to discuss public safety.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/stat ... acial.html

Racial tensions flare in L.A. after teen fatally shot


Blacks, Latinos at heart of divide
By Dan Laidman
COPLEY NEWS SERVICE
January 28, 2007

LOS ANGELES – During the 1990s, Los Angeles erupted into deadly riots sparked by the beating of a black motorist by white police officers and the shooting of a black teenager by a Korean shopkeeper, events that symbolized old and new racial schisms in one of the nation's most diverse cities.

Today, the city is reeling from another act of violence that has highlighted racial tensions of a different kind. Black teenager Cheryl Green was shot to death last month, allegedly by Latino gang members, as she chatted with friends in broad daylight on a street corner near her home.

The shooting took place on a block known as a dividing line between Latino and black residents, and police have called the Dec. 15 incident a hate crime.

In its aftermath, Los Angeles leaders are alarmed that the city is once again in the national spotlight as racial tensions take on ugly new dimensions.

“No one should have to fear for their life because of the color of their skin, not in our city, not in our country and certainly not in this neighborhood,” Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said recently at a news conference near the site of Cheryl's death.

From City Hall to local universities to the streets of mixed communities, many who follow the city's changing demographics say blacks and Latinos largely get along well in Los Angeles.

The city has the nation's worst gang problem, with an estimated 700 gangs claiming more than 40,000 members, according to a recent city-commissioned report. In many communities, experts say, entrenched gang cultures have exacerbated racial conflicts.

That has policy-makers and residents worried, especially when it translates into deadly consequences for community members who are not involved with gangs, such as Cheryl Green.

“She was starting to plan her little life already at 14 years old,” said her cousin Rachel Riles.

Relatives described Cheryl as a “bubbly” girl devoted to her mother and her friends, and who dreamed of becoming a doctor.

“She was where she belonged,” said City Councilwoman Janice Hahn, who represents the neighborhood where Cheryl lived. “She was not in the wrong place at the wrong time. She was in her neighborhood talking with her friends on a street. That was the tipping point for me.”

Hahn has focused on finding millions of dollars in funding for social programs that could steer youths away from gangs, while police and prosecutors are planning crackdowns.

There is much public soul searching about why some mixed neighborhoods are harmonious and others tense.

“The black-Latino relationship in L.A. has a lot of facets, a lot of which are quite positive,” said Raphael Sonenshein, a political science professor at California State University Fullerton. “So it's not as if the gangs are the advance army of this deep and abiding conflict.”

Sonenshein, the author of “Politics in Black and White: Race and Power in Los Angeles,” said that the most stable neighborhoods likely have strong community leaders who resist the urge to demonize new arrivals, while the hotbeds of hatred and violence are those in which the gangs have more influence.

Some point to the racially stratified California prison system, long the incubator for violent street gangs, as the source of much of the prejudice. Others say the gangs intensify racial conflicts that exist as a result of factors such as competition for economic resources, political power and basic living space.

The historically black core of Los Angeles – traditionally known as “South Central” – went from being 55 percent black in 1990 to 39.8 percent black in 2000, according to a University of Southern California study. The Latino population in the area rose from 45.5 percent to 58 percent in the same period.

The study's author, Dowell Myers, noted that the economic progress of many local blacks has stalled in recent years, while the growing Latino population tends to be more upwardly mobile.

“You have this new group coming in and expanding in size and being economically really active and successful,” said Myers, a professor of urban planning and demography. Black residents “see that around them as more of the stores become Spanish-oriented and the houses are being bought by Mexican-American families.”

There can be a political disparity, too, as the black population decreases in areas where African-Americans fought hard to gain a strong civic presence. Myers pointed to Compton, a city 11 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles. Although the majority of its population is Latino, all of its elected officials are black.

“There is sort of a disconnect between official political control and unofficial street control,” Myers said. “I don't think these conflicts are really about voting or elected officials, it's more about youth culture and prison culture. . . . That is where it gets polarized and really accentuated.”

The case of the Avenues gang in the Los Angeles community of Highland Park provides a stark example. Federal prosecutors recently won convictions against several Avenues members who allegedly tried to drive black residents out of the community under orders from the notorious Mexican Mafia prison gang, which has feuded behind bars for decades with rival black gangs, among others.

On the streets, the lines often blur. The gang whose members police say are responsible for the slaying of Cheryl Green, 204th Street, feuds with another local Latino gang known as Tortilla Flats.

Ten days before Cheryl was killed, a 34-year-old Mexican immigrant named Arturo Mercado Ponce was killed nearby. That crime remains unsolved, as does the shooting of a 34-year-old black man in the neighborhood Jan. 20.

City officials have promised a renewed crime-fighting effort, although the understaffed Los Angeles Police Department continues to have difficulty recruiting officers. Local prosecutors tout the use of gang injunctions – court orders that prevent gang members from associating – and have called for a new one targeting 204th Street. The tactic has drawn criticism from civil libertarians and gang-intervention workers, who question the injunctions' effectiveness.

There are many who would like to beef up the city's anemic gang prevention and intervention efforts, especially those that aim to snuff out racial animosity. A key test may come next year, when officials plan to put a parcel tax on the ballot to fund such programs.

“A lot of kids, instead of going to school and graduating, they go to gangs and then they go to the prison system, and it's a vicious cycle,” said Randy Jurado Ertll, executive director of the social services agency El Centro de Accion Social. “It's easy to blame someone who looks different, and we have to teach young kids you can't do that.”

Down the street from where Cheryl Green was killed, longtime local resident Jeanette Strickland said she is glad there is some momentum for improving the situation, although she remains skeptical there will be results.

Strickland, who is black, has a daughter Cheryl's age, and the two girls were friends.

“There have been a lot of people that have left since the shootings. . . . Since Cheryl's death, I don't know how many families have left the neighborhood,” she said. “But that's not going to solve any problems.”