Los Angeles names and targets city's worst 11 gangs
Mayor and police chief vow to pursue the groups with local-federal law enforcement teams. Experts question the strategy.
By Patrick McGreevy and Richard Winton
Times Staff Writers
February 8, 2007
Launching a counteroffensive against organized street thugs, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and police officials took the unusual step Wednesday of identifying the city's 11 worst gangs, then promising to go after them with teams of police, federal agents, probation officers and prosecutors.
Facing 720 identifiable gangs with 39,000 members, the city's plan would target the most dangerous groups, which total at least 800 members. Those gangs are thought to be responsible for a disproportionate amount of mayhem.
The gangs on the list are believed to have committed 6% of the violent crime that occurred in the city last year.
How many local and federal officers will be committed to the anti-gang push remained unclear, however. And given the complexity of what has been a long-standing social problem, some experts questioned whether the plan would be any more effective than past police crackdowns.
Overall, serious crime declined in Los Angeles last year, but violent, gang-related crime increased 14%.
Gang crime was even higher in areas such as South Los Angeles, where it increased 25%, and a section of the north San Fernando Valley where it grew by nearly 160%.
"Street gangs are responsible for the majority of all the murders in Los Angeles and nearly 70% of all the shootings," Villaraigosa said Wednesday at a previously scheduled international summit on gang issues in Universal City. "We must work to address gang violence in a truly comprehensive way."
Although the police had identified certain gangs on occasion, especially when they appeared to be involved in high-profile crimes, the LAPD historically has not called out their names "because of the widely held perception that doing so elevated the criminals' influence and standing in the gang community," the mayor's plan says.
"This new strategy abandons the earlier posture and challenges these menaces by exposing their corrosive behavior to the scrutiny of a more informed and confident community," the plan says.
But Wes McBride, executive director of the California Gang Investigators Assn. and a retired Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy, said he was "not sure" that identifying the gangs was a good idea.
"These guys keep the clippings, and I don't know if you can really say which are the most dangerous gangs on any one day," he said. "It is the kind of advertising you don't need."
McBride said he feared that some gangs would feel slighted if not named and might try to up the ante with more violent crimes.
Najee Ali, a community activist and former gang member, said he also was opposed to any ranking system. "The mayor and chief shouldn't be legitimizing the gangs," he said. "To the gang members it is a badge of honor."
The list of targeted gangs includes the 204th Street gang in Harbor Gateway, which is believed to be responsible for recent racially motivated attacks and will be the subject of a special abatement effort. The list also includes Canoga Park Alabama, whose members' recent violent acts have contributed to gang crime skyrocketing 43% in the San Fernando Valley.
The other gangs on the list include 18th Street Westside in the LAPD's Southeast Division; the Avenues gang in the Northeast Division; the Grape Street Crips in the Southeast Division; Black P-Stones in the Southwest Division; the La Mirada Locos in the Rampart and Northeast divisions; the Mara Salvatrucha in the Rampart, Hollywood and Wilshire divisions; the Rollin' 40s and Rollin' 30s Harlem Crips, both in Southwest, and the Rollin' 60s in the 77th Street Division.
The Mara Salvatrucha gang has up to 50,000 members in six countries, but police will focus on cliques that operate in a few local high-crime neighborhoods.
The LAPD already has shifted 18 additional officers to the 204th Street gang turf and is expected to double that amount soon. Smaller deployments are expected for other gang-infested neighborhoods.
An additional 50 officers will be assigned to a Community Safety Operations Center in the Valley, which will analyze real-time crime data to rapidly and strategically deploy officers, including high-visibility patrols, in crime-ridden regions of the Valley.
The mayor and chief are set to formally unveil their plan at 2:30 p.m. today at the Valley's Mission Community Police Station.
Most of the gangs on the list already have been hit with injunctions that restrict their movements and ability to socialize, and some have been in the crosshairs of local and federal authorities for years.
But Villaraigosa said that the new plan is not as piecemeal as previously, and that the FBI, the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, county probation agents, county and city prosecutors, and the U.S. attorney's office have signed on to step up pressure.
"We, the police, law enforcement, can do a great deal working collectively together, with force magnification, to reduce this problem," said Police Chief William J. Bratton on Wednesday.
But, Villaraigosa added, the gang-suppression plan was only the first step in stabilizing crime-ridden neighborhoods. He said the city would later provide prevention and intervention programs to keep young people out of gangs.
The chief acknowledged that with a police force already stretched thin and expansion occurring slowly, he would have to redeploy existing officers to hot spots in the immediate future.
McBride, the gang expert, cautioned that plans without resources often fall short.
"Until everyone hires a bunch more cops, you are shoving sand in the wind," he said.
In addition to releasing a list of targeted gangs, the LAPD has submitted the name of a fugitive gang member for placement on the FBI's most wanted list and will submit another name when the first fugitive is captured, officials said.
The submissions will come from the LAPD's own list of its 10 most wanted gang fugitives, which also was released Wednesday. It includes Merced "Shadow" Cambero, from the Avenues gang, and Kody "Monster Cody" DeJohn Scott, from the 8-Trey Gangster Crips.
Also, the plan includes the appointment of an LAPD gang coordinator, creates a South Bureau Criminal Gang Homicide Group, designates additional patrol officers in gang territories to enforce injunctions and warrants, and proposes community symposiums on gang awareness in affected neighborhoods.
Malcolm Klein, a professor emeritus at USC and a gang expert, said the city's gang plan would appear to use a "tip of the iceberg" strategy.
"Targeting hot spots for gangs — that is not much different than the past," Klein said.
He also questioned the methods used to choose which gangs belonged on the worst 11 list.
"The level of violence generated by a gang makes sense to me. But the interracial conflict [at the root of the 204th Street gang murders] is not common, and shooting at police officers also isn't common. The last two are more political than rational."
However, the idea of focusing on the most violent gangs was supported by Alex Alonso, an academic who studies gang territories in Los Angeles and runs the website streetgangs.com.
"What they did under [former Police Chief Daryl F.] Gates didn't work: Suppress everyone. Now they want to be more focused on the most hard-core gang members, that 10% who are really responsible for violence," Alonso said.
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(INFOBOX BELOW)
Top targets
Here are the areas where the gangs targeted by Los Angeles city officials operate:
1. Canoga Park Alabama
2. Avenues
3. Mara Salvatrucha
4. La Mirada Locos
5. 18th Street Westside
6. Black P-Stones
7. Rollin' 30s
Rollin' 40s
8. Rollin' 60s
9. Grape Street Crips
10. 204th Street
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Tax to fight gangs set for ballot
With street violence on the rise, the City Council agrees to ask voters to OK a levy on parcels to pay for intervention and prevention programs.
By Patrick McGreevy and Steve Hymon
Times Staff Writers
January 24, 2007
Desperate to stem the rise of gang violence in Los Angeles, the City Council agreed Tuesday to draft a ballot measure that would impose a parcel tax to raise $50 million or more annually for intervention and prevention programs.
However, council members said it was unlikely the proposal would go onto the ballot until next year, skipping the municipal election in May.
Also Tuesday, City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo released his plan for reducing gangs, which includes a call for school uniforms to be required for all Los Angeles Unified School District students, legal action to shut down the headquarters of the 10 worst gangs, and expanding his assignment of prosecutors to every police station and to neighborhoods around gang-plagued schools.
Delgadillo also said he would seek to expand the city attorney office's truancy program to numerous of middle schools, obtain stay-away orders for those who do not live in the neighborhoods they terrorize and push for legislation to increase penalties for gang-related crime.
Councilwoman Janice Hahn, who wrote and championed the proposal for a parcel tax to fight gangs, said action was needed because of the 267 gang-related homicides last year and the 14% increase in gang crime citywide.
"We have a major crisis in the city of Los Angeles," Hahn said. "I think the time is right that we ask the voters of Los Angeles if they would be willing to partner with us for a sustainable comprehensive approach to gang violence."
After a sometimes emotional debate, the council voted 13 to 0 to direct the city attorney to draft language for a ballot measure.
Another vote will be necessary to put it to voters.
Hahn reluctantly agreed to remove a commitment to the May election from the council resolution after some of her colleagues said it was likely to fail because it needs two-thirds support to pass and voter turnout is expected to be low.
Hahn represents parts of South Los Angeles, including the Harbor Gateway neighborhood that has seen two killings of African American residents by Latino gang members in as many months.
One was the Dec. 15 slaying of 14-year-old Cheryl Green. A Mexican immigrant was fatally shot Dec. 5 by a youth who witnesses believe was black, although his identity was shielded by a hood and mask.
"I have felt overwhelmed by the gang violence in my council district. I have felt desperate," Hahn told her colleagues, her voice cracking with emotion. "There was a huge part of me that just did not want to wait."
Hahn said she believes voters would support a parcel tax, which she estimated would cost property owners a flat $5 per month.
The vote to draft the ballot measure was particularly striking given the council's leeriness of tax hikes following two recent failures. City voters refused, in November 2004, to go along with a countywide sales tax increase to pay for more police, and they rejected a $1-billion affordable-housing bond last fall.
Hahn would like to see the measure go to voters early next year and is hoping that the state Legislature will act to move the presidential primary election forward to February. Meanwhile, she hopes to secure additional funds for city gang prevention programs during council budget negotiations in May.
Councilman Herb Wesson raised the need for a compromise on the timing of the election, telling his colleagues that his considerable political experience told him a ballot measure wouldn't win in May.
"People in our community are depending on us to do this right," Wesson said. "Let's not just deliver a ballot measure, let's deliver a winning ballot measure."
Some council members objected that a May vote would not provide enough time to digest and act on a study released last week by the Advancement Project that recommended an overhaul of intervention and prevention efforts.
The study said the city has failed to reduce gang violence, in large part because it lacks coordination and focus for the 23 scattered anti-gang programs it currently funds to the tune of $82 million a year.
Councilman Tony Cardenas, who leads a council committee on gang programs, said the city has not determined how much money is needed to get the job done, and he worried that $50 million might not be enough.
Councilman Dennis Zine, although he voted to draft the tax measure, questioned whether voters would support it less than a year after the council increased trash fees to pay for 1,000 more police officers.
The concern about overburdening taxpayers was raised by Veronica Perez Becker, a vice president of the Central City Assn.
"Before imposing more taxes on your constituents, we urge you to take a careful look at the collective impact of recent tax increases," Becker told the council.
In a telephone interview, Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn., predicted the council would face a tough time selling another tax hike to voters. "They have an uphill battle," he said.
In recent years, two other California cities — Santa Rosa and San Bernardino — have won voter approval for tax increases to combat gangs. In both instances, however, the added charges also helped pay for more police.
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