Gang Unit

A special anti-gang unit in Ventura County will have to continue to beg for money after the Board of Supervisors declined Tuesday to make emergency funds available for the program, which has drawn praise for curbing street violence. While Ventura County remains one of the safest areas in the nation, finding money to pay for the program is proving increasingly difficult as local governments confront a worsening state budget crisis.

The recent streak of gang-related homicides does not represent a new kind of problem for Angelenos. We have been dealing with this sort of thing for more than 30 years. In fact, we exported it to other parts of the country. So should we, as Police Chief William J. Bratton says, get mad about it now? Of course. But there are other things that we probably should be even madder about.

Speaking at a special City Council meeting Wednesday night in Sylmar, Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton assured residents that his department would launch an all-out war on street gangs. Bratton praised a recent initiative by the LAPD and local political leaders to work more closely with community youth and religious organizations to help curb the gang problem. "It's partnership that is the cornerstone of community policing," he told a crowd of several hundred at Mission College.

Ten years ago, the gangs of the Watts housing projects signed a peace treaty. Other truces followed in South Los Angeles. San Fernando Valley gangs agreed to their own peace accord in 1993, a year in which Los Angeles police counted 346 gang-related homicides in the city. By 1999, thanks to factors including law enforcement efforts and the treaties, gang killings in the city dropped to 136. But now, except in Watts, the treaties no longer seem to be working.

"The Heat's Off" (Opinion, May 5) not only identified the need for adequate numbers of police officers in any given area, especially those with gangs, but it also identified the problem that occurs when those numbers fall woefully short: the increase in crime. The L.A. County Board of Supervisors is calling for a cut of more than $100 million in the Sheriff's Department budget. If that drastic cut is approved, it is going to devastate public safety in the unincorporated areas for which we are responsible.

Two gang members who authorities say killed Venice-area newsletter publisher James Richards were involved in a unique partnership that brought together a local black gang and a Latino one against a man whom both gangs perceived as a common foe, police said Wednesday. "They felt Mr. Richards was a threat to their narcotics dealings," Det. Bernard Rogers said. "The motive was that they believed Mr. Richards was a snitch."

It looks like unincorporated East Los Angeles will finish 2001 with the lowest number of homicides in decades. The area, home to 128,000 people and patrolled by the Sheriff's Department, has had only five homicides as of Thursday, compared with 18 killings in 2000. "That is kind of incredible," Sheriff's Homicide Bureau Lt. Ray Peavy said. "I almost don't want to say anything because I don't want to jinx it." You have to go back to the 1970-71 fiscal year for an East L.A.

As night falls on a San Fernando Valley public housing project, 10 gang members laugh at the notion that a court injunction could bring them down. The Pacoima Project Boys were hanging out on the tattered western fringe of San Fernando Gardens, more than a month after the city of Los Angeles secured an injunction barring them from congregating in public. The gang members, heavily tattooed, some showing off the crack cocaine they were selling, said they controlled their turf more now than ever.

Prosecutors won a court order Wednesday against a Pacoima street gang in a bid to curb recent violence that has included the wounding of a 9-year-old girl and the slaying of a 15-year-old boy. The injunction against the Pacoima Project Boys, which was issued by Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Howard J. Schwab, applies to 12 gang members and a half-mile area they are known to frequent in the community south of the 118 Freeway.