Gangs

A key strategy in Los Angeles' battle against street gangs -- the use of court injunctions -- has come under attack by state lawmakers who are moving to strictly limit it. The state Senate has approved a measure that would allow suspected gang members who do not commit a crime for five years to be automatically removed from civil injunctions unless prosecutors can show they remain a public threat.

The two-bedroom stucco house at 3304 Drew St. in Glassell Park was once the center of one of the most menacing drug marketplaces in Los Angeles. From the house, Maria "Chata" Leon, an illegal immigrant, her family and associates controlled drug and gang activity on the street for years, police said.

Los Angeles officials want to go after about 800 members of the city's most dangerous gangs, and on Thursday committed more than 200 LAPD officers to a force that will also include FBI agents, prosecutors and probation officers. Gangs on this list accounted for 6% of the city's violent crimes last year.

His name rhymed with Al Capone and he came to a bad end behind the wheel of a rented white Volkswagen. Until the moment a bomb planted on his car exploded on a Tel Aviv street, mob boss Yaakov Alperon was living large. He and his Carmela Soprano-blond wife, Ahuva, were media darlings who even took part in a 2006 reality show in which a famous Israeli model moved in with their family.

After years in the L.A. street gang world, Ronald Lamonte Barron devoted his life to preventing young people from following in his footsteps. Barron, a former member of the Mansfield Crips gang that claims territory around Pico Boulevard and La Brea Avenue, was one of a few gang outreach workers who was trusted enough by Los Angeles authorities to counsel young offenders in the jails. Barron was leaving a bar in his old neighborhood Sunday night with his girlfriend when he noticed a tagger defacing a wall on Pico.

Civic leaders are planning to march through Watts on Saturday to demonstrate against gang violence, which has been blamed for four recent deaths in and around Nickerson Gardens, an area that has seen a marked decline in violence. According to police and coroner's records, three men have been killed on a short stretch of East 115th Street, between South Central and Compton avenues, since Nov. 22. Lavell Hudson, 24, was shot in the head at 4 a.m. that day. Rayshawn Boyce, 31, was killed Dec. 12, and Glenn Carr, 45, was killed Dec. 17. A fourth man, Kevin Shallowhorn, was shot and killed Dec. 22 in the 1600 block of East 110th Street, just outside the Nickerson Gardens public housing development.

Police were searching Saturday for a group of youths who attacked a longtime Fullerton minister and his sons, chasing them into their church and pelting them with rocks. The Rev. Willie Holmes, president and founder of Majesty Christian Fellowship, said he was driving his two sons and another passenger back to the church from a Fullerton Union High School concert about 10:20 p.m. Friday when they were attacked near Valencia Drive and Highland Avenue.

Los Angeles County supervisors on Tuesday approved a multiagency pilot program to combat gang activity in four targeted communities -- Duarte-Monrovia, Florence-Firestone, Harbor Gateway and Pacoima. County Chief Executive Officer William T. Fujioka and Sheriff Lee Baca said the plan focuses on improving coordination of services, such as law enforcement, probation and social services, for at-risk youth in those areas. If the pilot program succeeds, it could be expanded countywide.

The leader of an embattled South Los Angeles gang intervention agency has pledged to press on with his work, even as he conceded that his agency is about to lose its contract in a second pocket of the city, two weeks after City Hall officials severed ties with him. "It's in God's hands now," said Kevin Mustafa Fletcher, a former member of the Swan gang and the executive director of Unity T.W.O., one of the city's more high-profile gang intervention agencies. In an impassioned three-hour interview at his Avalon Boulevard headquarters Wednesday, Fletcher said he had been unfairly targeted -- swept up in politics and abandoned by former allies who are themselves looking to cash in on the flood of public money that the city is setting aside for gang intervention.

More double-talk and equivocation by Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner (Metro, Sept. 20). He starts out talking firm and strong, " . . . Prosecutors will stop routinely plea-bargaining with gang members." But the article ends with a wimp, " . . . R. Dan Murphy, Reiner's director of special operations, conceded that there still will be cases where there is no option but to plea-bargain." Typical Reiner nonsense. Furthermore, it is misleading for him to use the term "plea-bargain."