Street Gang

Some of the city's most notorious street gangs are infiltrating the Police Department here, and officials can't do much about it. Until gang members in blue break a law, they are protected by their union contract and the right to associate with whomever they please, officials said. In the last three years, at least 15 police officers have been charged with crimes, forced to resign or investigated for membership in a street gang, the Chicago Sun-Times said in its Sunday editions.

Only a few years ago, the Cadillac-Corning neighborhood was no different than other pleasant working-class enclaves within a stone's throw south of Beverly Hills. But now, residents are more likely to describe the 26-block district as a graffiti-strewn prison where they are held hostage by the Playboy Gangster Crips, a drug-peddling street gang. To avoid muggings, burglaries and intermittent gunfire, some residents have stopped walking their dogs or watering their lawns after nightfall.

Responding to a request from the Los Angeles Police Commission, police officials released a report with a list of resources they say they need to combat the 18th Street gang. The report, to be presented to the commission Tuesday, said it is unfair to expect police agencies to neutralize gangs because they are not solely the responsibility of community policing efforts.

When police detectives in South-Central Los Angeles raided almost two dozen locations this weekend to arrest gang members and confiscate their guns, ammunition and other firepower, the officers unexpectedly stumbled onto something "much more explosive"--dynamite. In the 11-hour raid at four drug houses and 18 residences, the officers arrested eight people considered leaders of a faction of the Bloods street gang.

In an effort to blunt continuing problems with street gangs in the city, police have reorganized the department's gang detail and started sweeps to arrest the most criminally active youths. During the first of those dragnets, officers early Monday morning arrested four suspected gang members for suspicion of a number of crimes, including possession of drugs and strong-arm robbery.

A dispute over a baseball cap bearing a street gang's "colors" was blamed Monday for triggering a drive-by shooting that killed a 6-year-old East Compton girl and wounded four members of her family as they watched television in their living room. First-grader Irma Saucedo died after being struck in the chest by one of at least 22 bullets fired Sunday night into the front of her family's small home, authorities said. Her mother, father, brother and cousin were wounded.

The copper-colored cane 75-year-old Vera Leeman uses to help her walk is as good a symbol as any of the grip the Blythe Street gang holds on the law-abiding residents of this block-long stretch of despair. She said she walks with the cane because six months ago, gang members "knocked me down and started kicking me because they knew I was watching them and they didn't want me to."

Dozens of law-enforcement officials fanned out across Orange County on Thursday to arrest 23 suspected members of a white racist street gang that includes nonwhites and is allegedly involved in identity theft, drug sales and other crimes. More than half of those arrested were women, including a Vietnamese woman and a Latina. Authorities did not list the charges, but Sheriff Michael S. Carona said most suspects were picked up for parole and probation violations.

Federal prosecutors Wednesday announced two grand jury indictments against 13 members of the Grape Street Crips, a street gang suspected of manufacturing and distributing large quantities of the drug PCP throughout Southern California.

Two teen-agers said Tuesday that they have been subjected to death threats by a street gang after they were forced by Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies to publicly identify a gunman who allegedly shot at one of them. The two--one 13, the other 19--said deputies took them to a street corner the day after the shooting to identify the assailant. When they did, the teen-agers were seen by gang members who have since terrorized them, they said.