Not on my block

Gang violence remains a pervasive problem in many Southland communities, and it was one of the key topics at the gathering last Saturday of the regional Congress of Neighborhoods, entitled “Gang Violence: Finding Solutions to a Community Health and Economic Crisis” held at West Adams Preparatory High School.
The forum attracted a number of residents, police, and a panel of community leaders who were concerned about the continuing surge of gang violence in South Los Angeles.
“Gang violence affects everything that happens in our community. It’s a multi-pronged problem, so we need to work on multi-pronged solutions,” said Julian Rogers, council chair of the Southeast Area Empowerment Congress of the NDC.
Mary Jones-Darks, board member of the Empowerment Congress West Area NDC and a resident of Baldwin Village, observed that the presence of gangs has resulted in many seniors being intimidated in her neighborhood. “Seniors are afraid to come out in the daytime,” said Jones-Darks, who predicted that gangs are spreading and that other neighborhoods would soon be impacted by the threat of gangs. “Anybody who thinks that some of the crime is not racially motivated has their head in the sand,” she declared. “If we don’t build a united front, these gangs are going to take over our communities.”
Moderator Kara Inae Carlisle, president of the Los Angeles City Human Relations Commission, queried what communities could do to eradicate gang violence.
“I think we need to go back and see where we’ve had success in quelling gang violence in the past,” observed Alex Alonso, president of StreetGangs.com. “We need to go back to the mid-90’s. Back then, we had 50 percent less murders and that was partly due to the guys on the street who were involved in gang intervention. Our society will never get rid of gangs–they’ve been part of our culture for centuries, but our ultimate goal must be to mitigate violence as much as possible.”
Rev. Jeff Carr, the director of the Mayor’s office of Gang Reduction and Youth Development, said that there has been a concerted effort to eradicate the most volatile commmunities of gang violence. “We have been targeting some of the more violent areas in the city and we’ve found that only five to ten percent of the gang members are performing 65 percent of the crime,” he observed. “Number one, we have to decrease the level of violence through prevention and intervention, and number two, we have to persuade young people not to join gangs in the first place. We have to give these young people other options.”
LAPD Chief Earl Paysinger agreed. “It takes more than a hammer or a nail to make a house a home,” he pointed out. “We have to find another way to reach these young people before they join a gang.” Glancing at the West Adams athletic field where several youths were playing a game of touch football, Paysinger added, “Look out the window. That’s one way we can reach young people.”
Alonso said that gang violence had changed over the years. “In the 1980’s, most of the gang violence centered around black-on-black and brown-on-brown gang warfare,” he said. “But around 1993, something changed. There was a consistent path of murders and homicides. There’s no doubt that gang violence is happening, and we have to hope that it doesn’t spread throughout the city. But we cannot jump the gun and declare that it’s race related.”
Paysinger said that shifting demographics have played a part in the tensions between gangs. “In the past several years in Los Angeles, there’s been a seismic demographic shift from the black to the brown population. But the texture and the tapestry of this city carries a wonderful mosaic,” he pointed out. “The city’s diversity presents a beautiful opportunity to teach our young people to get along with each other.”
Jones-Darks commented that the tensions between gangs will remain a problem until the community unifies to mitigate the problem. “In my community, the rival gangs are the Black P Stones, who are black, and the 18th Street gang, who are Latino. I just heard about a Latino boy who walked up and shot a young black man in the head who was only 15 years old. My neighborhood used to be a predominately black community, but now there are certain streets where blacks cannot even walk,” Jones-Darks observed.
Asked about the pervasive presence of gangs, Sands observed, “The existence of gangs is based on economics. The gang member might not be able to read or fill out an application, but he can stand on the corner and sell drugs. If we can fix the fact that a gang member is chronically unemployed, then we can get to the root of the problem. Gangs are also about turf. A gang member feels pressure because he believes that someone is taking something that belongs to him.”
Carr observed that the media plays a large part in fueling interracial gang tensions. “The media bombards us with the news that gang fighting is racially motivated. Look at Locke (High School)–the media said that the fight between black and brown was racially motivated, but that fight actually broke out between two tagging crews–one black and one Latino–who got into a brawl. But because tensions exist, the media feels the fights are racial.”
“We need responsible solutions,” said Paysinger. “There’s an enormous amount of parental neglect. Oftentimes, the parents (of these gang members) weren’t parented well, either.”
Carr added, “I agree that there’s a lack of parental oversight. For every kid that’s screwed up, there’s a parent that’s twice as screwed up. We need coaches and mentors to step up and help these young people. If we don’t, these young people will join a gang that will provide the social networking they need. We have to show these young people that there’s another way to go,” observed Carr. “We have to deal with the gang problem with all the resources or tools that we have.”