Activists Demand Help in Halting Violence

At two meetings called Monday to quell the recent spike in violent crime in Los Angeles, gang experts, community leaders, parents and clergy demanded more jobs, recreation activities and conflict resolution programs for inner-city youths to prevent further bloodshed.

The causes of the recent 7.5% increase in violent crime were debated at a morning meeting at First AME Church in South Los Angeles and at an afternoon gathering sponsored by Los Angeles City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas. But most participants criticized elected officials for not offering enough deterrents such as summer jobs for troubled youths before the shootings and homicides began to reverse years of declining crime rates in Los Angeles.

“Politicians need to quit talking about it,” Chilton “Kwashie” Alphonse, head of the Community Youth Sports and Arts Foundation in the Crenshaw district, said after the public meeting at the church. “If you have a problem, put resources on it.”

The morning meeting, organized by Assemblyman Antonio Villaraigosa (D-Los Angeles) and Los Angeles County Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, attracted more than 150 participants to draw suggestions for a plan of action.

Later in the day, many of the same people were among the 100 who attended a closed-door meeting at Ridley-Thomas’ South Los Angeles office to discuss the crime resurgence that has hit his inner-city district hard.

Ridley-Thomas said he will ask the City Council to declare a state of emergency to make additional city funds available for job training for young people and gang intervention efforts, he said.

“It’s not about locking them up and throwing away the key. We’ve put far too much energy in that direction,” the councilman said at a news conference Monday evening.

Violent crime has increased by 7.5% in Los Angeles in the first six months of the year compared to the same period last year, according to Police Department statistics. More troubling is a 30% increase in homicides over last year. There have been 250 murders in the first half of the year, compared to 192 deaths in the same period last year, according to police.

The biggest increases in homicide have been in South and Southeast Los Angeles, where gang violence has begun to boil over after years of relative peace and record-low crime rates.

Police say more than 40% of the homicides this year are gang related.

No one could say definitively what sparked the recent surge. Some pointed to gang warfare over turf and drug trade. Others blamed a lack of summer jobs. Several gang experts noted a rise in the gang ranks of a younger, more violent generation of members.

“If I knew how to stop the violence, I would have done it a long time ago,” Burke said at the church.

Los Angeles and much of Southern California enjoyed record-low crime rates for the last seven years, thanks in part to a surging economy and low unemployment.

But Burke and others at the meeting said inner-city youths with criminal records still can’t find jobs that pay well, despite the strong economy.

“Gang members need jobs because they have kids,” said Michael Jones, who described himself as a former gang member. “The kids have to eat.”

Without jobs, Jones said, gang members will continue to commit crimes to feed their families.

Fernando Chacon, director of youth services for El Centro del Pueblo in Echo Park, said he is frustrated with elected officials and police who start to listen to community leaders only after crime rates begin to shoot up.

“I’m tired of coming to meetings like this,” he said.

Other participants, including religious leaders, urged parents to get involved in the lives of their children.

“You so-called parents need to stand up and enforce some law and order on your children,” said a mother and volunteer from South Los Angeles who did not identify herself as she spoke from the audience in the church meeting room.

William “Blinky” Rodriguez, a Christian lay minister who helped broker a truce among the Valley’s Latino gangs in 1993, placed part of the blame for the recent upsurge on a culture that glamorizes gang violence in rap music and movies.

“We’ve opened a Pandora’s box and now we cannot close it,” he said.

Several former gang members suggested that the LAPD corruption scandal has contributed to the problem by projecting the department as being under siege and unable to respond the to problem, thus emboldening gang members.

But LAPD Deputy Police Chief Maurice Moore rejected such suggestions, saying the department’s best anti-gang officers are still on the streets fighting crime.

Participants promised to organize future gatherings and seek funding to launch some of the efforts proposed during the meeting.

Big names in law-enforcement, politics and community activist circles attended one or both of the meetings.Among them were U.S. Atty. Alejandro Mayorkas, Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti, Los Angeles City Atty. James K. Hahn, Los Angeles school Supt. Roy Romer, Urban League president John Mack and LAPD Deputy Chief Martin Pomeroy.

Mayorkas said he and Hahn will unveil a program on the Eastside to close down liquor stores, hotels and other places where drugs are sold.

Burke and Villaraigosa, a candidate for Los Angeles mayor, held a meeting three weeks ago with police officials to gauge the crime increase. Their Monday meeting was intended to provide community members an opportunity to be heard.

The morning summit grew heated near the end when Najee Ali, director of Project Islamic HOPE, became upset with Burke for not inviting gang intervention experts to stand in front of television cameras alongside a handful of politicians during a news conference held by meeting organizers.

As Ali and Burke began to argue, a Burke aide told television news crews to shut off their cameras. None did. The squabble was quashed when Ali apologized for causing a scene and the former gang members took their place behind the podium.

Afterward, most participants agreed that the meeting was an important step toward devising a plan to reduce the violence.

“This is not the end,” said Kahlid Shah, executive director of Stop the Violence, Increase the Peace Foundation. “This is just a start.”