Gangs in Los Angeles - recent stories
Anti-gang battle needs more than just cops
Steve Lopez
Los Angeles
Times
January 19, 2007
The 204th Street gang was a no-show Thursday in Harbor Gateway. I was there to
personally thank members for their generosity in allowing African Americans to
walk down the street, but the Latino gangbangers were nowhere to be found.
Najee Ali, who had organized a little demonstration of love and unity, walked
around the neighborhood with me looking for a gang member he might recognize.
They were supposed to drop by and sign a document calling for an end to
violence.
"They don't want to show their face now," Ali said, attributing their reluctance
to the fact that L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and other officials were coming
later in the day to announce a crackdown on the gang by local, state and federal
agencies.
I went off on my own after a while, trying to find gang members. Call me naive,
but I wanted to see what they had to say about race relations, what sucked them
into gang life, what might get them out and why they thought it was OK to cordon
off sections of the city for their exclusive use.
I had no luck in the end, and Ali's news conference kind of fizzled too,
devolving into a discussion of whether the agreement he had with gang members
was a truce or a treaty and what it all meant in the end anyway.
"It ain't gonna work," 20-year-old Darren Brown told me. He was there because of
his friendship with the family of a 14-year-old black girl shot to death Dec.
15, allegedly by Latino gang members. "The people who called the truce are
nowhere to be seen," Brown went on, so it isn't worth anything.
We were across the street from Del Amo Market, which Brown said he had never
been inside despite living three blocks away.
Why not? I asked.
"Fear of getting shot," he said.
You don't have to work hard in this neighborhood to find a story that flips
things around the other way. Why do the black kids have to throw signs at people
and curse, asked a 35-year-old woman named Alva, who gave me a tour of recent
shooting sites and said two of the victims were Latino. And why did it take a
black victim to bring in all this heavy artillery from the police and the media?
Ali walked by with the family of the 14-year-old who was killed, and Alva asked
him why he hadn't invited the family of the slain Latino man to his ceremony.
Ali told her that family was welcome and so was every other family, and the
whole point of his being there was to bring people together.
It's a nice thought, but it's going to take more than a truce or a treaty to
stem the bloodshed in Harbor Gateway and across the city, and it's also going to
take more than the big guns and injunctions dragged out by the mayor and law
enforcement officials Thursday.
Gang violence is going up citywide while overall crime goes down. In the San
Fernando Valley, 2006 saw a 42% increase in gang-related crime. In Angelino
Heights, residents are still in mourning over the death of a 9-year-old girl hit
by a stray bullet last month, and law enforcement officials enraged them with
the news that gang members who fired the bullet that killed her are not culpable
because they shot in self-defense.
Go ahead and drop a hammer on the bad guys, says Connie Rice, who recently
completed a city-financed report that warned of gang violence spreading into
previously safe neighborhoods.
"But before you lower the boom, what you need to do is go in and let guys know
we've got exit ramps for you if you don't want that third strike," Rice said.
"We've got a bridge out. Job training. If you can't read, we can help. If you're
on drugs, we can get you off that."
Rice's report said the city's efforts are disorganized and under-powered, with
little accountability for 23 scattered agencies that spend $82 million in city
funds. Get it together, she said. Appoint a czar. Go after the toughest members
of the nastiest gangs. But don't expect much in the way of long-term success
until suppression is backed up by smarter intervention and prevention.
City Councilman Tony Cardenas agreed. The chairman of a committee on gang
violence called it the Hurricane Katrina of Los Angeles and said the city can't
expect state and federal officials to hand over money for intervention until it
gets smarter on its own.
"The situation is out of hand," Cardenas said. "Even firefighters and paramedics
are getting shot at, and the reason to point this out is that we have a broad
spectrum of victims we're talking about. It's not just poor people in poor
communities. Everybody's affected by this, and it's a war that's got to stop."
We've got 40,000 gang members and only 61 gang intervention officers, Rice said.
Is it any wonder the gangs are in control?
If indeed the violence spreads to previously safe neighborhoods, it'll put the
problem on everyone's radar screen. Maybe then we'll be interested enough to
discover that Rice is right when she says the cops can do only so much.
Although some gang members are sociopaths who need to be locked away for good,
many are products of economic, educational, cultural and social forces that have
destroyed families and communities. They grow up with absent dads and addicted
moms in places where the manufacturing jobs of yesteryear gave way to a service
economy that doesn't buy you a house and barely pays the rent.
"If you don't have a job for them, it's over," Rice said about what happens if
you're lucky enough to talk a kid out of a gang. "[Father] Greg Boyle is right.
The only factor that has ever substantially reduced crime by gangs is jobs."
She had a thought too on how to create them.
"You need a Manhattan Project to create violence-reduction jobs like the public
works jobs from World War II," she said, telling me Los Angeles has arrested
450,000 minors in the last 10 years and sent many of them off to prisons at
tremendous public expense. "You create jobs because it's a whole lot cheaper
than what we're doing now."
****************
Los Angeles names and targets city's worst 11 gangs
Mayor and police chief vow to pursue the groups with local-federal law enforcement teams. Experts question the strategy.
By Patrick McGreevy and Richard Winton
Los Angeles Times
February 8, 2007
Launching a counteroffensive against organized street thugs, Los Angeles Mayor
Antonio Villaraigosa and police officials took the unusual step Wednesday of
identifying the city's 11 worst gangs, then promising to go after them with
teams of police, federal agents, probation officers and prosecutors.
Facing 720 identifiable gangs with 39,000 members, the city's plan would target
the most dangerous groups, which total at least 800 members. Those gangs are
thought to be responsible for a disproportionate amount of mayhem.
The gangs on the list are believed to have committed 6% of the violent crime
that occurred in the city last year.
How many local and federal officers will be committed to the anti-gang push
remained unclear, however. And given the complexity of what has been a
long-standing social problem, some experts questioned whether the plan would be
any more effective than past police crackdowns.
Overall, serious crime declined in Los Angeles last year, but violent,
gang-related crime increased 14%.
Gang crime was even higher in areas such as South Los Angeles, where it
increased 25%, and a section of the north San Fernando Valley where it grew by
nearly 160%.
"Street gangs are responsible for the majority of all the murders in Los Angeles
and nearly 70% of all the shootings," Villaraigosa said Wednesday at a
previously scheduled international summit on gang issues in Universal City. "We
must work to address gang violence in a truly comprehensive way."
Although the police had identified certain gangs on occasion, especially when
they appeared to be involved in high-profile crimes, the LAPD historically has
not called out their names "because of the widely held perception that doing so
elevated the criminals' influence and standing in the gang community," the
mayor's plan says.
"This new strategy abandons the earlier posture and challenges these menaces by
exposing their corrosive behavior to the scrutiny of a more informed and
confident community," the plan says.
But Wes McBride, executive director of the California Gang Investigators Assn.
and a retired Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy, said he was "not sure" that
identifying the gangs was a good idea.
"These guys keep the clippings, and I don't know if you can really say which are
the most dangerous gangs on any one day," he said. "It is the kind of
advertising you don't need."
McBride said he feared that some gangs would feel slighted if not named and
might try to up the ante with more violent crimes.
Najee Ali, a community activist and former gang member, said he also was opposed
to any ranking system. "The mayor and chief shouldn't be legitimizing the
gangs," he said. "To the gang members it is a badge of honor."
The list of targeted gangs includes the 204th Street gang in Harbor Gateway,
which is believed to be responsible for recent racially motivated attacks and
will be the subject of a special abatement effort. The list also includes Canoga
Park Alabama, whose members' recent violent acts have contributed to gang crime
skyrocketing 43% in the San Fernando Valley.
The other gangs on the list include 18th Street Westside in the LAPD's Southeast
Division; the Avenues gang in the Northeast Division; the Grape Street Crips in
the Southeast Division; Black P-Stones in the Southwest Division; the La Mirada
Locos in the Rampart and Northeast divisions; the Mara Salvatrucha in the
Rampart, Hollywood and Wilshire divisions; the Rollin' 40s and Rollin' 30s
Harlem Crips, both in Southwest, and the Rollin' 60s in the 77th Street
Division.
The Mara Salvatrucha gang has up to 50,000 members in six countries, but police
will focus on cliques that operate in a few local high-crime neighborhoods.
The LAPD already has shifted 18 additional officers to the 204th Street gang
turf and is expected to double that amount soon. Smaller deployments are
expected for other gang-infested neighborhoods.
An additional 50 officers will be assigned to a Community Safety Operations
Center in the Valley, which will analyze real-time crime data to rapidly and
strategically deploy officers, including high-visibility patrols, in
crime-ridden regions of the Valley.
The mayor and chief are set to formally unveil their plan at 2:30 p.m. today at
the Valley's Mission Community Police Station.
Most of the gangs on the list already have been hit with injunctions that
restrict their movements and ability to socialize, and some have been in the
crosshairs of local and federal authorities for years.
But Villaraigosa said that the new plan is not as piecemeal as previously, and
that the FBI, the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the
federal Drug Enforcement Administration, county probation agents, county and
city prosecutors, and the U.S. attorney's office have signed on to step up
pressure.
"We, the police, law enforcement, can do a great deal working collectively
together, with force magnification, to reduce this problem," said Police Chief
William J. Bratton on Wednesday.
But, Villaraigosa added, the gang-suppression plan was only the first step in
stabilizing crime-ridden neighborhoods. He said the city would later provide
prevention and intervention programs to keep young people out of gangs.
The chief acknowledged that with a police force already stretched thin and
expansion occurring slowly, he would have to redeploy existing officers to hot
spots in the immediate future.
McBride, the gang expert, cautioned that plans without resources often fall
short.
"Until everyone hires a bunch more cops, you are shoving sand in the wind," he
said.
In addition to releasing a list of targeted gangs, the LAPD has submitted the
name of a fugitive gang member for placement on the FBI's most wanted list and
will submit another name when the first fugitive is captured, officials said.
The submissions will come from the LAPD's own list of its 10 most wanted gang
fugitives, which also was released Wednesday. It includes Merced "Shadow"
Cambero, from the Avenues gang, and Kody "Monster Cody" DeJohn Scott, from the
8-Trey Gangster Crips.
Also, the plan includes the appointment of an LAPD gang coordinator, creates a
South Bureau Criminal Gang Homicide Group, designates additional patrol officers
in gang territories to enforce injunctions and warrants, and proposes community
symposiums on gang awareness in affected neighborhoods.
Malcolm Klein, a professor emeritus at USC and a gang expert, said the city's
gang plan would appear to use a "tip of the iceberg" strategy.
"Targeting hot spots for gangs — that is not much different than the past,"
Klein said.
He also questioned the methods used to choose which gangs belonged on the worst
11 list.
"The level of violence generated by a gang makes sense to me. But the
interracial conflict [at the root of the 204th Street gang murders] is not
common, and shooting at police officers also isn't common. The last two are more
political than rational."
However, the idea of focusing on the most violent gangs was supported by Alex
Alonso, an academic who studies gang territories in Los Angeles and runs the
website streetgangs.com.
"What they did under [former Police Chief Daryl F.] Gates didn't work: Suppress
everyone. Now they want to be more focused on the most hard-core gang members,
that 10% who are really responsible for violence," Alonso said.
Experts suggest police crackdowns do only half the job. One plan calls for a mix of programs designed to 'hold and build' neighborhoods.
By Richard Winton and Patrick McGreevy
Times Staff Writers
February 11, 2007
Every few years, an act of gang violence rises above the rest, sparking outrage
across Los Angeles and vows to finally conquer the gang problem.
When Karen Toshima was killed by gang crossfire in Westwood Village in 1988,
then-Police Chief Daryl F. Gates intensified Operation Hammer. The gang sweeps
yielded thousands of arrests but also generated much criticism about
mistreatment by officers.
The 1995 killing of 3-year-old Stephanie Kuhen when her family drove onto a
dead-end street in Cypress Park resulted in another gang crackdown.
When William J. Bratton became chief in 2002, he was faced with a string of 20
gang shootings — including the death of 14-year-old Clive Jackson. He declared
war on gangs, referring to them as domestic terrorists.
Last week, he and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa declared war again — the
inspiration this time the racially motivated killing of Cheryl Green, a
14-year-old African American, by members of a Latino gang in the Harbor Gateway
neighborhood.
The new crackdown — targeting 11 gangs — might suggest that the Los Angeles
Police Department is trying again where it has failed before.
But it's more complex than that. Though gang crimes jumped 14% in 2006, they are
down significantly from the early 1990s and even more compared with the
mid-1980s. According to LAPD statistics, there were 7,714 gang crimes last year,
compared with 10,945 in 1995.
"What we are doing is no different than what we have been doing. As a Police
Department we have always been assertive, very aggressive in going at gangs,"
Bratton said. "What we are doing with this effort — it's more comprehensive."
But what some critics of the crackdown find familiar is the race to respond to a
killing that garners news media attention and public outrage — an approach they
say is not always comprehensive or effective.
"It is the same prescription every time they have a major event," said Malcolm
Klein, a veteran gang sociologist and USC professor emeritus. "Gangs are defined
as a crime problem and not a community problem. This is old fashioned
suppression in a new guise, and where is the proof that has worked?"
He noted that since 1980, when gang slayings topped 200 in Los Angeles, the city
has focused most of its gang response on policing.
A month ago, Connie Rice, director of the Advancement Project in Los Angeles,
produced a comprehensive plan for the city to overhaul gang intervention
programs and try to use means other than law enforcement to address its 39,000
gang members.
Rice proposes what she calls a Marshall Plan of sorts that would mix law
enforcement with gang intervention and job programs, community outreach and
newly created community oversight groups.
It would focus initially on 12 so-called hot zones around the city. Gang
prevention efforts now cost the city $82 million a year, but the report called
for as much as $1 billion to be spent over the first 18 months.
Rice said past LAPD gang suppression efforts have worked in some neighborhoods,
but only for a short time. The city, she said, has always failed to follow up
with programs to keep the gangs out.
"The surges of police activity work, and they may even work for months or
years," Rice said. "But eventually, three years later, another [gang] set comes
in."
She likened the situation to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, where troops quickly
routed the enemy, only to see a lack of proper planning lead to chaos.
"The LAPD knows how to surge and purge," Rice said. But "after the LAPD clears
out a neighborhood, we don't know how to hold and build."
Rice and Klein said the city's response to the Stephanie Kuhen shooting in
Cypress Park by the Avenues gang highlights the problem.
In the wake of the killing, the city created the L.A. Bridges after-school
program, but it has not done what was required, Rice said. The program budgeted
for $26 million last year reaches only 5% of gang members and 2% of children in
neighborhoods with high gang activity, and is not keeping enough young people
out of gangs, she said.
Cheryl Maxson, a UC Irvine criminologist and gang expert, said the problem is
that the LAPD can move much faster than gang intervention groups.
"The program community, the interventionists, are not able to mobilize as
quickly as LAPD, so law enforcement has taken the lead on gangs for decades,"
she said. "So the city goes with strategic suppression."
Bratton, however, is quick to point out that LAPD efforts over the last four
years have yielded results.
"In 2002, 2003 we had a similar initiative. [Before then] we had had three
straight years of growing crime in the city. Gang violence in particular," he
said. "We put in new resources. That year, we had a 23% decline in homicides
throughout the city. About 20% of that decline, over 100 fewer murders, were in
the South Bureau."
The latest plan calls for 200 extra officers to target the 11 gangs, a new South
L.A. gang homicide bureau and an LAPD gang coordinator.
Villaraigosa said the plan, which identifies gangs by name, represents a more
direct approach to the problem, learning from past mistakes.
"Part of what dynamic leadership is all about … is you are constantly evaluating
what works and what doesn't," he said, adding that he also wants to boost
gang-intervention programs.
The police crackdown has met with general support from community activists in
some gang-plagued neighborhoods, who say they have been begging the city for
years to make their areas safer.
But aggressive gang crackdowns have generated criticism in the past over
heavy-handed tactics.
Efforts in the 1980s were widely seen as excessive, symbolized by police use of
a tank-like battering ram to smash into suspected gang houses. In 1988, police
ripped apart apartments on Dalton Street looking for gangs and drugs — but later
admitted they had the wrong places.
A decade later, gang enforcement efforts were further tarnished by the Rampart
scandal. Caught in a dope-stealing allegation, then-Officer Rafael Perez
revealed that dozens of officers, many in the elite area gang unit, were making
false arrests, giving perjured testimony and framing suspects.
Then-Chief Bernard C. Parks, now a city councilman, disbanded the anti-gang
units. Subsequently, the U.S. Justice Department forced the LAPD and city into a
consent decree with oversight of the department continuing today. Tough rules
govern the gang units now in use, and there are audits and constant monitoring.
(INFOBOX BELOW)
Anti-gang efforts
Here are some defining moments in the Los Angeles Police Department's long — and
at times controversial — fight against street gangs.
• 1985: The LAPD started using a tank-like battering ram to
enter suspected gang and drug houses. The Times reported: "Police Chief Daryl F.
Gates was so proud of the event that he personally christened the new tank and
then rode inside it, while cameras rolled, as it did its dirty work."
• 1988: Eighty-eight LAPD officers stormed two apartment
houses at Dalton Avenue and 39th Street, near the Coliseum. The officers broke
windows, smashed walls, ceilings and furniture with sledgehammers and battering
rams and ripped out sinks and toilets. Apparently, they had the wrong
apartments. The city paid more than $4 million in settlements.
• 1988: The LAPD launched Operation Hammer, anti-gang sweeps
that resulted in tens of thousands of arrests. Many blacks and Latinos said the
effort amounted to racial harassment. On one night, officers in Operation Hammer
arrested 1,453 people — 1,350 of whom were released with no charges filed.
• 1994: In the wake of riots in 1992, several major gangs
agreed to truces, which appeared to reduce killings in some neighborhoods, but
in many cases the results were short-lived.
• 1995: The LAPD and other agencies launched what was
described as the "largest street gang crackdown of its kind in Los Angeles
history." In two weeks, only 69 people had been arrested by the 800-member task
force.
• 1997: Law enforcement agencies won a sweeping,
first-of-its-kind injunction aimed at the heart of the notorious 18th Street
gang's domain, a crowded and crime-plagued square-mile area west of downtown
where the group had emerged more than 30 years ago.
• 1998: Crime in Los Angeles dropped to the lowest level in
more than two decades.
• 1999: The Rampart scandal erupted, with accusations of
criminal behavior by members of the LAPD's anti-gang detail.
• 2002: Mayor James K. Hahn and Los Angeles Police Chief
William J. Bratton announced an "all-out assault" on the city's street gangs,
with plans to use the same tactics that crippled organized crime to pursue gang
members.
**********
L.A. housing project stuck in a cycle of violence and distrust
Residents feel caught between the local gang and the police officers that battle it.
By Paul Pringle
Los Angeles Times
February 16, 2007
School was out, and the municipal gym jumped with the wholesome noise of girls
and boys slapping basketballs onto the hardwood. Then came the clatter of a
helicopter overhead.
"LAPD — you see?" said Jose Saucedo, in a voice too weary for his 18 years. He
stood at the gym door, eyeing the police chopper as if it were a storm cloud.
"What's the reason for the helicopter? Why?"
The simple answer is that the gym sits in Ramona Gardens, an Eastside housing
project that has seen countless confrontations between the police and its
home-grown street gang, Big Hazard. The cycles of seething standoffs and bursts
of violence stretch back generations and have defeated every effort to bring
lasting security to the neighborhood.
Caught in the middle are Saucedo and his fellow ballplayers, along with about
2,000 other folks determined to lead normal lives in the sprawl of
barracks-like, World War II-era masonry buildings.
Some say they feel under siege more from the police than the gang, because of
what they contend are heavy-handed tactics, a characterization that the Los
Angeles Police Department disputes.
"Growing up here is as close as you're going to get to living in a police
state," said Jose Navarro, 29, a USC doctoral student from Ramona Gardens.
Earlier this month, the routines of residents were disrupted again after a
reputed Big Hazard member died in LAPD custody. The death of Mauricio Cornejo,
31, who was arrested in the project, ignited yet another round of
police-brutality accusations and countercharges of gang intimidation.
Two people said they saw officers beat or kick Cornejo in the head. The LAPD
denies it and cites a preliminary coroner's examination that found no signs of
serious head injuries. The police also say they are often targeted by Big
Hazard. The gang has at least 260 members, including those in prison or living
outside Ramona Gardens, and has connections to the Mexican Mafia, according to
the LAPD.
Twice since January 2006, the police say, gunmen have fired at patrol cars in
Ramona Gardens, with bullets narrowly missing officers.
"Every time we walk away from our car, it's going to be vandalized," said LAPD
Capt. William Fierro. "I just don't know how to get the roots of that gang out
of there."
None of this surprises housing experts. They say that Ramona Gardens, squeezed
by railroad tracks and the San Bernardino Freeway, has become a field laboratory
for housing policies gone wrong and that any solution would require razing the
buildings and starting from scratch. The city's oldest project, Ramona Gardens
opened in 1941.
"It has outlived its useful life," said Rudy Montiel, executive director of the
Los Angeles Housing Authority, which runs the project. Rents for the 497
residences are based on income and can be as little as $50 a month.
Montiel said Ramona Gardens typifies a failed model, because it piles poor
families on top of each other and is separated from the surrounding community —
hothouse conditions for predatory crime. He said the old Aliso Village project
nearby was in similar distress until it was replaced with a combination of low-
and middle-income housing. That could ultimately be Ramona Gardens' fate, he
said, although there is no specific plan for such an undertaking.
"This is an area that has been neglected for years," said City Councilman Jose
Huizar, whose district includes Ramona Gardens. He pledged to begin meeting
regularly with residents.
A litany of ills
The project has witnessed shootings, a thriving drug trade, shakedown
schemes that victimized delivery and bus drivers, apartment squatting by gang
members and street skirmishes that rained rocks and bottles on police, according
to the LAPD.
Last week, as tensions mounted over Cornejo's death, the threat of more mayhem
charged the air. About 100 riot-equipped officers rolled into Ramona Gardens to
disperse a group of 40 to 50 Big Hazard members — some of whom were drinking
beer and smoking marijuana — and residents holding a curbside carwash to pay for
Cornejo's funeral.
Because the gang members melted away without incident, LAPD officials declared
the operation a success. But it left mixed emotions among residents. As police
prepared to pull back, Fabian Puente, 21, who was born in Ramona Gardens, walked
onto Lancaster Avenue to applaud them. "These officers are just doing their
jobs," he said. "We are living in our houses like prisoners."
Many other residents declined to answer a reporter's questions or even give
their names, seeming to show that they were afraid of the gang, the police or
both.
The most vocal complained that the police stopped them for nothing and issued
jaywalking tickets to teenagers heading home from school. Several accusations
were directed at an officer assigned to monitor Big Hazard.
Miguel Jurado, 18, who grew up in Ramona Gardens, said the officer recently
ticketed him for riding his bicycle without lights.
"He told me I looked like a gang member," said Jurado, a carpentry student who
added that he doesn't belong to a gang and has never been arrested.
Fierro said the police do not detain residents without probable cause, and
he defended the lead gang officer. He also dismissed a common belief in the
project that rookie officers are deployed in Ramona Gardens as part of their
training.
But Fierro acknowledged that there might be truth to an assertion that officers
do not have enough contact with residents to quickly judge who is and isn't a
troublemaker. "That bothers me, and I want to see if we can change that image
that we have," he said.
Fierro and other police officials said they had been making strides in that
direction — last year, an LAPD team played residents in a basketball game —
until Cornejo's death.
On Feb. 3, LAPD spokesmen say, officers tried to apprehend Cornejo, but he led
them on a foot chase and tossed away a .45-caliber pistol.
They say Cornejo, a wanted parolee, then fought with officers and was struck
with a baton on an arm and leg. After he was handcuffed, Cornejo continued to
kick at the officers, according to Lt. Paul Vernon. At the LAPD's Hollenbeck
station, Cornejo developed breathing problems, and the police called paramedics,
Vernon said. Cornejo was pronounced dead shortly afterward.
Two women have said they saw the police strike Cornejo in the head and body
after he was handcuffed, and a third woman said she saw officers drag him
through a station hallway and kick him. The police say that is untrue.
Complete autopsy results are pending.
History repeats itself
The recriminations over Cornejo's death are history repeating itself at
Ramona Gardens. Eleven years ago, a crowd pelted officers with rocks and bottles
after the police shot a suspected gang member to death. In 1991, a similar
eruption occurred when a sheriff's deputy fatally shot an unarmed gang member,
who authorities said had assaulted a second deputy with a flashlight.
Each time, residents said the police and sheriff's officials had ignored
harassment complaints and were out of touch with the community.
The residents do not downplay the presence of Big Hazard. But many say the gang
members, for better or worse, have family ties with those on the right side of
the law.
The police insist that Big Hazard bullies residents into silence, while dealing
drugs and committing robberies.
"Ninety percent of the people in there are good, hard-working people," said LAPD
Deputy Chief Cayler Carter. He said the department has resolved to "take that
community away from the gang and give it back to the people."
Carter and Fierro said the 2006 shootings at two patrol vehicles were on their
minds when they marshaled a military-strength convoy to break up the carwash
last week.
Current and former gang members say the police exaggerate the danger. Gabriel,
42, who asked that his last name be withheld, said he joined Big Hazard at age
12, has served multiple prison terms and has been employed under the table since
his 2004 parole.
He said Big Hazard does not prey on residents. "It could be better, but it's a
nice community," he said the day after the police operation.
Gabriel said that he expected the police to constantly eye him, if only because
he is thoroughly branded with gang tattoos, but that the LAPD hassles too many
innocents.
"These kids see it," he said, gesturing to the youngsters at the gym.
He said he followed his father into the gang, but the family had its triumphs: A
brother is a civilian worker for the Sheriff's Department, and a sister is an
apartment manager. "You can emancipate from this," Gabriel said, "but it takes a
lot of discipline."
Discipline pays off
Navarro, the USC doctoral student, had the discipline. At the carwash, he
wore a pullover from his alma mater, UC Berkeley, and told of being reared at
Ramona Gardens by his aunt, Maggie Aguilar, who helped keep him out of the gang.
"I'd have kicked his butt," said Aguilar, whose daughter, Kristy Alvarez, is
Lincoln High School's reigning homecoming queen.
Navarro, who was a friend of Cornejo, said the police use the gang label to
"dehumanize" young people in the neighborhood. "There's little difference
between me and the so-called gang members," he said.
He was standing on Lancaster Avenue as the third day of the carwash wound down.
As it grew dark, Navarro chatted with another childhood friend, Gerard
Hernandez, 27, remembering happier times. Hernandez once visited him at
Berkeley, Navarro said.
On this night, he said, Hernandez joked about someday attending Harvard.
Half an hour later, Hernandez was shot near the gym and staggered out to the
street. He died at the hospital.
Fierro said that Hernandez belonged to Big Hazard and that the killing was
gang-related.