Posted on 06/02/2004 8:22:10 PM PDT by Libloather
Gang-related murders soaring
L.A., other cities in crisis as youth programs lack funds to fight crime.
By Beth Barrett
Staff writer
Even as violent crime declines overall, gang-related murders have soared across the country and now represent a major law enforcement crisis in the Los Angeles area, other major cities and even rural communities, according to a study released Tuesday.
While funding of juvenile programs was being cut, gang activity has been spreading rapidly from Los Angeles to the rest of the country, and homicides linked to juveniles in gangs have soared from 692 nationally in 1999 to more than 1,100 in 2002, the study found.
"More and more kids are trading school colors for gang colors and more parents are trading graduations for funerals,' said Sanford Newman, president of Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, a Washington D.C.-based anti- crime organization of 2,000 police chiefs, sheriffs, prosecutors and victims of violence that prepared the report, "Caught in the Crossfire: Arresting Gang Violence by Investing in Kids.'
In Los Angeles overall gang homicides are up 25.9 percent, from 81 through early April 2003 to 102 during the comparable period of 2004. The increase follows a 26 percent drop in L.A. gang-related homicides from 350 in 2002 to 259 in 2003.
Current statistics from Long Beach were unavailable Tuesday, but police said that more than half the city's 50 homicides in 2003 were gang-related.
There are about 6,000 gang members in Long Beach, comprising roughly 1.25 percent of the city's estimated 475,000 residents. In Los Angeles, 48,000 gang members make up just over 1 percent of the population, but account for about half the city's slayings.
"Gang violence in America is once again on the rise,' said Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton during a teleconference on the report. "This is a pending crisis. We know it's coming. We can guarantee it's coming.'
The report noted that since 2002, federal funds for juvenile programs have been cut 44 percent and potentially might be cut 40 percent more soon.
Violent crime trends including a dip in spousal homicides have "hidden' the sharp increase in gang homicides, said James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University in Boston.
While gang violence declined through the 1990s, it began to climb in 1999, "when we let down our guard,' he said.
Targeting praised
Bratton said L.A. has had success when police and other agencies have targeted neighborhoods in tandem with prevention and intervention programs. But he noted there aren't enough officers on the streets, sheriff deputies in the jails, prosecutors or youth programs to do all that's required.
The report cites dramatic drops in youth gang violence in Boston, Philadelphia and Baton Rouge, La., where there have been those collaborations, close supervision of young people and a wide variety of community support services.
Negative celebrity
Fox said often gang leaders return to their neighborhoods from prison as "celebrities.'
"More young kids are attracted to gangs. They're too young to have witnessed the bloodshed of a generation ago.'
They see the status and the thrills, not the "early grave.'
The report identified three kinds of gangs.
*The traditional gangs are those that formed before the mid-1980s to defend turf from which to sell drugs and commit crimes, using automatic weapons in drive-by shootings to enforce boundaries or settle disputes.
Traditional gangs like the Crips and Bloods in L.A., Compton and Long Beach have tried to export their gangs through chapters in other cities.
*More recent gangs formed in the 1980s as "crews, cliques, or posses.' Typically smaller, around 25 members, they are more likely to sell drugs, but not to identify as much through "colors,' hand signals or gang graffiti.
*The newest gangs formed in the 1990s in smaller cities, suburbs and rural areas. They tend to be more diverse including women, and middle class members and less violent or involved in drug sales, the report said.
A survey of youth gang activity in 2003 found 87 percent of cities over 250,000 people have gangs, while 38 percent of suburban counties and 12 percent of rural counties do.
"It is soon coming to a town near you,' Bratton said.
Funding for youth violence prevention programs will be the topic of a forum Thursday in Long Beach, where city leaders, police and school officials will discuss how to retain the revenue streams backing such programs.
"We want to make state legislators know that these programs are critical in helping our kids and keeping them off the streets,' said Cynthia Fogg, Long Beach Youth Services superintendent.
Federal and state grants fund numerous youth and after-school programs in Long Beach, including the 21st Century Unity Learning Center and the hiring of probation officers for the city's middle and high schools, Fogg said.
-- Staff writer Kristopher Hanson contributed to this report.
We need to run the Cap Weinberger book threads again where in his book he mentions the disolution of Mexico as a national security threat.
I thought Midnight Basketball was supposed to solve this problem!
"throwin money "........Illinois has the "vanity" license plate with the dove on purple background (last I was there) where the cost of said plate went to fighting the gang problem.
Or overhaul the WOD to recognize that open borders isn't any kind of WOD when we know how most of the drugs are coming in. Or change it so that domestic sources aren't being prosecuted but the foreign sources of drugs are allowed to do whatever they please.
Instead of knocking down doors of American citizens, I think they'd accomplish more if they would stop what's coming over the border.
Almost forgot about the *Crinton/Altoast solution. That Aldork phone tax is still kickin' - no?
They still allow law abiding citizens to own guns out there on the left coast?
The term Broken Family infers that their was a working family that somehow "Broke".
I don't buy this for a second. These cretins spawn from street hookers and crack adicts, or they come across the border to join the gangs.
Am I sad they are killing each other?...NO
This kind of crap doesn't happen in my neighborhood because we won't tolerate it. Screw 'em...
The gangs will have to get in line behind the blacks, and the Native Americans. Unless, of course, the Mexicans are demanding reparations because we "stole" part of their country from them; at which point they will have to go to the back of the line. </ sarcasm>
If the WOG's is anything like the WOD's, it's a total failure from day one.
Broken families in the sense that much of the time mommy and daddy aren't and weren't married and maybe don't even know each other's last names, or haven't seen each other in years. Add to that a series of "boy friends", half brothers and sisters, and voila! No one belongs to anyone, no one is responsible for anyone, so no kids learn responsibility. There's more love and discipline in between a mother cat and her kittens than in some of these spawn and their "parents".
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