There’s a war going on, and it’s not overseas. It’s right here in Los Angeles.
Last month, a 14-year-old girl was gunned down by gang members as she stood on the sidewalk.
Just days ago ““ and just blocks away ““ a man was shot, unprovoked, in the chest as he waited to pick up his daughters from a sleepover.
This sort of gang violence has risen drastically recently, even as other types of crime have decreased, and it’s reaching a breaking point.
Consider this: In West Los Angeles your chances of being murdered are one in 78,000. In Southeast Los Angeles, those chances are one in 2,220.
What’s more, the violence is fast encroaching on formerly safe neighborhoods, and police now warn that they may no longer be able to contain it in the poorer and immigrant hot spots.
The city council and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, not surprisingly, have called for action. But Los Angeles has tried to crack down in the past, with obviously unimpressive results.
Civil rights lawyer Connie Rice, in a report commissioned by the city council, has just called for a Marshall Plan to fight gangs.
The plan would have the city invest in jobs and school-centered gang prevention programs in order to provide youth with opportunities outside of the gang lifestyle.
Whereas a police crackdown, as tried in the past, just treats the symptoms of gang violence, Rice’s plan gets to its root.
Joining a gang is a choice, and that choice is made easier or harder by the alternatives presented.
If kids have after-school programs and jobs with a living wage, joining a gang can quickly become a lot less appealing.
But preventing today’s youth from growing up to be gangbangers is only part of the solution.
The way we police must also change.
It’s important to lock up violent gang members, but when the law sends thousands of people to prison for petty crimes, the results are catastrophic.
Police crackdowns hurt neighborhoods, in a phenomenon called the “prison boomerang” effect.
Men come back to their neighborhoods hardened by a violent prison system. They are better connected, thanks to prison gangs, and are often in worse health and are unemployable.
With 450,000 minors going through the revolving door of prison in the last 10 years, the system has created a huge caste of men whose only way to make a living is to hook
up with a gang, Rice said in an interview on National Public Radio.
The city, and the state, need to work on getting small-time, non-violent offenders into viable jobs and off the streets, not into jails.
Finally, while city officials have been busying themselves with the gang problem from above, they should take note of community activists working on it from below.
Local activist Najee Ali has been trying to negotiate a cease-fire in the Harbor Gateway area, where members of the 204th Street Latino gang have been shooting their black
neighbors in what some have called a race war.
Unfortunately, the gang has been uncooperative.
Community-based negotiations such as this can only be effective if all sides come to the table.
The city should foster collaboration between black activists such as Ali and Latino community groups so the ground-up peace appeals to everyone in the neighborhoods.
In 1992, gang leaders came together for a historic truce. Rice and other activists brought older gang leaders together and worked with them to negotiate a cease-fire.
If they can do it again with the right kind of community leadership and the support of the city, the bloodshed in our streets could end soon.
The ideas to end gang violence are out there; it’s just a matter of choosing the right ones to make some peace in the streets.
Got your own experiences with violence in Los Angeles? E-mail Reed at treed@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to viewpoint@media.edu.