CrimProf Blog

In new tactic, L.A. goes after gangs' money

The city of Los Angeles, plagued by 23,000 violent gang crimes since 2004, including 784 murders and 12,000 felony assaults, announced Tuesday that it had won its first civil judgment, for $5 million, against a criminal gang that had dominated the heroin trade downtown for decades.

The verdict could bode well for another first-of-its-kind lawsuit the city filed last month that goes after all assets of gang leaders, not just those associated with their criminal activity. Both suits seek to plow the money back into improving the neighborhoods affected by the gangs through a fund.

"By giving prosecutors more tools to fight gang activity at the local level, we are protecting our communities at the same time [that] we're able to strengthen our statewide anti-gang efforts," said Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in a statement released with the announcement of the $5 million verdict against the 5th and Hill gang in L.A.

The civil suits were filed under different amendments to state laws, one passed in 2007 and one in 2008, designed to strengthen authorities' ability to control gangs. The 2007 amendment allows law enforcement to seize assets associated with criminal conduct. But the 2008 law goes even further – it allows prosecutors to collect damages from gang members' personal assets, too.

The December suit against the 18th Street gang is the first to make use of the 2008 amendment.

"We're sending a message to gang leaders across this city," said City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo at a press conference last month. "If you break the law, we will not only find you, arrest you, and put you behind bars, we will also take away your money, your property, your homes, and your cars. Every penny we strip away will be returned to the neighborhoods."

The tactic of trying to cripple organizations by taking away their assets has been commonly used against the mafia. More recently, it has been used against white supremacist organizations. In 2000, the Southern Poverty Law Center won a $6.3 million verdict against the Aryan Nations that forced the organization to give up its 20-acre compound in Idaho.

The center won its most recent case last November, getting $2.5 million from the Imperial Klans of America on behalf of a teenager assaulted by Klan members in rural Kentucky. [Mark Godsey]

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S.F. killings seen as centering on gangs, turf

San Francisco's 98 homicides last year, the highest number in 12 years, were anything but random. According to a new study, the violence was concentrated - routinely involving the same gangs and featuring suspects and victims with long rap sheets.

Nearly three-fourths of the 38 suspects arrested so far in the killings had criminal records, according to the study by the Berkeley Center for Criminal Justice, a research and policy group at the UC Berkeley School of Law. The average suspect had 12 previous arrests.

Homicide victims typically had even longer records, the study found. More than three-fourths had been booked for a felony or misdemeanor at some point, and victims who had records averaged 13 arrests.

Police concluded that almost half the slayings in 2007 were carried out for the benefit of one of the city's 53 identified gangs, the study said.

Some of the findings of the study by researchers Anthony Braga, David Onek and Sarah Lawrence were presented at a recent anti-crime summit at the University of San Francisco. Police worked closely with the authors and intend to use the study to guide policy, but it was not paid for by the city.

"Today's shooter is tomorrow's victim," said Onek, the study group's executive director and a member of the San Francisco Police Commission. "A small number of individuals in a small number of places are responsible for a disproportionate share of the violence. If you can make a difference with that group, you can make a significant impact on violence in San Francisco."

Deputy Police Chief David Shinn, who heads the Police Department's investigations bureau, said the concentrated nature of the violence prompted the department nine months ago to crack down on drugs and gangs in five neighborhoods: the Mission, Tenderloin, Western Addition, Bayview and Visitacion Valley.

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Prop. A backers say now is the time to fund anti-gang efforts

The city of Los Angeles ended 2006 with the high-profile killings of two children: a 9-year-old girl in Angeleno Heights and a 14-year-old girl in Harbor Gateway who, police say, was targeted in part because of her race.

In the wake of those tragedies, the city's elected officials began work on a tax measure that would raise $30 million for anti-gang initiatives, including after-school programs and city-run recreation activities.

But with crime rates steadily falling and the region's economic picture growing dire, backers of Proposition A are finding it difficult to remind voters of those tragedies -- and of the need to avoid future ones. So they are also arguing that the proposed tax hike, on the Nov. 4 ballot, has come at a perfect time, just as the city's anti-gang programs have been revamped and moved into the office of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

"With the progress we've made in the last year, we're going to use these funds in a better way than we would have even a year ago," said Deputy Mayor Jeff Carr, the man tapped to be Villaraigosa's gang czar.

The debate over anti-gang programs also comes as the Los Angeles Police Department is seeing notable successes. Since the hiring of Police Chief William J. Bratton, the number of killings citywide has decreased 38%, from 641 in 2002 to 394 in 2007. If this year's trends hold, that number could fall as low as 350.

Carr said the city should take advantage of the progress it has made on crime by strategically adding money to programs that attack the gang problem from another direction.

Still, some neighborhood leaders say they are tired of being hit up for more money to fund the city's public safety initiatives. In just two years, Villaraigosa and the City Council have more than tripled the trash fee for homeowners, raising it from $132 per year to $436 per year to pay for LAPD pay raises, new equipment and the hiring of 1,000 officers. [Mark Godsey]

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L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa says summer anti-gang programs decreased violence

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on Monday credited a new summertime anti-gang program, which included special community events and extended nighttime hours at eight city parks, with a measurable drop in crime in some of the city's most violent neighborhoods.

Between the Fourth of July and Labor Day, the Summer Night Lights program offered special movie nights and other youth- and family-oriented events until midnight four nights a week, during peak time for gang activity and other juvenile-related crime.

The events were held at parks in communities hit hardest by gang activity, including Baldwin Village, Boyle Heights and Ramona Gardens, and targeted at-risk youth.

"Regardless of where you live, the color of your skin, we all want pretty much the same thing. We want to live, work and play in a safe community free of gang violence," Villaraigosa said at a news conference Monday at the city's Jim Gilliam Park in Baldwin Village.

The mayor emphasized that the drop in crime came during the summer months, when the school break would usually lead to an uptick of criminal activity.

According to the mayor's office, the communities surrounding the eight parks involved in Summer Night Lights had a 17% drop in violent crime during the summer, compared with the year before. Homicides were down by 86%, and the community surrounding Jim Gilliam Park had no killings, compared with six during the same period last year.

Citywide, Los Angeles has seen an overall drop in crime and during the summer had the fewest number of homicides in more than four decades. From June through August, there were 84 homicides in Los Angeles, the lowest number since 1967 when there were 79 during the same period. [Mark Godsey]

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Young Guns: A new brand of gangster grows up in a killing culture

Danger sits in a booth at Denny's, talking about the reason for his name.

"I stabbed about three people," he says, his angular face betraying no particular emotion. He mentions it offhandedly, like a kid trying to be modest about something in which he takes great pride.

Now 18, Danger, has been a dedicated gang member for the past five years. It was his homies, his brothers in arms, who bestowed the street name.

"I been in it forever," said the narrow-eyed young man, fresh from a six-month stint at the juvenile lockup Maple Lane, where he served time for robbery and assault. "Grew up with it from like when I was a baby."

Gang membership - which has earned Danger a 49-page rap sheet loaded with weapons, burglary, robbery, car theft, harassment and assault charges - was a family tradition, he says, and he can't recall ever wanting anything else. His father, now dead, was involved, as are his older brothers. He is estranged from his mother, who lives in White Center.

As a boy, he did the bidding of his elders on a series of missions - "It was like 'Go here, rob somebody. Go there, do that' " - and then, after a sufficient number he was initiated, "jumped-in" the traditional way, by a crowd of gangsters who beat him until he could fight his way out.

After that it was official. Danger had become, at 13, part of the sprawling local network of Hispanic gangs that run under the Sureños umbrella.

There are as many as 100 such groups in and around Seattle - black, Latino, Asian and white gangs - some with carefully structured hierarchies that get their marching orders from prison inmates, others taking a more haphazard approach. During the first eight months of 2008, their gunplay has killed at least a half-dozen teenagers, injured scores more and left police scrambling to find new ways of addressing a problem that is decades old. Records show at least 43 youth victims of gun assaults in Seattle since the beginning of the year. [Mark Godsey]

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Sacramento Hails Drop In Murdered Teens, Progress Vs. Gangs

The streets of Sacramento are claiming fewer young people.

In what authorities say may be a fragile sign of progress, fewer Sacramento County teenagers have been slain in 2008 than in any year going back at least a decade.

And the promising signs do not end there. According to Sacramento police and the county Sheriff's Department, the number of teenage shooting victims is down by about one-third over last year.

In the area's two largest law enforcement jurisdictions – the city of Sacramento and the neighborhoods of Sacramento County patrolled by the Sheriff's Department – the drop may be the residual effect of increased prevention efforts and a shift toward more aggressive anti-gang tactics used by law enforcement, officials said.

Other police agencies across the region reported little or no change in their already low levels of youths involved in violent crime but said efforts to engage young people – especially in schools and those arrested for low-level crimes – are working.

"We're doing something right, and I think it's not just one thing," Sacramento Police Chief Rick Braziel said. [Mark Godsey]

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Agencies join forces to tackle violent gangs

Federal law enforcement authorities have coupled multi-agency task forces with strategies that once focused on Mafia-era crime syndicates to target national and international gangs, many of which have brought warfare to the nation's cities.

With a propensity for indiscriminate violence, intimidation and coercion, some of the gangs are considered security threats. One of the largest is Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, with an FBI estimate of 10,000 members in 42 states, including Maryland and Virginia, as well as the District.

Federal law enforcement authorities have coupled multi-agency task forces with strategies that once focused on Mafia-era crime syndicates to target national and international gangs, many of which have brought warfare to the nation's cities.

With a propensity for indiscriminate violence, intimidation and coercion, some of the gangs are considered security threats. One of the largest is Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, with an FBI estimate of 10,000 members in 42 states, including Maryland and Virginia, as well as the District. [Mark Godsey]

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Gang violence in Seattle on the rise, report says City study urges more spending on prevention

A report on gangs in Seattle bolsters what some in law enforcement and community groups already were saying -- gang violence is up, and more prevention programs are needed."It validated what I'd been hearing and experiencing the last few months," said Terry Hayes, a supervisor with the city's Human Services Department who works with youth programs.The 87-page report, completed in four weeks, cost $15,000. Work on it began Feb. 1, less than a month after two young Seattle men were slain in what were believed to have been gang-related shootings. Allen Joplin, 17, was shot dead Jan. 3 and, in a separate shooting, De'Che Morrison, 14, was killed Jan. 11. Neither case has been solved.

"The problem, youth are saying, is increasing," Hayes said.

The report was done for Human Services at the behest of the City Council, part of an assessment required when the council added $500,000 to the agency's budget for gang prevention.

That money is held until the council officially releases it, said Councilman Tim Burgess, chairman of the Public Safety Committee. He expects the report to be discussed and a decision made at the committee's meeting on Tuesday.

Burgess found the report enlightening, if somewhat bleak.

"What catches my eye is the confirmation of what we've seen from our police reports," he said. "We're seeing a significant upsurge in gang activity that is happening among youth who are younger and younger."

Among the report's findings:

Youths, police officers and those who work with at-risk youth, all agree that despite record low crime rates, gang violence in Seattle has increased over the past two to three years.

Estimates of the number of gangs in Seattle vary wildly, from a low of 30 to a high of 200.

Nearly 80 percent of youths surveyed reported having a friend in a gang, while more than 50 percent said they had a relative who was a gang member.

Guns are too easy for teens to obtain.

The report recommends more gang prevention programs and more money for them. It also suggests that such programs intervene earlier in the lives of kids, and that former and current gang members be allowed to participate in prevention efforts when willing.

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