Pubdate: Wed, 30 Dec 2009
Source: Wall Street Journal (US)
Copyright: 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.wsj.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/487
Author: Tamara Audi

LA GANGS SEEK PROFIT IN PEACE

Violence Ebbs As Criminal Alliances Emerge In New Test For Authoritie

LOS ANGELES -- After nearly two decades fighting gangs, Los Angeles
County Sheriff's Detective Robert Lyons thought he had seen it all.
Until he saw members of the Bloods and the Crips -- rival gangs that
spent years in brutal conflict -- meeting amiably in a restaurant.

"They were talking. There was hugging and high-fiving. It was
unbelievable," Mr. Lyons said. He has heard a refrain from gang
members: Red (the Bloods) and blue (the Crips) make green (money).

Gangs that were once bloody rivals now are cooperating to wring
profits from the sale of illegal drugs and weapons, law-enforcement
officials and gang experts say. In some cases, gangs that
investigators believed to be sworn enemies share neighborhoods and
strike business deals. The collaboration even crosses racial lines,
remarkable in a gang world where racial divisions are sharp and
clashes are often racially motivated. "You see African-Americans
dealing with Hispanics on obtaining narcotics and weapons. We're
seeing Hispanic gang members involved with the Eastern European
criminal figures," said Robert W. Clark, acting special agent in
charge of the criminal division of the Los Angeles field office of the
Federal Bureau of Investigation. "Where they see opportunities to
collaborate, they do."

Gang activity has been one of the most intractable crime problems
facing Southern California for decades, terrorizing communities,
claiming hundreds of lives a year in some periods and also breeding a
nexus of criminal activity that has been exported to other
communities. Los Angeles, along with Chicago, has long been considered
one of the centers of gang activity in the U.S.

But gang-related violence is at a 30-year low in Los Angeles,
according to experts. Gang-related homicides in Los Angeles totaled
128 in through October of this year, compared with 312 in all of 2002.
All reported gang-related crimes, including rape, assault and
robberies, totaled 4,899 through October, compared with 7,432 in 2002.

The sharp drop is undoubtedly a landmark success for law-enforcement
officials and policy makers, who have used aggressive policing and
rehabilitation programs to tackle the problem. But the reports of
alliances between formerly warring gangs potentially offers a
different explanation: Gangs are committing less violence because they
are partnering on criminal activity, creating new challenges for law
enforcement. "Now, instead of having 200 guys that are arch-enemies
with 200 other guys, you have 400 guys working together against law
enforcement," said the sheriff's detective, Mr. Lyons.

There are still plenty of rivalries and violence. One Los Angeles-area
Latino gang, Barrio Hawaiian Gardens, was charged this spring with
hate crimes against African-Americans -- including targeted shootings.
Tracking the number of gang members is notoriously tricky, and
membership is fluid. But a November report from the California Gang
Node Advisory Committee, which attempts to track gang membership, put
the number of gang members at 85,832 in Los Angeles County, up
slightly from recent years. And the number of gang members has been on
the upswing nationally. There were about one million gang members in
the U.S. in 2008, up from 800,000 in 2005, according to the National
Gang Threat Assessment, compiled by the National Gang Intelligence
Center and the National Drug Intelligence Center. Some regions of the
country -- like New England, with 640 gangs -- are seeing an increase
in violence as gangs grow and fight for control of neighborhoods and
the drug trade, the report said. But there is cohesion in other
regions, like Washington and Oregon, where "alliances between gangs
may result in the expansion of criminal networks and increased
criminal activity in the Northwest Region," the report says.

In Los Angeles, federal and local law-enforcement agencies have
launched massive investigations and raids against gangs. In 2009,
law-enforcement officials arrested more than 650 gang members in
Southern California, according to the FBI.

City officials also credit gang-prevention and rehabilitation programs
for the drop in crime. Gang intervention workers -- often former gang
members -- work alongside police to prevent retaliatory shootings.
Homeboy Industries, a privately funded gang-rehabilitation program in
Los Angeles, serves around 12,000 people a year who have left gangs,
providing job training, counseling and tattoo removal. And the mayor's
office has sponsored activities like basketball games and picnics
among neighborhoods that are home to feuding gangs. But intensifying
pressure from police has also prompted gangs to work together, said
Jorja Leap, a University of California, Los Angeles professor and gang
expert. "They really are united against what they perceive to be a
common enemy -- law enforcement," said Ms. Leap, who now advises Los
Angeles County Sheriff Leroy Baca on gangs.

Ms. Leap said gangs form links to survive -- and to maximize profits.
"The market is tougher and they're consolidating," she said. Los
Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said gangs are "treating their
activities more like businesses than before. In business, you work
with whoever you have to."

This collaboration can make tracking gang crime and dismantling gangs
more complicated. Members of street gangs are showing up unexpectedly
in health-care and credit-card fraud investigations, which have
traditionally been run by Eastern European crime rings.

During a two-year investigation of the Athens Park Bloods, an
African-American gang entrenched in south Los Angeles, investigators
learned the members had formed a pact with a Hispanic gang called
Barrio 13. Eventually, 22 people were charged -- 20 African-Americans
and two Hispanics. "They shared the same guns, the same narcotics, the
same neighborhood," said Mr. Lyons, the sheriff's detective.
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