Gangland: A modestly immoderate proposal
We know when summer has arrived in Los Angeles: The coast is foggy, valleys are roasting and streets are bloodied.
There's just something about warm weather that brings out gangbangers.
A few weeks ago, many, many American eggheads - those who study the incessant contortions of our social phenomena the way Gypsy seers peruse tea leaves - seemed convinced that paramilitary Rightwing militiamen were set to burst from their tule outhouses and overthrow American social and political apple carts. This was in the wake of some scattered violence linked to "conservative" or religious extremists, notably the assassination of an abortion doctor in the Midwest.
But for some of us out here, clinging to the underbelly of sticky unpleasantness that today passes for reality, the signal crisis facing this country isn't "hate" - white or otherwise.
It's violence.
Here are some recent hightlights from my own community's "merc list":
- Here in North Hollywood, a few blocks from me, a 17-year-old high school student was stabbed to death Friday in her home.
- An Arleta man was gunned down Sunday in what police describe as gang-related violence.
- In central L.A., an 18-year-old was gunned down by assailant in a passing vehicle - a classic gang "drive-by".
Federal and local law enforcement authorities on Tuesday, June 23, 2009, arrested eight of 39 members and associates of one of the most entrenched "cliques" of the Los Angeles 18th Street Gang after the return of federal criminal charges alleging that the gang operated a racketeering enterprise responsible for the October 2007 attempted murder of a street vendor near MacArthur Park that resulted in the fatal shooting of a 3-week-old infant, a murder of an innocent young man that occurred in 2001, and other crimes. [SOURCE - HuntingtonNews]
We can assume the three-week-old was not this "shot-caller's" intended victim. We can also assume deaths of the infant and innocent young man concerned the gunmen responsible not a whit.
One reason for the carnage is that drive-by gangbangers simply can't hit their intended targets, and this unnerving deficiency can be pinned on two main factors: They don't give a damn who they shoot up in their demented violence and they operate their weapons with all the proficiency of daycare toddlers. I notice their lazy sideways grasp has been adopted by Hollywood, and now actors blazing away on celluloid grip their handguns at 90-degree horizontal angles. Although TV and film directors may think the style is "cool", for the gangstas the method occurs naturally: It's simply the most convenient way to hang a pistol out a car window when spraying a street with gunfire.
Doing so, however, invariably sends bullets flying everywhere but on-target. I'm no expert on firearms, but it doesn't take a genius to understand that to be successful in murderous assaults (i.e., kill the thug nemeses on the business end of the barrel), the weapons should be aimed. Marksmen should look down the gunsights, have some rudimentary knowlege of the weapon's characteristics, consider range, etc. - the whole manual. By simply aiming, street gangs could sidestep their unfortunate tendency to drop children, popsicle vendors, elderly folk teetering on walkers, nuns - just about anyone fitting the description "innocent bystander".
But maybe I'm overlooking something here. Maybe they deliberately whack the innocent. As per the proverb: Kill one, warn a hundred. Thugs underscore their street-level "influence" with intimidation and terror. Maybe the message is simply: "We can kill you just because we feel like it." One certainty: It's almost impossible to find witnesses willing to testify against gang members. And that's not just because "snitches" are unwelcome at Crips' bake sales.
In the past few years, the terror message has assumed a freshly insidious component. For all the great lengths taken by local news media to gloss over the development, a growing proportion of inter-gang bloodshed is race-related. Hispanic gang-bangers target African-American "homies" and vice-versa. There has appeared in recent years nothing short of ethnic cleansing occuring to clear neighborhoods of black residents in South Central L.A.
And even more frightening a development is the emergence of extremely dangerous gangs like the Salvadoran "immigrant" MS-13, which evolved from a ping-pong odyssey between L.A. and El Salvador, picking up along the way jungle-trained guerrilla veterans. Folks, this is paramilitary.
Sometimes, the stage seems set for Doo-Rag Armageddon.
And nobody has any answers. A few months ago, late at night on deep-cable, I watched an old movie called "Colors", with Robert Duvall and Sean Penn as uniform LAPD cops patrolling gang-ridden East L.A. The term "homie" must have been fresh, since it pops up in the film with grating frequency. But something occurred to me: In the 20 years since the movie was released, the violence it portrays has changed to only one degree:
It's much worse now.
As some means of alleviating this warfare, at least blunting the violence even an iota, no realistic proposals are proffered. Obviously, much of the bloodshed stems from battles over drug profits. We've now had four decades of War on Drugs, and it's obviously not working. Ideas, anyone?
Seemingly, it's easier for the Left to frame racial violence in terms of Klan gunmen or extremist lynch parties, and this inability to reconcile comfortable dogma with harsh, current reality has left this political sector utterly out of contention as resource for answers to gang-related, urban violence today. In cities across America, the strikingly high death toll among young black and brown men isn't the work of racist nightriders. These young men are killing one another, and, frequently, innocent bystanders.
The Left, so eloquent at chronically harping on societal defiencies, has nothing to offer here. Progressives are more at ease dealing with familiar paradigms, which, in this country, gravitate tightly around racism as root of all public ills. Race-based gang warfare is avoided as subject matter, simply because it does not conform to relentlessly defined myth that non-whites form a united, infractible bloc struggling timelessly against the great bugaboo of white supremacism.
This unstated, generalized compact is honored by the news media, which makes little of this development; for instance, the L.A. Times piece I cited above was an editorial written not by a staffer, but by Sheriff Lee Baca. But even law enforcement gently reconfirms this socio-political fantasy. FBI statistics for 2007 cite 3,800 hate crimes committed by whites out of a total 9,000. It would be easy to conclude that racists are rampaging out of control - until we notice the statistics table doesn't provide a column for Hispanic offenders, even among ethnic group categories that include Pacfic Islanders. The statistics mix crimes of Hispanic gang members into overall white tallies, wildly skewing any reliable "hate crimes" profile that could emerge from the figures.
From the Right, the intolerable bloodletting is tolerated for reasons somewhat more... seedy. Because such violence doesn't touch them, it's easier for this demographic to detach itself from the problem altogether. Within middle America, there's an insular, alarming, habit of considering problems removed from direct line of sight as simply nonexistent. The "boot-strap" mentality that anyone can get a piece of the pie with a little hard work encourages a willful ignorance about the realities of changing social strata, and the difficulties, today, of "getting ahead". More disgracefully, it reinforces a contemptuous neglect of those who don't have boots to "pull up".
In that framework, this society is a cheese culture of neuroses, in which accoutrements of success are constantly displayed, ruthlessly imbued with absurdly high worth. Such an infantile value system pitches any gulfs between "haves" and "have-nots" not just in terms of social and economic distances, but of mental and emotional ones, as well. If inescapable advertising tells us only those who matter own the car, then we're worthless if we walk; some will do anything to reverse that unnatural narrative.
More practically, like illegal immigration, a lot of the profits from illegal drugs derive from their illegal nature. Big-time smuggling operations require big-time cooperation from corrupt government structure, and such operations pump a lot of money into the local economy - like it or not. Earlier this year, there were some proposals to legalize drugs; these sound ideas failed to catch fire mostly because they didn't get pushed by any American political segment with resources to underwrite such campaigns.
So, in the interest of providing at least one brainstorm to lessen the death tolls about which we're so damn sanguine, here's my modest proposal (with apologies to Jonathan Swift):
Any time a gang member is arrested for anything, mandate that he receives firearms training, that he may more accuately fire his weapon. This could seriously diminish the casualty rate among innocent bystanders, and, hopefully, diminish the numbers of gang members on the streets. Simply: They'll kill each other off in higher numbers if their aim is true.
I know this sounds ugly and crazed - probably even infected with that ol' devilment, racism - but I prefer to term this solution pragmatic brutality. Right now, especially in L.A., there are just too damn many gangbangers bangin' up too damn much of the landscape. This idea could winnow the herd, lessen the numbers of armed half-wits shooting holes in this town.
And, it'll better the chances of infants reaching four weeks of age.
It gets so tiresome to talk about this when no politician has the courage to begin to deal with the problems realistically.
As long as there is a market for drugs there will be suppliers. The drug profits will buy weapons and finance other criminal endeavors. Legalization takes the money out of the hands of criminals as well as lessening the need to fight over profitable locations or to expand their business's reach.
Second if a poor teenager or adult sees little hope of getting a legitimate job of course some will be drawn to gangs and criminal activity. We need some type of WPA with the government as the employer of last resort. People need to see a path out of their poverty and this could be a first step.
These are only the beginning. There needs to be more equity throughout society. These two steps would make a fundamental change in society but politicians won't even consider them.
June 30, 2009 3:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Politicians respond to lobbyists - and squeaky wheels. Advocacy without money requires numbers and noise to attract attention. Your ideas are fine ones, and you're right - politicians won't consider them. All problems have solutions, and there must be a way to turn this around. For our future.
June 30, 2009 3:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
A couple of things I read recently that I found interesting and might interest you as well if you missed them:
John Seabrook, "Don't Shoot, a radical remedy for gang violence" in the June 22 The New Yorker.
and
Sudhir Venkatesh on the Salvadoran gangs.
I would also like to say, as one of the kind of New Yorkers who doesn't hate Los Angeles, but likes it very much as an alternative kind of metropolis, I feel sorry for youse guys that you can't seem to mitigate this knotty problem some (a given: it's never going to go away totally, we still have it, it just moved to the burbs), and reading of how bad it gets there also makes me fearful of the bad old crime days coming back to NYC.
June 30, 2009 6:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Since the end of World War II, California has been the vanguard of the nation. In fact, with its population, the Golden State is a nation. It happens here first, then it happens everywhere else. Get ready. I don't see your silver-spoon mayor "going Giuliani" on the throw-downs. Good luck!
June 30, 2009 6:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
God said to Abraham
Kill me a son
Abe said god
You must be putting me on
We sacrifice human beings every goddamanable day.
40,000 dead from gunshots and they say a quarter of those dead were the result of shots fired by gangbangers.
We lose 4500 men and women defending this country in six years.
We lose ten thousand a year
FOR SIMPLY LIVING IN THE WRONG PLACE
SOMETHING MUST BE DONE ABOUT THIS.
Do we send troops into our slums?
I do not know.
But this can not be countenanced.
June 30, 2009 6:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Intentionally hitting anything while firing from a moving vehicle is a remote probability, regardless of training. Other than that, I got nothing solution-wise.
June 30, 2009 7:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think a WPA approach is probably the most doable, all thing consider. And it's been tried, and the results. I think it was in Inglewood some years back. Some federal bucks were poured into a program that subsidized salaries for city maintenace and construction jobs, and a bunch of gangsters - crips and bloods I think - got really well paying jobs. Gang activity stopped for these men, according to the assessments of the project. In some cases, interviewed clients stated that they made more money dealing drugs, but the benefit of steady employment, even being legal, reduced stress and so on trumped the old gang life-style. Of course when the funds dried up, they were back on the streets...probably more bitter and fucked-up than ever. But I think it is clear that jobs work. I wish I could give you a cite for this - I think I saw it on Frontline or something like that - about 10 years ago.
June 30, 2009 8:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Programs to alleviate the drift of young people to gangs, like Gang Resistance Is Paramount (GRIP) and Workforce Partners, come and go; when they are maintained, their effectiveness is dependent on specific budget terms. Some years are better than others. They tend to fade whenever California faces another of its chronic money crises. While in existence, these programs have shown encouraging results. Overall, however, inability to sustain them tracks to Sacramento's failure to successfully administer itself.
July 1, 2009 10:03 AM | Reply | Permalink
A full-funded nonprofit sector could alleviate many social ills at a fraction of the cost that government or for-profit organizations can deliver the same solutions. I think nonprofits have been terrible at getting their story into the national narrative, despite the compelling nature of most of their tales.
July 1, 2009 10:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
I won't argue with that, Jason. Here's my position: Whatever works. It's odd, however, that this state, so mindful of keeping oil companies happy with subsidies and tax breaks, can't be as generous and consistent with programs that actually help people who actually need help.
July 1, 2009 10:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
Of course - every jobs program that is publicly funded has a sunset clause. It's frustrating to me because in the end the one thing that works is impossible to sustain.
An old and dear friend, now departed, founded ran the minority employment program in Caliornia's EDD (then the Department of Employment). She developed, over the years, several terrific programs. She told me once about her project in the Fillmore in SF, a job interview training program. How to do well in an interview. It worked - the clients were getting hired left and right after learning how to make a good impression on a prospective employer. But as she was counting the successes, her eyes sort of glazed over and she said: "But there are no jobs." She went on to explain that the whole thing was futile without jobs - and the successes of the training program ultimately created a musical chairs effect - for each person hired, another was bumped. So I guess the lesson is that unemployment is immutable by virtue of the structure of our economy, and the great social question is who gets to be unemployed?
I grew up in Compton, Kurt. In the very early sixties I found myself at Compton College and volunteering for civil rights work. The project was to defeat "blockbusting." In those days the ghetto line was Alameda Blvd, and the housing pressure in West Compton was enormous. So realtors would sell a house to a black family in a white neighborhood at inflated prices, and then canvas the neighborhood creating panic with home owners over falling property value due to black folks moving in. The realtors would purchase property from panicked whites at significant below market value, and turn around and sell to black families at above market value prices, due to the high demand for decent housing. So we would go from door to door in Compton explaining this to property owners, and urging them not to panic and sell. The aim, of course, was to eliminate ghettos and integrate neighborhoods. Boy, were we naive.
I've drifted off topic - really bad gangsters in those days still used zip-guns, and homicides were rare. In ELA the Xicano movement was budding - to get away from the "Pachuco" image. The old "gangs" morphed into car clubs, and 5-7 Chebbys and five dollar haircuts were the hot items of the day.
July 1, 2009 12:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Another great blog, Curt. I think you nailed all the usual suspects who have kept this problem festering for decades now. The War on Drugs has long been our Achilles Heel and both parties have exploited it since the beginning, which can really be traced all the way back to the first anti-marijuana laws and the Prohibition era. The Puritan ethic that contaminated our Enlightenment-inspired Republic from the get-go still rears its ugly head today.
It can be seen in our stubborn inability to practice politics as a way to make the country better rather than in our own image - left and right.
Solving this problem is simple. Legalize drugs and use those revenues to fix our education system to provide real futures for disadvantaged youths. Further, as part of the drug regulation policies, we put in place identification mechanisms for certain substances that would allow for better deployment of rehab programs. Start treating us all like adults and within a couple generations this whole sorry paradigm would go away to a great degree. Of course, there will always be shady people who try to game the system. I think they would rather be criminals in a less violent underworld that didn't include the illicit drug trade.
We have long had violent criminals, but never in the percentages we face today.
Of course, in today's US Congress and state legislatures, the will to make such a drastic and sudden change in policy is nil. The only way we will ever get there is to start the decade long process of cleaning out incumbents by exponentially increasing turnout for the primary elections. I know I am a broken record on that, but with an average of 16% showing up for primaries, it is the only place where the math works in our favor. A small push at the right systemic weaknesses and we could transform that country. We The People have had this opportunity for decades. In fact, we have had it since 1964 when 100% of the country were finally given the right to vote. This is what we have done with that right in the intervening years.
Given the historical record of such pathetic performance on the part of voters and politicians alike, your proposal makes more sense than the ostrich act we've been pursuing.
July 1, 2009 8:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
Whooda thunk our Latin American policies for the benefit of banana plantations, corrupt govenrments and drug smugglers would come back and bite us in the ass? Nice writing Curt.
I think maybe vocational training would be better than firearms training. Gangs have been shooting other gangs for a long time. As a self-cleaning oven, it is not working. Either we as a society provide a legitimate means to a decent life, or desperation will provide more than enough new recruits to replace the dead or jailed gang members.
"When you ain't got nothing,
You got nothing to lose."
July 1, 2009 11:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
From your title, I assume your solution is satiric. That's my hope.
There are several liberal proposals to reduce gang violence and many are effective, though often ridiculed and derided in the media. Youth join gangs for socialization and security - offering alternatives works. The much laughed at and ridiculed midnight basketball works. Gun buybacks work. Community policing works. However, these effective solutions are often mocked and are also the first on the chopping block when budget cuts come along.
Additionally, legalization of drugs - a libertarian solution with supporters on the left and the right among civil libertarians would mitigate the drug-related violence. Stronger gun control - also would mitigate violence. There are solutions from the left and from civil libertarians.
African Americans, Latinos and Asians are also actively working on crime prevention and gang violence and have as much desire for safe streets as anyone. I don't know where you get your stereotype of liberals from, do you listen to Limbaugh?
July 10, 2009 3:18 PM | Reply | Permalink