So, Chief Bill Bratton and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa both testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee this morning on that Feinstein gang bill…..(Here’s the LA Times story.)
Antonio said:
“Gangs are no longer a local issue and they are no longer isolated to urban cities. They operate sophisticated multi-state and multi-national networks that cannot be contained by municipal police alone. That is why we need a sustained partnership with the federal government if we are going to turn our neighborhoods around. Cities need the federal government to make an investment and play its part.”
ROUGH TRANSLATION: “We need money—or else our gangs are coming to your cities. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.”
Bratton said:
“This bill recognizes what cops already know, that we can’t arrest our way out of a gang crime problem. The police alone can’t own the gang problem. Society must step up to address intervention and prevention…”
ROUGH TRANSLATION: “We need money. We’re sick of the whole problem being dumped on cops and cops alone. What do we look like, social workers?”
It’s not my intention to make light of the situation. Beyond the political rhetoric, the mayor and the chief are pleading for essential resources. This month gang crime is down in Los Angeles. But if our city is to truly do something permanent about the violence that blows irreparable holes in too many LA families, it’s going to take a big infusion of cash.
In this year’s State of the City speech, Villaraigosa proposed targeting certain high crime areas of the city and flooding them with services in the form of a wrap around system of enforcement, prevention, intervention and community support. His plan was a sort of pilot version of the kind of all-hands-on-deck approach that Connie Rice had already proposed with her Advancement Project gang report.
But thus far the money needed to accomplish even the mayor’s mini version, just ain’t there.. It would be nice if Feinstein’s lock-’em-up gang bill provided a healthy share of the needed help, but it doesn’t. Out of its $1 billion budget, it allocates $50 million a year for prevention and intervention—for the whole country. Let’s say LA got a reasonable chunk, like maybe a full tenth of it—that’s $5 million. Split that five mil between law enforcement and prevention/intervention programs, and you can buy……not a hell of a lot.
Instead the bill turns petty crimes into Federal offenses, and puts its biggest bucks -behind an interweave of high profile Federal strike forces and multi-agency enforcement teams.
IN OTHER WORDS….the bill does nothing to keep the disaffected fool of a 15-year-old from blasting at an “enemy”—AKA another disaffected teenager—-and maybe hitting a toddler instead, which is what the heart of LA’s gang violence problem really looks like.
[MORE GANGS AND POLITICIANS AFTER THE JUMP]
Feinstein’s gang bill doesn’t help the 20,000 LA school kids living in gang haunted neighborhoods feel any safer walking to school.
It doesn’t help the kid about to be released from probation camp, who swears to himself that he’s going to “do good” when he gets out, but lands right back in the some old neighborhood, with the same old family problems, and the same old street temptations, the same school that really would prefer he’d drop out because they’re overcrowded anyway, and he looks like trouble.
But of course, the solutions to those kinds of day-in-day-out problems are nowhere near as glamorous as throwing money at a national FBI-led multi-agency, wire-tapping, RICO-wielding task force aimed at going after the big bad menace of, say, Mara Salvatrucha….or whatever.
ON THE OTHER HAND…. bills can change a lot in committee. If one reads between the lines, that seems to be what both Bratton and Villaraigosa are pushing for.
Antonio also said:
“In order to reduce gang violence for the long term, we must confront it with a comprehensive solution. That means a significant and sustained investment in prevention, intervention and re-entry, in addition to enhanced suppression.”
Yep. Exactly right.
Celeste, this is a great post. In my work with addicted youth, the first “law” when they are admitted to residential services is no colors and no gang signs. Despite that, problems with inter-gang rivalry continues from time to time.
Kids join gangs for a lot of reasons, but one of the major reasons is that they are searching for acceptance and acknowledgement of their existance, something they often do not get at home.
Parenting is a tough job and there are no licensing requirments unlike carrying a gun or driving a car. While I’m not for licensing parenthood, I believe that parenting classes ought to be a part of all pre-natal care from any physician. Intervention in the early years (to age 12-14)will give children the necessary tools, self confidence, knowing they are loved and accepted, to escape from the gang culture by not needing that acceptance from the gang.
Too often, gang members or gang-wanna-be’s get sucked in, and then find that they are being used. In therapy, many, many gang-bangers will, in individual counseling, acknowledge that they would like to get out, but the penalty is often too harsh once they make the decision to leave.
This is a big problem and one that thoughtful people ought to be able to sit down and figure out how to solve. And it should never be a question of “money” because these kids can grow up to be our citizens, or our prisoners in various state and federal prisons.
If someone wants out of a gang, tell him to move to the suburbs. Need any other problems solved? (Okay, I’m kidding, but you weren’t sure, were you?)
Rather than concentrating on existing gang members, put more resources to helping those who are potential gang members. You’ll get a better return, although it takes longer to recognize results.
The gang problem is like the bump under the rug. Push it down somewhere and it pops up somewhere else across the floor. Metaphorically, what needs to be done is to pull up the rug, the wood, and remake the floor. In real terms that means attacking the problem on its many fronts, hopeless kids, lack of resources to occupy and train them to do something more interesting than selling drugs, parental support, rounding up existing offenders, to name a few. We can’t “arrest” our way out of this. Root causes must be addressed. Nothing less has any hope of succeeding.
You know its a funny thing about gangs. Back in the 19th Century there were some pretty bad Irish ones. Scorcese even did a film about it. Then, at the turn of the century Italian and Jewish mobs were the scourge of the city. And a funny thing happened that pretty much cleaned up the problem. All those people got good jobs, went to college, got even better jobs and too Woody’s advice and moved to the suburbs. Amazing what a little opportunity will do!
My guess is that Fernando Guerra of Loyola’s LA Institute is right and the Latino arc will be very similiar to that of the Italians (how many here know that over a third of the paisans went back to Bella Italia? And I had Aunts and Uncles from the old country who never really learned English. Since I never learned Italian it mad communicating rather hard. And I miss not knowing the language. My brother went to Community College to pick it up!)
over a third of the paisans went back to Bella Italia
In the 1900’s before welfare and child benefits for everyone, people found out that the grass was not so greener here and nearly half went back home. The US got the benefit of best and brightest HALF of the immigrants who stayed and prospered.
Actually Pokey a lot saved their dough while here and went back to be padrones.