Decrease in crime may be caused by gang-war cycles
Many politicians and the police claim that it is their "tough on crime" and
"lock 'em up" programs that are causing the recent decrease in crime rates. One
has to question, however, how much deterrence works against a young gang member who
doesn't think about living beyond his twenties and is filled with vengeance toward rival
gangs. Malcolm Klein, who specializes in gang research, has demonstrated that gang
violence typically increases and decreases in a cyclical pattern that usually has nothing
to do with the police and sentencing programs that are in place. He also notes that many
times when rates are decreasing, the police, politicians and the media will jump on the
bandwagon proclaiming the programs in place should be given credit.
During the 1980s there was a major crack epidemic and many gangs were in bloody turf
battles to take over the market. Eventually the gangs became tired and weary of
killing each other off and created truces. One of the major decreases in homicides
has been the decrease in gang related murders. Proof of this is also revealed by the
above average decreases in homicide in large cities.
Since 1991, violent crime rates have been decreasing across the nation. As the
statistics show, many of them are attributable to the decrease in violent gang crimes.
Should the 3-Strikes law take credit or are we simply in the downturn of a cycle? The
following are some statistics and comments from books and articles on crime rates and gang
cycles. PLEASE SEND US NEW DATA AND ARTICLES IF YOU HAVE THEM.
"It is clear by now that street gangs do cycle, gang areas do
cycle, gang cities do cycle."
After studying New York, Los Angeles, Louisville, Fort Wayne, Philadelphia, Baltimore,
San Francisco, and so on, Malcolm W. Klein states "It is clear by now that street
gangs do cycle, gang areas do cycle, gang cities do cycle."
And despite what the politicians and police forces say, Klein states "It is the
violent cycles that arouse major response, usually in the form of a suppressive response
from legislation and law enforcement officials. I know of no data that demonstrate a
reduction of gang violence--a down cycle--as a result of such responses, although
anecdotes to that effect are not uncommon."
"I have no good answer, no good answer based upon properly collected data; but
let me offer a hypothesis . . . My hypothesis is that reductions in street gang violence
are not the result of various forms of community or justice system response. Rather, they
are responses by gang members to their own relative state of activity. It's as if there
were a social biofeedback system. I've seen this process at work during my early days as a
street observer of gang life. Gangs can in fact get over their heads in their rivalries,
escalating the intergang violence to the point of shared anxiety and fear. . . . If this
hypothesis has any merit, it says that increases in gang violence carry their own
inevitable seeds of self-response and violence reduction."
"This may be the lesson of the truces begun by Los Angeles gang members most
before the Rodney King riots in 1992 and reinforced by various community groups (but not
the police) thereafter. In this instance, various factions of the Crips and Bloods in the
general area that was to contain the flash points of the riots came together pretty much
on their own to consider reducing the continually accelerating intergang violence. 'Unity'
parties were held in several housing projects in the Watts area of South Central Los
Angeles. According to one activist involved in the initiation of the truce, it resulted
when gang members in one of the hottest areas "agreed they were tired of the warfare
and the violence." Malcolm W. Klein, "Street Gang Cycles" in Crime:
Twenty-eight leading experts look at the most pressing problem or our time, edited by
James Q. Wilson and Joan Petersilia, 1995, San Francisco: ICS Press, pgs. 217-36.
Former gangbangers and grass-roots groups contribute to drop in
homicide rate.
LA Times reporter, Michael Kirkorian interviews former gang members and grass-foots
groups and discovers that they have played a large role in decreasing crime in Los
Angeles.
Six years ago, 466 slayings were recorded in South Los Angeles. That number jumped to
481 the next year. But a steady decline began in 1994, and homicides in the area dropped
to 223 last year.
Standing on the corner of Vermont Avenue and 88th Street, Raymond "Mad Dog"
Lafayette laughs when he hears that Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti, the Los Angeles Police
Department and the mayor have taken some credit for last year's drop in homicides.
"When I would go out for a drive-by, Gil Garcetti was the last
thing on my mind," said the tall 23-year-old gang member who has spent three years
behind bars.
Lafayette said he quit the thug life because a group of
older, retired gang members convinced him of the futility of it
all. "I don't even know who they were, but they made some serious
sense," he said.
They may have been from Unity One, No Guns, Focus, Exodus, FACES, BOSS, Islamic HOPE,
RISE or other small grass-roots organizations composed largely of ex-gang members that
operate on little or no budget.
They operate on love, they say. And they have grown weary of
seeing too many sons and daughters in caskets. They say they have put themselves between
rival guns when word circulated that a payback shooting was in the works. They then would
take to the streets to appeal for peace and brotherhood.
Other groups, composed of victims' families, or community groups that work to keep
young children out of gangs, have also played a role in helping bring peace to the
streets.
It was the street gangs in Watts that started the peace movement in 1992
when gang leaders signed a truce. That treaty is still holding, they say.
Two weeks ago, the Grape Street Crips from the Jordan Downs housing project played
football against Nickerson Gardens' Bounty Hunters. More than 400 people attended. There
were no fights.
"They've always downplayed the gang truce because they didn't start it,
the gangs did," said Daude Sherrills, an architect of the Watts treaty. "You can
bet if the mayor or City Council started up the Watts gang peace treaty, you'd be hearing
about it every . . . day.
"How would you feel if you stopped the killing and here comes
the mayor and Garcetti saying they fixed it? They never set foot in the 'hood, and they
take the credit."
Dewayne Holmes, an ex-gang leader who works for State Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles),
spoke of the drop in crime.
"Not to take anything away from anyone, but I think that more
than anything else, it is the people on the streets who are responsible," Holmes
said. "Stiffer sentencing, and some more police on the streets may have helped a
little, but the people getting involved on the front lines is the overwhelming reason
crime is down."
Holmes said his life "has been anything but peaceful. I have
been shot, I have been stabbed, I have been incarcerated. I don't know anything about
peace. But I want to know all about peace. We need to lay down the arms and fight for a
different cause."
The campaign against internecine warfare has been taken up by some Latino gangs as
well. The efforts of black and brown former gangsters go beyond Watts to South-Central,
the Westside, the Eastside and the San Fernando Valley. Former gang leaders say they are
uniting now in hopes of influencing younger, more violent gang members to put down their
arms.
"We are an organization not only concerned about crime in our
community, but crime in all communities," said Victor Perez of No Guns, a group
working for peace on the Westside and in the South Bay.
This new breed of peacemakers has the support of more-established
organizations such as the Watts Labor Community Action Committee. Janine Watkins, a
community action committee official, said the drop in crime has nothing to do with the
politicians.
"The solutions are coming from those that are suffering, not from those that are
creating legislation that perpetuates the problem," Watkins said. "These guys
that started the treaty, that work in the trenches all over the city, they are the
solution. They have lived up to their word. You can bring in the National Guard, but if
the neighborhoods aren't organizing the peace, it is not going to happen."
Police say the majority of homicides are still in some way gang-related, and a captain
acknowledges that grass-roots groups have helped lower the crime rate.
Capt. Tom Lorenzen, patrol commander at LAPD's Southeast Division, whose 75 homicides
were the most in the city last year, said the gang treaty and cease-fires have made a
difference. "I think we have seen a passing of the day
where kids are going to get shot just for wearing a particular color," Lorenzen said.
"Those days are gone. I got to give them credit for that."
The peace movement is not only being felt on the streets, but in California's jails
and prisons as well, some inmates say.
In Men's Central Jail, while being processed out of state prison, Darren
"CW" Williams, 36, said being a shooter on the streets is no longer something to
be proud of inside prison walls.
"Don't think you can shoot a brother and come up in here and think you
gonna get any love," said Williams, who served 13 years for murder. "That ain't
gonna fly anymore. You ain't getting any stripes for killing a brother." LATimes, 1/26/98.
"Forget about the cops. The credit should go to these
youngsters."
Art Romo, former gang member, helped bring together a truce of more than 1,000 youths
from 50 gangs in August of 1992. Romo and his allies in the United Gang Council put
together the truce, and after Romo was arrested a month later, the truce collapsed.
From 1991 to 1996, violent crime has declined 33.7%. Gang homicides took longer to
combat, but they too dropped drastically by 1996, in which there were 21 killings,
compared with 46 the year before.
Police want to take the credit, but Romo contends otherwise. "Forget about
me," he says. "Forget about the cops. The credit should go to those youngsters.
They're the ones who are listening, all these youngsters who are putting their guns
down." OC-Register, 7/10/97.
Gang attacks plummet in Orange County
The decrease in crime appears to be caused by the decrease in gang attacks. "I
would say countywide, the nature of gang activity is way down," said Anaheim Police
Lt. Ted Labahn, who heads his city's bureau on crimes against persons.
The homicide rate has dropped from 8.5 killings for every 100,000 people in 1993 to 4
slayings per 100,000 people so far this year.
O.C. Homicides: First six moths of each year
1992
|
1993
|
1994
|
1995
|
1996
|
1997
|
87
|
86
|
91
|
91
|
63
|
55
|
The police, of course, credit the decline in gang attacks with a 3-year program that
has targeted the most violent gang members for arrest.
Without acknowledging anything about gang cycles, Santa Ana gang-homicide Investigator
Rick Reese says that the countywide strategy of combining law-enforcement tactics with
community prevention programs is working. They congratulate the "tough on crime"
crowd by citing the state's three-strikes law, the lowering of the age at which teens can
be tried as adults and greater cooperation among the county's 21 police departments.
What will they say when crime rates increase? Will they blame their programs?
Decrease in homicides almost double in the nation's largest
cities.
In the nation's largest cities, those with populations of 1 million or more, there was
a better-than-average 11% decline in homicides. LATimes,
5/18/98.
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Date last modified: 5/18/98.
