A Bloody West Coast Story

By Jacob V. Lamar

Call it the Good Friday rampage. At twilight on April 1, a brown Cadillac sedan glided up to the corner of Vernon and Raymond avenues in South Central Los Angeles. Words were exchanged between the young men in the car, members of a Crips street gang, and a 16-year-old who was hanging out on the sidewalk. Suddenly, the mobile "gangbangers" blasted the youth. A moment later, they turned their guns on a pedestrian across the street.

The Caddy then cruised two blocks down Raymond, where a small group of youngsters had gathered. Two gunmen stepped out of the car and opened fire into the shrieking crowd. Witnesses later told of a "river of blood" in the street. Deshawn Holly, 5, was hit with four bullets but miraculously survived. Stacey Childress, 19, was less lucky. Of the eleven people shot in the five- minute spree, Childress was the sole fatality. The presumed motive for the bloodbath: a drug deal gone bad.

Gang warfare has bedeviled Los Angeles for more than two decades, but the burgeoning crack trade has lately made such groups as the Crips even more willing to kill for the sake of greater profits. Children of the underclass, weaned on violence and despair, have become bloodthirsty entrepreneurs. Some have made small fortunes marketing the cheap, explosive cocaine derivative -- known as "rock" in L.A. -- while settling business differences with state-of-the-art firearms. Many more have wound up in prison or the graveyard.

"There are a million kids out there who have no skills other than fighting," says James Galipeau, a veteran officer in the probation department. "They are not afraid of the police or jail or of dying." As demonstrated by the Good Friday attack, the gang members also show a grotesque disregard for the safety of innocent people. Of the 387 gang-related homicides in Los Angeles County last year, approximately half were innocent bystanders caught in the cross fire of shootouts.

Since February, Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates has waged an intensive campaign against the crack-dealing street gangs. A task force of 100 has been busting 20 gang members a day and has raided 43 rock houses. But Good Friday made those efforts seem futile. While the carnage on Raymond Avenue took place, 180 police officers stood for roll call at a command center less than a mile away.

Gates launched his biggest offensive yet last week: 1,000-man sweeps of gangland territories. At four command posts around the city, including the parking lot of the Los Angeles Coliseum, jail buses with barred windows and portable booking stations awaited fresh business. Gates had announced the drive with such fanfare that many dealers in South Central L.A. had gone to ground, but on Friday the police still managed to bust 334 gang members citywide on charges ranging from driving without a license to narcotics and weapons possession.

But sweeping arrests only aggravate another Los Angeles problem: overcrowded jails. The county prison system, designed to hold 12,800, now houses 22,600 inmates. Gates' combined antigang task forces have arrested more than 1,100 gang members in the past five weeks, an impressive performance that is marred by the fact that the county sheriff was forced to give early release to 1,200 prisoners in order to make room for the newcomers. "We have $500 million in jail construction in progress," says James Painter, who, as chief of the Los Angeles sheriff's custody division, oversees a jail system that is larger than the prison facilities in any of 46 states. "But our projections show that by the time those are completed in five years, we will be more overcrowded than we are now." The city's deputy police chief, Glenn Levant, is unmoved by the shortage. "Our philosophy," he says, "is that unfortunately this is the sheriff's problem." He asserts, "I'm going to keep the prisons full."

The L.A.P.D. has recently tried to attack the "demand side" of the drug crisis. In the past month, officers posing as dealers have begun nabbing would-be buyers. The police are also confiscating -- permanently -- the automobiles of people who try to purchase dope through their car windows. Says Levant: "We are going to make life miserable for users until they realize that every dollar they spend for drugs adds to the violence in this country."

As the police prepared for their sweeps last week, County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn took a drastic step. In a telegram to Governor George Deukmejian, he asked that National Guard military police be dispatched to South Central L.A. for a "show of force." While the Governor's office replied that such a move would be "doubtful," the full county board of supervisors and the Los Angeles city council began debating whether to formally to request the assistance of the Guard.

The gang wars have now become material for Hollywood entertainment. Dennis Hopper's Colors, an already controversial film about Los Angeles cops battling dope-dealing thugs, premieres this week. But no movie could convey the tragic impact of gang brutality on the lives of ghetto families. Consider the case of Peggy Graham, the mother of Stacey Childress. Last November another son, Ermond Easley Jr., 16, was fatally shot in the head and chest while standing a few blocks from the Coliseum. In February, Graham's 19-year-old brother Walter Dirks was murdered by two men who were trying to steal his car. "We are determined to take back the streets from thses hoodlums," declared Mayor Tom Bradley, a former police lieutenant. Those who choose to obey the law in Los Angeles' inner city can only hope that it is not too late.

With reporting by Jonathan Beaty/Los Angeles