Added D.A. Aides to Focus on Gangs Dealing in Drugs

The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office is expanding its anti-gang unit, adding lawyers who for the first time will specialize in prosecuting gang members trafficking in drugs.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Genelin, head of the unit, said county supervisors in February approved the expansion, initially by seven prosecutors, at a cost of about $1.3 million.

Even more lawyers could be added to the unit later if they are needed, Genelin said.

Concern for Violence

“We are attempting to make sure that every case involving a crime of violence committed by gang members is prosecuted by the hard-core gangs division,” Genelin said.

“We have had enormous success with those prosecutions. Of those cases that go to trial that are prosecuted by the division, 97% of those people are convicted.

“We feel it’s important to continue that process even more so these days” with increased efforts by law enforcement all over the county to contend with the gang problem.

Some of the added lawyers will solely prosecute gang members who deal drugs, a growing phenomenon that law enforcement experts believe is fueling gang violence.

“What the gang-narcotics deputies are going to be attempting to do is dislodge gang members from the foothold they’ve got in the narcotics trade,” Genelin said. “It will allow us to prosecute more of the gang members who are involved in drugs.”

The new prosecutors will be trained by and work with several gang-narcotics prosecutors already established in the anti-narcotics unit.

Genelin said drug dealing by gangs, especially black gangs in South-Central Los Angeles, “bears a lot of responsibility for the violence that is going on there. I mean, you no longer just have turf wars, you have drug-money turf wars.

“Essentially, turf means money now because it’s narcotics money. If you deal in that area, you don’t want someone cutting into your turf. And so it results in more violence.”

Another reason for the increased violence, he said, “is that if a gang member deals in narcotics, they have money to buy or trade for guns,” he said.

Genelin said gangs dealing drugs is a relatively new phenomenon “that we’ve been watching grow over the last two or three years.”

He said Colombian drug dealers supply the black gangs of South-Central with cocaine--”the drug of choice”--to deal, but generally do so through Mexican or Cuban intermediaries who insulate them from direct contact with the gangs.

The middlemen sell the drugs to so-called “high rollers”--gang members who use profits from street trafficking to finance their own drug dealing operations. The “high rollers,” in turn, recruit gang members to sell the cocaine for them in return for a share of the profits, Genelin said.

Genelin said Latino gangs are not involved in the cocaine process to the extent that black gangs are. Latino gangs, he said, tend to deal in PCP, amphetamines, marijuana and heroin.

Unlike black gangs, he said, the Latino gangs are not supplied by Colombian drug dealers. Most of the drugs they deal, except for heroin, are grown or manufactured in California, Genelin said.