Alarmed City Leaders Try to Counter Rise in Violence

An upsurge in violent crime has political leaders and anti-gang specialists in Los Angeles scrambling to devise a counterattack.

The spate of recent shootings continued Thursday evening, with three separate incidents in the space of an hour. They left a 29-year-old man dead, a teenage boy gravely wounded and two other men injured.

Los Angeles City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, whose South Los Angeles district has been hard-hit by recent violence, is hosting a private meeting Monday with police, gang intervention specialists and others to offer solutions to what some fear is the reversal of a seven-year decline in crime rates.

Also on Monday, Assemblyman Antonio Villaraigosa (D-Los Angeles), who is a candidate for mayor, and county Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke are hosting a community forum at the First AME Church in South Los Angeles to take public input on the problem.

On Thursday, a man was killed in the 200 block of West 118th Street about 6:10 p.m. when the 29-year-old man and a male friend were picking up two young children at a neighborhood playground, said Los Angeles Police spokesman Lt. Horace Frank. A car zoomed past, shots were fired and the two men fell to the ground. The second man was listed in stable condition late Thursday night with back wounds.

In another incident, a cab driver was shot in the 400 block of East 98th Street by a passenger who fired through the plastic shield separating the front and back seats, police said. The driver was in stable condition Thursday night.

The boy was shot in the 1600 block of East 104th Street around the same time. He was not expected to survive, said police spokesman Don Cox.

It’s not clear if the three attacks were related, Cox said. Police said preliminary witness statements suggest the gunmen were different in each shooting.

The efforts by political leaders and others are in response to a 7.5% increase in violent crime in the first six months of the year over the same period last year. Most troubling, however is a 28% increase in homicides in the first half of the year.

In South-Central, a chapter of L.A. Bridges, the city’s anti-gang program, plans to hold a peace march and rally at Gompers Middle School Saturday morning under the theme “Envision No Violence.”

Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, who has been criticized by South Los Angeles activists for failing to respond to the increase, said through a spokesman that he is “very concerned about the rise in violence” and announced Thursday that the mayor’s office has been working for several months on an effort to stem the violence.

Manuel Valencia, a spokesman for Riordan, declined to elaborate on Riordan’s efforts, saying premature publicity and political pressure might thwart progress.

But he added: “There is a serious effort underway to look at what can and should be done.”

The sharpest spikes in homicides have occurred in the city’s South and Central police bureaus, where gangs have been at war in recent months, according to police and gang experts.

It is not clear what has prompted the escalation in violence, but some gang experts attribute the increase to the coming of age of a new and more violent generation of gang members. Others, including police, blame recent gang disputes over turf and drug sales.

LAPD Lt. Horace Frank said the number of shootings and assaults by gang members has not increased over the last year but the number of deaths resulting from those attacks has jumped 80%.

Frank said police don’t know why the gang attacks have become more deadly.

The upsurge has leaders worried because Los Angeles will be in the spotlight next month when the city hosts the Democratic National Convention.

Earlier this week, the entire City Council instructed Los Angeles Police Chief Bernard Parks to submit a report explaining how the department is addressing the increase.

Ridley-Thomas, who heads a council panel on gang violence, hopes his meeting Monday will generate a plan that he can pitch to the entire council and to the Police Department.

“I’m expecting action to come out of it,” said Ridley-Thomas, who has also scheduled a public hearing on the crime increase for July 13.

Activists have already called for a gang summit in hopes of reaching a truce between gangs. Others have proposed an increase in after-school programs and job training initiatives.

Police are uncertain whether the increase is a temporary spike or the start of a much larger crime wave, but they note that overall, crime rates are still much lower than in the most of the 1990s.

The city of Los Angeles had 230 homicides in the first six months of the year, putting it on pace to have 460 killings by Dec. 31. That would surpass the 422 homicides for 1998 and the 428 homicides for 1999 but would be lower than the 569 homicides in 1997.

South Los Angeles activists, who have been pressing for action, praised the organizers of the upcoming meetings.

“Overall, I’m glad to see everyone involved,” said Kahlid Shah, executive director of Stop the Violence, Increase the Peace Foundation, who promises to attend at least one of the meetings on Monday.

Times staff writers Bobby Cuza and Jeffrey Gettleman contributed to this story.

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Violent Crime Jump

Here are citywide violent-crime figures for this year through

June 21 compared with figures for the same period in 1999.

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Offenses and attempts 2000 1999 Change Homicide 230 180 28% Rape 678 600 13% Robbery 6,905 6,778 2% Aggravated assault 15,286 13,937 10% Total 23,099 21,495 7%

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Source: Los Angeles Police Department