- LOS ANGELES (UPI) -- A career
Los Angeles police officer and veteran of some of the department's most
elite units became the city's first "gang czar" Wednesday and
was put in charge of tackling the street gangs that are being blamed for
the city's shocking murder rate.
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- Michael Hillman received a rare two-step bump from captain
to deputy chief in a late-afternoon ceremony at the 77th Street Division
station in the heart of South Central Los Angeles where a simmering gang
war boiled over shortly after Hillman's boss, Chief William Bratton, was
sworn into office last month.
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- The LAPD has launched anti-gang offensives in the past,
but they left behind anger and bitterness among residents who felt the
police were harassing innocent black and Latino youths who were allegedly
being stopped on the streets for no good reason.
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- Hillman, a former SWAT supervisor and member of the anti-terrorism
squad, served notice that while the latest anti-gang effort would not throw
the Bill of Rights out of the window, it would also undoubtedly lead to
an increased number of "field contacts" in which patrol officers
stop citizens on the street to be questioned and sometimes frisked.
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- "Make no mistake about it, for us to be able to
do this, we are going to need the community's support," Hillman told
television station KCAL in an interview earlier Wednesday.
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- "We are also going to need support for the fact
that police officers are going to be able to stop people based on reasonable
suspicion and probable cause.
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- "It's not pretty, but what is really not pretty
is seeing the victim down on the street," he told KCAL.
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- Hillman moved into the upper command echelon after more
than 35 years on the force, much of it with the elite Metro Division, which
operates out of police headquarters downtown. His latest assignment was
as commander of the LAPD's 15-helicopter air unit.
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- Bratton said Wednesday that he and Hillman were on the
same page in term of strategies to combat gangs and that "he understands
my goal of gaining the respect of the community."
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- Gang crime has been the proverbial elephant in the room
for Los Angeles police and political leaders. They are caught between public
pressure to institute reforms following the Rampart scandal, and a lawless
army of an estimated 100,000 gang bangers and their associates who have
contributed to a murder rate in Los Angeles that leads the nation.
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- More than half of this year's 614 homicides have occurred
in the 77th Street Division.
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- "There is nothing more insidious than these gangs,"
Bratton said Tuesday when he announced the city would seek federal assistance
in its anti-gang effort.
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- "They are worse than the Mafia. Show me a year in
New York where the Mafia indiscriminately killed 300 people. You can't."
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- Bratton, a former New York police commissioner, indicated
that with the help of the feds, he would launch a more subtle operation
to target gang leaders using tactics similar to those used against the
Big Apple's Mafia families.
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- The chief and Mayor James Hahn plan to travel to Washington
next week to lobby for support from federal officials.
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- Law enforcement agencies in Los Angeles and cities across
the country have run several gang investigations with the federal government,
which has jurisdiction over major drug trafficking, firearms and racketeering
laws.
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- Generally, career gang members are involved in conspiracies
that run afoul of federal law, and they can be sent to prison for long
stretches.
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- But experts told the Los Angeles Times that there were
few similarities between the New York mob and Los Angeles gangs.
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- Criminologist Howard Abadinsky told the Los Angeles Times
that the New York mob investigations were run by the FBI and took years
of patient surveillance to put together. In addition, he said, Los Angeles
gangs are far larger than the Mafia.
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- "You need to stop recruitment," he said. "The
problem you've got in L.A. is you have an unlimited supply of applicants."
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- Copyright © 2002 United Press International
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