2 Officers Did Their Best to Stop Gang Fight, LAPD Says

Two Los Angeles police officers who last week accompanied a procession of gang members to what turned into a brawl with a rival gang were expressly given the assignment to prevent trouble, a police spokesman said Wednesday.

But, he said, the officers could not have stopped the turn of events “under the circumstances.”

Police Cmdr. William Booth said a total of six police officers stopped the procession several blocks before it reached 90th Place near Normandie Avenue, where the brawl occurred, but had no cause to make arrests. Only two of the officers continued along with the procession.

Despite reports from residents that many of the gang members were drinking from open beer bottles and could have been arrested for violation of the law, Booth said the officers observed no illegalities.

“The streets are public and we want to keep them public,” said Booth, citing the rights of all citizens, including known gang members, to walk anywhere as long as they stay within the law. “The officers had observed (the youths) doing nothing illegal and had no reason to arrest them.”

The officers did the best job they could by being on hand to call for reinforcements once the two gang factions clashed, Booth said. Nevertheless, he added, the Police Department will probably increase the number of police observers at gang funerals and wakes.

“We might do our monitoring with more officers, officers who are aware of what happened” on 90th Place, Booth said.

Only one police car was on hand at the time of the brawl, he said, because “we thought that would be enough.”

As a result of the July 12 incident, 16 people, including 12 minors, were arrested. Later that night, an 18-year-old man was fatally wounded in a drive-by shooting that police believe stemmed from the brawl.

Police have said that the 25 to 60 gang members were walking from a neighborhood park, where they had gone for a wake after a funeral for a slain comrade.

Booth said the funeral and the dispersal of people from the wake was monitored by several officers because there had been what he called “hostilities” between the two groups the week before. Other police sources said privately that the gangs were embroiled in a vicious turf war that had resulted in two slayings. Residents said members of one gang had shot up homes frequented by members of the other on several occasions.

The funeral that preceded the brawl was for one of the slain youths.

Guns Reported

Minutes before the brawl started, members from the rival gang group were standing with two sheriff’s deputies complaining that members of the other gang had passed by and pointed guns at them.

Lt. Robert Rifkin, a Sheriff’s Department investigator, said earlier in the week that the two LAPD officers, though assigned to an anti-gang unit, were inexperienced and did not know in whose gang territory they were traveling. There was no radio communication between the LAPD unit and two sheriff’s deputies who were already on 90th Place, he said.

Rifkin, who is investigating the brawl because it happened in an unincorporated area under the jurisdiction of the Sheriff’s Department and who had said the LAPD officers made an “honest mistake,” declined to answer further questions Wednesday.

His supervisor, Lt. Chuck Brantley, agreed with Booth that the LAPD officers had done all they could have done to prevent the brawl. Brantley said, however, that the enormity of the gang problem and the fact that the police officers were greatly outnumbered probably contributed to the way they acted.

“There are 700 gangs in the county. Every officer can’t be familiar with every gang,” he said. “The situation has gotten so out of hand it is hard to tell who is fighting who when.

“Those officers were victims. How are two guys going to arrest 60 gang members,” he continued. “They did everything exactly right. They stood back and waited until enough units got there. They got help right away and no one was seriously hurt.”