COLUMN ONE : Elaborate Death Rites of Gangs : Street hoodlums bury their fallen comrades in rituals that are an unholy alliance of love and hate, bathed in the gangsters’ colors. Parents, ministers and police all are torn about how to respond.

There is no better lesson on gang life in Los Angeles than to witness the homage accorded a homeboy in death.

Hundreds of times each year, gang members are laid to rest like martyred soldiers. Gang salutes follow coffins into the earth. Words of love mix with vows of retribution. Tears are dried with red and blue bandannas--the colors waved by Los Angeles’ warring nations of the street.

And so it went for Cadillac Jim.

Gunned down one night in front of a cheap motel, Cadillac Jim, 29, was eulogized by 500 relatives, friends and fellow gangsters. His deluxe funeral included a silver hearse and four stretch limousines, six floral sprays and other trappings befitting a veteran of more than a decade of gangsterism.

Cadillac Jim’s body rested in an open casket underneath an eight-foot banner that bore his name and was fringed with glistening Crips-blue garland. Many young men, blue scarfs hanging from their back pockets, paused by the casket and had their pictures taken with the body. Some bent to kiss his forehead.

Outside the spacious chapel in the Angelus Funeral Home on Crenshaw Boulevard, Los Angeles law enforcement stood on alert. James Y. Shelton Jr.--alias Cadillac Jim--was no stranger to them. He was an “O.G.”--a well-known, high-level Original Gangster who had served time in jail on weapons charges.

Nearly a dozen police officers cruised in circles or posted themselves in strategic locations, watching for rival gangs or other signs of trouble. They checked license plates in computers and brainstormed over how to retrieve a stolen car driven by one of the mourners.

After a 17-mile, 100-vehicle procession to Forest Lawn Memorial-Park in Glendale, Cadillac Jim was buried in a section called “Brotherly Love” as his friends threw gang signs, their blue bandannas held aloft.

“We all knew it would happen, homie, some time, some day, but not so soon and certainly not to you,” one gang member wrote in a poem in a memorial booklet. “The emptiness we feel is unexplainable. And our love is without measure.”

As gang violence reaches record levels, funerals such as Cadillac Jim’s have become an urban ritual in Los Angeles, an unholy alliance of love and hate, peace and violence--unfolding with tragic regularity at cemeteries throughout the city.

“You go to the funeral out of respect for the neighborhood and the homeboys. This is what you have been fighting and dying for,” said former gang member Gregory Williams, 23. “In the Army you die for your country. In a gang you die for your neighborhood.”

Rarely do gang members use funerals as occasions to reflect on the cycle of carnage that often claims innocent lives. Never is there a similar showing of reverence for victims of their errant gunfire.

“They can do a drive-by, be shooting at some guy, hit a 2-year-old and not think twice about it,” said Los Angeles Police Officer Terry Lovan, a 10-year veteran of CRASH, the department’s anti-gang unit. “That’s what you’re dealing with. No remorse. The whole mentality is different. . . . The only thing they answer to is their selves.”

The rituals of gang funerals cross ethnic lines. When a Latino gangster is buried, the trappings of the gang are often mingled with the symbols of Catholicism.

At the funeral for 20-year-old Alejandro Luevano, killed by a sheriff’s deputy, mourners crowded into the Dolores Mission Roman Catholic Church east of downtown. Wearing rosary beads atop black sweat shirts stenciled with the words, “Rest in Peace, homie,” dozens of sobbing gangsters filed past Luevano’s coffin. On his chest they placed crucifixes and black bandannas.

Each funeral carries the threat of more mayhem and death. They are “a keg of dynamite,” said V. G. Guinses, executive director of Say Yes Inc., a gang counseling agency in the Crenshaw district.

“It can explode at any moment,” he said. “You never know who is going to show up. You never know what can happen.”

Police cite a litany of horrors. Once, enemy gangs invaded a funeral home and stabbed a corpse. Another time, gangsters shot a body after stealing it from the mortuary.

Late last year, three youths were wounded in a gun battle that erupted in Rosedale Cemetery west of downtown after two gangs came face to face during simultaneous funerals. The mourners in one party shot a 15-year-old enemy they had spied at a nearby graveside service. Soon after, gunmen in a speeding car retaliated by spraying bullets into the crowd.

Harold Bender, funeral director at Solomon’s Mortuary in South-Central Los Angeles, recalled leaving a gang funeral and walking into a barrage of gunfire.

“I had to jump in the back of the hearse,” Bender said. “It’s just that dangerous.”

On one simmering day last summer, while standing graveside reading a biblical psalm, Brother Modesto Leon heard someone shout “They got guns!” and saw three youths dressed in buttoned-up black Raiders jackets approaching the mourners.

Leon stopped the prayer. He walked across the cemetery lawn--white vestments flowing in the breeze--and approached the trio. As he pushed their chests, telling them to leave, “I could feel they were packing.”

Driving away from the cemetery he saw the three youths spread-eagled against a police car, with about eight guns displayed on the ground.

Because of the ever-present threat of violence, security for gang funerals is carefully charted by police, mortuary employees and gang counselors--right down to the route the procession will follow from the mortuary to the burial grounds.

The overriding goal is to stay out of rival gang turf and guide the caravan onto the freeway as fast as possible. Sometimes, the best of plans cannot avert trouble.

Steve Valdivia, executive director of Community Youth Gang Services, said he will not soon forget the time a procession he was monitoring headed into enemy territory. Awaiting them on the street, he said, was a barricade of armed gang members. The caravan turned back, Valdivia said, and found another route to the cemetery.

At the funerals themselves, police say they turn a blind eye to much of the dubious comportment that goes on, such as public drinking or gang signing, choosing to keep a discreet distance--unless all hell starts to break loose.

“It’s a difficult assignment because we may see a group of gang members that under normal conditions we would stop and question them,” said CRASH Lt. Dennis Shirey. “But you have to have some sensitivity because they may be brothers or family members to the victim.”

“Years ago, we didn’t have to cover every funeral,” said Sgt. Bill Shortley. “It was the exception rather than the rule when you had trouble. Now, because of the volatility of the gangs, we pretty much have to cover them all.”

So numerous and ritualistic are gang funerals these days that a cottage industry has sprung up to meet the demand for the required regalia. Florists specialize in arrangements using gang-color ribbon. Other merchants produce custom sweat shirts and T-shirts printed with messages honoring the dead.

K. H. Kim, who specializes in more expensive Old-English style letters, handles a fair amount of funeral wear from his monogramming shop at the Slauson Swap Meet. Pointing to a shirt emblazoned with “Chico, R.I.P., “ Kim said he appreciates the business but does not feel good about it.

“They are doing this for respect,” Kim said of his customers, “but (if) a friend of mine dies, I would not show respect by buying a shirt. They think in a different way.”

Some felled gang members are themselves buried in homeboy attire, a practice that James McCarty, chief embalmer at Angelus Funeral Home, said he gently discourages.

“I try and tell them (family members) that now is not the time for colors. I tell them I am not concerned about how the person died, only that he is buried in peace,” said McCarty, who increasingly spends his days using special putty to rebuild the faces and bodies of young people torn apart by gunfire.

“I’ve gotten to the point,” McCarty said, “where I feel good when I don’t see a young man in here.”

Clyde, a 28-year-old Crip, said he attended about 30 funerals last year, including one he organized for his best friend. Among other things, Clyde said he ordered a floral arrangement with a ribbon saying, “We Love You Homie.”

Two or three times a year, Clyde said, he visits cemeteries to wipe off his friends’ tombstones. Last Memorial Day, he said, “we had a barbecue for the homies” on the cemetery lawn.

“I hope someday someone will do the same for me,” he said, predicting that his own funeral will “be almost like they are burying a president, there will be so many people there.”

As for the police presence at funeral services, Clyde said it does not much matter because there is a sort of unwritten understanding that such scrutiny comes with the territory.

“They come packing their (guns),” Clyde said of the police, “and we come packing ours.”

For the clergy who officiate at gang funerals, the service is perhaps their most challenging ministerial hour.

As the body of a dead homeboy lies before the gang members, some ministers seize the moment to provoke consciences and firmly condemn gang killings. Others, fearing that a confrontational sermon will only inflame tensions, choose to comfort family members and speak in lofty words on the positive aspects of the slain homeboy’s life.

Leon, who has officiated at 106 gang wakes, refers to funerals as a “teachable moment,” a choice opportunity to grab the attention of a captive audience. He uses the funeral to pointedly “ask people to look at what brought us here and ask what they have done to add to this violence.”

At a recent wake at Holy Cross Church near Los Angeles, Leon targeted his sermon to several gang leaders who had encouraged a 15-year-old boy, now lain before them, to join the gang.

“Those who helped this young man get into the gang helped pull the trigger that brought him into this deathtrap,” Leon preached.

He could feel tension mounting from the brittle silence in the sanctuary. Then he saw three leaders rise from the pews and walk out of the church. “I know I am hitting a nerve,” he said, “when they walk out in such anger.”

The Rev. David Morris said he was nervous when he presided at Cadillac Jim’s funeral. He had just signed up to serve as a $75-a-service minister at the funeral home, and it was his first gang funeral.

“I got an inkling that this was not going to be an ordinary funeral when I drove into the parking lot and saw that young men were drinking,” said Morris, associate pastor of Westminster Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles, which serves a largely middle-class congregation.

“The guard warned me to keep the sermon short and sweet,” Morris said. “I chose to be pastoral and priestly rather than confrontational.”

Never at a funeral had he witnessed such a show of reverence over the body, Morris said.

“What struck me was the ritual around the body--taking so many pictures . . . waiting at the cemetery for the body to be lowered,” Morris said. “When I saw how these young people viewed the body, how they kissed the body, I could see how this person was like family to them. . . . It was just a sad, hurting feeling.”

Father Gregory Boyle, a priest at the Dolores Mission, has performed dozens of gang funerals. He allows gang regalia but tries to discourage talk of revenge. He said he worries that much of the ceremony around a gang member’s death tends to glorify the slain youth.

“You want death to be an alarm clock for them,” Boyle said. “I’d rather have it wake them up than (have them) be lulled into hero worship. But you deal with what you have.”

The Rev. Lewis Dias, a Baptist preacher, officiated at the funeral of his own nephew, a 16-year-old shot to death by a rival gang. As he looked out onto the audience of teen-age boys dressed in matching uniforms, Dias felt not only rage but despair. There before him were the very boys responsible for his nephew’s death because they had drawn him into their fold.

Still, he tried to challenge the gangsters crowding the small chapel to change their lives. It was futile, he believes.

“I was talking to them about life, that they are wasting their time,” Dias said sadly. “It’s amazing it doesn’t seem to get through.”

Families have conflicting emotions and opinions about the presence of gangs at their children’s funerals. Some are outraged and go to great lengths to avoid gang participation, giving out the wrong time for services or opting for graveside ceremonies that leave little time for shenanigans.

But some parents see the gangsters as the best friends their son or daughter had and are grateful when the gang chips in to pay for the funeral.

City Terrace resident Francisca Villegas regarded the presence of gangsters at her son’s funeral as a show of solidarity and support. They had held a carwash and raised $200 to help pay for the burial of 18-year-old Francisco, killed in a drive-by shooting. Villegas maintains that her son was not part of the gang, but its members knew him and respected the family.

“We all live together on this street,” Villegas said. “I have seen them grow up from when they were little. I know them. A gang may have bad people, but as long as they don’t mess with you, there is no problem.”

Maria Torres, a housewife in Boyle Heights, disagrees. When she buried her 18-year-old son last year, Torres demanded that “the boys” leave her family to grieve in peace.

“They said it was a difficult thing that I was asking of them,” Torres said. “I said more difficult is what I am going through. I told them to respect my pain.”

By challenging the gang members who live in her neighborhood, the 40-year-old mother of three believes she forced some of them to think twice about the endless violence that they are part of.

Other families seem oblivious to the crowd gathered at the funeral. Some said they were so overcome by grief that they barely noticed the police outside and the gangsters inside.

“I wasn’t paying attention to that sort of thing,” said Charles Anderson, whose 28-year-old son, Leonard E. Anderson, was gunned down May 22 as he stood outside a South-Central Los Angeles liquor store. “We weren’t afraid. We were hurt.”

Leon sees the funeral as a turning point for many parents, some of whom are unaware of the extent of their child’s gang affiliation until dozens of homeboys show up for the funeral. It can also be a turning point for a few youths, who are so jolted by the death that they want to seek a way out of the gang.

Although still a young man, Gregory Williams has seen--and participated in--the continuum of violence and death that permeates gang life. Both his girlfriend and 13-month-old son were gunned down outside a liquor store by gang members retaliating against Williams after a soured drug deal.

The night of their deaths, Williams said, he and some homeboys “got drunk, smoked some PCP and started doing drive-bys. I don’t remember now how many we did. I really didn’t care.”

The next day he began planning the funerals for his girlfriend and baby. “I paid for everything by dealing dope,” Williams said.

About 800 people showed up for the $7,000 funeral, he said. As the caskets were about to be lowered, a 30-second barrage of gunfire shattered the solemnity.

“Cars drove by and started shooting up the place,” Williams said. “I fell to the ground, grabbed my gun and started shooting back.” He said no one was injured.

“You know, I still dream about the funerals I’ve been to, the drive-bys, the people I’ve hurt. I have nightmares,” he said. “I’m trying to shake it, I’m trying to shake it, but it’s like I’m in mourning all the time.”