Gang Crackdowns: Hit or Miss

Yet again, Los Angeles police have good news for the San Fernando Valley: Gang-related violence dropped sharply this year, mirroring an overall trend of falling crime rates. But at a meeting with top city officials earlier this month, police commanders offered some potentially surprising reasons and recommendations. Seems that good old-fashioned, day-to-day police work makes a bigger dent in gang crime than politically popular crackdowns.

Rather than depend too heavily on gang injunctions--popular because they criminalize many of the behaviors associated with gang activity--Deputy Chief Michael J. Bostic told city officials that deploying resources more widely can produce better results. For instance, Bostic suggested that tracking down gang members who violate parole is a better use of police time and money than implementing the myriad neighborhood crackdowns that politicians and many residents want.

It may not be a popular view from the neighborhoods, but it’s one that makes sense: Bust the bad guys before they get to a neighborhood and cause trouble. Better yet, catch kids with school programs so they never turn to crime. Bostic noted that police depend on flexible strategies and that each of the Valley’s five divisions used different tactics against gang crime this year. But all had similar results. Gang-related crimes dropped 33% in the West Valley Division, 17% in Foothill, 17% in Devonshire, 25% in Van Nuys and 19% in North Hollywood. Valleywide, violent crime for the first six months of this year fell 10%.

Keeping those numbers down demands police flexibility. Although popular, gang injunctions can reduce that flexibility. When part of a package of strategies--from job training to housing rehabilitation--gang injunctions can be effective at strangling the criminal element in a captive neighborhood. But when they are poorly defined or executed in isolation, injunctions simply squeeze thugs into another neighborhood. The problem doesn’t go away. It just becomes someone else’s.