Los Angeles has seen a rise in gang violence, with an increasing
number of gang crimes which appear to be driven by racial hatred,
police sources said.
There is a trend that Latino gangs are indiscriminately
targeting African American residents in what appear to be campaigns
to drive blacks from some neighborhoods, according to the Los
Angeles Police Department (LAPD).
Numerous communities across the area have reported rises in
racially motivated gang attacks, said Khalid Shah, executive
director of Stop the Violence Increase and the Peace
Foundation.
"What is happening is similar to small earthquakes taking place
along a major fault line," said Shah. "Ultimately the danger is
that there will be an explosion, particularly, I think, if we put
our heads in the sand and try to act like this issue isn't
real."
The vast majority of the most serious gang crime remains
intra-racial: Latinos attacking Latinos, blacks attacking
blacks.
Last year there were more than 2,700 black-on-black or
Latino-on-Latino incidents compared with slightly more than 500
interracial attacks.
In cases where gang-related homicide, aggravated assault or
robbery crossed racial lines, LAPD tracking shows an 11 percent
jump in incidents from 2002 to 2006; from 213 to 240
black-on-Latino attacks; and from 247 to 269 Latino-on-black
attacks. As those interracial crimes rose, intra-racial gang
attacks fell by 23 percent, from 3,577 to 2,780.
Of homicides, aggravated assaults and robberies committed by
black gang members, about 2 in 10 are against Latinos. About 1 in
10 of the crimes committed by Latino gang members are against
blacks.
Police find it harder to determine the intent behind the attacks
-- without an admission of motivation, and often without even a
suspect to question, the Los Angeles Times said.
?
Knowing why a victim was targeted by a gang member is difficult:
Was it skin color? Did they or family members have direct ties to
gangs? Was it just bad luck? Mistaken identity?
For the most part, though, the role racial animosity has played
in gang crime has gone unexamined, largely undocumented in crime
statistics and often tamped down by politicians and law enforcement
officials anxious about inflaming tensions, said The
Times.
In a city where blacks and Latinos make up 96 percent of known
street gang members and often live in proximity, it would not be
unexpected that the two groups account for the vast majority of
interracial gang crime, said the paper.
Latinos and blacks are not equally represented in either the
city's population or documented gang membership. About 49 percent
of Los Angeles residents are Latino and about 10 percent are black,
according to the most recent Census Bureau estimates.
Of the city's estimated 39,000 street gang members, the LAPD
reports about 56 percent are in Latino gangs and about 40 percent
in black gangs.
(Xinhua News Agency January 22, 2007)
