Word: ganges
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Lying facedown in the dirt -- the place where young men netted by the Los Angeles police department's vaunted antigang sweeps frequently wind up -- Javier Gonzalez, 18, watched in terror as an officer slammed Lewayne Williamson's head into the ground. "The cop asked if he was in a gang. Lewayne said no and was hit," Gonzalez recalls. "He said no again and was hit again. By the time they got to me, five or six people had already been whacked." Fearful of being beaten, Gonzalez blurted yes when asked if he was a gang member. Over the next...
...plans to attend college this fall, and 25 other Hispanic and black teenagers filed a $5.2 million suit against the L.A.P.D. claiming that their constitutional rights were violated during that incident in a Pacific Palisades park last February. The suit, which asserts that none of the detained youths were gang members, is the latest in a swelling number of complaints charging that the L.A.P.D. and Los Angeles County sheriff's officers' much publicized all-out war against gangs and drugs is being waged indiscriminately on law-abiding black and Hispanic citizens...
...color make them suspect. "It's open season on youth as far as the police are concerned," says American Civil Liberties Union attorney Patricia Erickson. "When it comes to probable cause, youth, especially minority youth, are guilty until proven innocent." But critics say that even adult residents of gang-plagued neighborhoods occasionally have become victims of curbside justice dispensed in the name of fighting crime...
...there is no policy within this police department that allows for the abuse of anyone." Richard Shinee, general counsel for the Association of Los Angeles County Deputy Sheriffs, contends that it is law-enforcement officers who are the targets of increasing violence. "Los Angeles is the capital of gang warfare throughout the country," says Shinee. "If you look at what's happening in the street -- the lack of respect for authority, police attacked with automatic weapons and assault rifles -- how can you expect that violence associated with law enforcement is going to decrease...
...L.A.P.D. claims it has the support of crime-ridden minority communities for the harsh crackdown on the gangs. But residents retort that whatever support they give the police stems from their even greater fear of trigger- happy gangs. Says Regina Jones, a black publicity consultant and former police department radio operator who lives in South Central Los Angeles: "People are frightened of the police, but they are more frightened of our own youth." Epigmenio Alvarez, a factory worker, complains that roadblocks set up by police to disrupt the movement of gang members and drug dealers in mostly Hispanic East...