Word: gangly
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Despite claims that the truce was an effort to focus gang fury against the police, there has been no evidence of increased attacks on officers and there has not been a single black gang-related homicide in L.A. since the riots. "They are not coming together to organize against law enforcement," says community gang worker Charles Norman. "They are coming together for mere survival because they have been to too many funerals...
Others are more cautious. "If the gangs are maintaining the truce because, as some say, they want to be a part of the rebuilding of South Central L.A., that's a good sign," says Sergeant Wes McBride, a member of Operation Safe Streets (oss), the gang unit of the L.A. County sheriff's department. "But if it's so they don't have to cover their backs as much and can become major dealers of narcotics, that's something else...
Some of the skepticism exists because the truce does not cover all Crips and Bloods factions. Nor does it affect the city's more violent Latino and Asian gangs. One of the widest and most organized peace efforts involves about 12,000 black gang members in four Bloods and three Crips "sets," or factions, within a 3.5-sq.-mi. area of South Central. The Monday after the riots, their leaders came to Norman seeking his help in keeping their peace. There were unity meetings between members of at least 100 gang sets in housing projects and other locations. Norman hopes...
Truce or no truce, no one can deny that gangs are a serious and growing problem. A 235-page report issued in May by the staff of L.A. County district attorney Ira Reiner estimated that the region has about 1,000 gangs with a total membership of 150,000. The study said gang-related homicides in the county increased more than 200% between 1984 and 1991. While drugs and gangs are intertwined, the D.A.'s staff concluded that most gang members are not serious drug dealers. The report's most striking claim was that half of all black males...
...police data bases that provided the numbers. Noting that only 8.5% of all Latinos and less than one-half of 1% of young white men in that age group show up in the data bases, critics complained that police authorities single out young black men and stereotype them as gang members simply by the way they dress and where they live. The police deny that they indiscriminately enter names in the data bases and insist that the numbers are an accurate reflection of the severity of the problem. "We don't have to create gang members," says McBride. "People...