Word: gangs
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...second reason for the increase in gang violence is just as basic. As gang members like Chino are coming back to their old neighborhoods, the police--demoralized by scandal--are backing out of them. In the mid-'90s, the L.A.P.D. curtailed gang violence with some hard-nosed policing, spearheaded by tough CRASH (Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums) units. But after Rafael Perez, a rogue cop from the L.A.P.D.'s Rampart division, was arrested in 1998 for stealing cocaine from a police warehouse, he implicated 70 antigang cops, alleging corruption, excessive force, planting evidence and falsifying testimony. In the end, eight...
...result of his testimony--which helped secure Perez a plea bargain and reduced sentence, though its accuracy is a subject of intense debate--some 100 gang convictions were overturned. The city is facing as much as $125 million in liability claims stemming from the Rampart scandal...
...their place set up Special Enforcement Units, which operate under severely limited rules of engagement. Morale fell to an all-time low, and many cops left for police departments in other cities. It was only a matter of time before the L.A.P.D. began to lose its grip on gangs. "Immediately after the dissolution of CRASH, there was a lull," says detective Chuck Zeglin, a gang specialist who has 18 years' experience in the L.A.P.D.'s detective-support division. "Then a lot of the more hard-core gangsters came to believe we were not going to be as proactive as before...
Chino is a spoon. (Like other gang members mentioned in this article, he agreed to speak to TIME on condition that his real name not be used.) At 29, he has been a Playboys member for 14 years. Many of his crack-war contemporaries are long dead. Chino, as a battle-scarred survivor, has earned special respect in the gang. In his spine are the fragments of a .38-cal. bullet from a 1994 drive-by shooting. A devil is tattooed on his back. He has shot at least two gang rivals, and he got out of jail this year...
Chino is as hard-core as it gets. In jail he learned how to make a tattooing needle, and a recent afternoon found him sitting in a small apartment in Highland Park inscribing a bunny design on the shoulder of Guapa, a 19-year-old female gang member. As Chino worked, he talked about the thrill he got from shooting at people when he was younger. "After a while I really wanted to see myself hit someone," he said. "That is how intense it became in my relationship with my gun. So I walked up to some guys and shot...