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Los Angeles Police Department officers conducts field interviews with suspected gang members in South Los Angeles. Gangsters arent bound by codes of conduct that used to exist and provided some sense of orderliness. An insult, a confrontation, one incident leading to another, creates a se emingly endless cycle of drive-by shootings and street violence that cla ims the lives of the innocent as well as the gangster. Gang members patro l their neighborhoods exacting "taxes" from nongang members who want to sell drugs or work as prostitutes. Addicts mingle with dealers as ordina ry people try to steer clear of trouble and go about their lives without incident. "This is our war on terrorism," said Ronald Preston, 55, an old "Outlaw" gangster known as "Baba" who served 12 years in prison for kidnapping, r obbery and attempted murder. His view is echoed by Pete Cavitt, 47, once a kingpin in the East Coast C rips who has seen two of his sons killed and now works as a gang interve ntionist trying to stop the bloodshed. "This is a black Civil War in this city that goes back 30 years. There are the haves and the not ha ving, and, simply, if you don't have, the frustration mounts, anger sets in and the least infringement in a neighborhood leads to chaos, revenge killings. Tensions between blacks and Latinos, worsening poverty, the lack of good jobs combined with the lingering effects of racism, despair and a host o f other problems create the conditions in which joining a gang often pro vides a sense of belonging that is otherwise lacking "This stuff is deeply rooted ... the rage is deeply within," said Kenny V alentine, 42, a gang intervention specialist with Unity TWO Inc. "When you're young, whichever neighborhood you're brought up in, you're p oor, there's no field trips, no jobs. If they're disrespected by someone scratching their name on a wall, or someone comes in to mess with a female, that's disrespect . Law enforcement authorities said the proliferation of semiautomatic and a utomatic weapons and sawed-off shotguns mixed with vast sums of money at stake in drug dealing and other criminal activity and idealization of g angsters in movies and music have created ever more incendiary condition s Gangsters aren't bound by codes of conduct that used to exist and provide d some sense of orderliness. For example, the answer "Nowhere," to the q uestion "Where you from?" "There's no answer (anymore)," said Superior Court Commissioner Jack Gold . Gold, who has dealt with gang members for more than two decades, said he is seeing more young kids, some only 8 or 9, carrying weapons. The same is true of taggers who "have taken on the persona of gangs in terms of d ress ... Recently, Gold said, a fully automatic weapon was found in the home of a teenage SRS Norinco tagging crew member, who had been placed on probatio n "The appeal of gangs and graffiti needs to be addressed at the grammar sc hool level, and it's not." The point that often is missed, say experts in the field, is that in many poor areas the gangs represent the strongest influence on children, esp ecially boys, as they grow up. Gang leaders are looked up to and imitate d and joining a gang is a rite of passage _ one that can only lead to "p rison or death" without effective intervention, said Scott "Popeye" Rose ngard, a veteran probation officer. Another probation officer, Howard Gold, said treating the addiction requi res addressing not only the violent behavior, but also the depression, s adness and hopelessness that drives it. "Being a gang member today gives status, access to drugs, a girl magnet. Much of the worst violence and criminality today is dictated by leaders o f prison gangs _ the "Mexican Mafia" in the Southland. Leaders send "kit es," or tiny scribbled messages from cell to cell until they can get ord ers out, use the phone or other means to order killings and other crimes . Gang experts say prison gangs are becoming more brazen in ordering attack s on cops. Assaults on LAPD officers through the first quarter of 2004 w ere up by nearly 9 percent, or 25, over last year. "There've been so many instances where it's a shoot-it-out type situation , where clearly the suspect could have just run away," said retired LAPD Lt. Several federal, state and LAPD task forces have been monitoring the acti vities of some of the area's most violent gangs. "This has been going on for quite some time," Wilson said. "This has high lighted the realization that gangs are a national problem. I can 't imagine any city in the nation not recognizing the gang cancer." Dan Bunch, running the Van Nuys LAPD gang team, said the cops know t he larger strategy is to keep kids out of gangs, and to get those who ha ve joined out. But his team's job is to arrest and prosecute those who c ommit crimes by enforcing "every applicable law." "If gangs are standing around, it gives an aura of a community out of con trol." On patrol one summer night, officers spotted a group of teenagers and you ng men in gang attire arguing in front of an apartment along Vanowen Str eet. A Haskell Locos gang member jumped in a car and the cops chased it, radio ing their partners to follow up with the gang members still on the stree t Officers caught up with the man who drove off and found he had no lic ense and that there was an open beer inside. Officers in a second car, back where the chase started, handcuffed Samuel Morales, 21, another Haskell gang member. I'm just not," Morales boasted as the cops pr epared to book him. A Haskell Street tattoo on his neck, his head shaved, Morales said he's l ived in the same apartment all his life; seen his uncle and his friends killed, and has learned to "torture" rivals, just like they "torture" hi m "Every gang member wants to kill you." Next to him was a 15-year-old boy who officers said had been in a gang fo r only three weeks. Caught between the cops and Morales, the boy alterna tely looked defiant and scared. The boy was taken to the station for booking on a minor offense, which wi ll mean he can be placed on probation _ the surest way the officers say some structure can be imposed and any more gang activities stopped. Gang officers say the hardest part of the job is talking to kids "until y ou're blue in the face" only to have them killed. "A person you just gave this speech to about life a few hours later is ch oking on their own blood and the family is screaming," said LAPD gang Of ficer Nick Nemecek. In revenge, his East Coast Crips band of brothers have turned streets and avenues nearby into killing fields. Today, Cavitt, 47, and three of his homeboys are the survivors of a long- running "war" between their Crips set and the Swans, a nearby Bloods gan g Between them, they have spent more than three decades in prison, incl uding time for murder. They bear scars from bullets from the reign of te rror they were part of and they share a passionate desire that their son s and daughters be spared any more of this warfare. We're going to have no more of these babies with bullets in their heads, " Cavitt said, bending to kiss his granddaughter, the daughter of one of his dead sons. Cavitt, who has the street handle "Pee Pee" tattooed on the inside of his left forearm along with "East Coast Original Crip," and James Dunn, 42, who earned the nickname "The Godfather" for never backing down, are aff iliated with the nonprofit Unity TWO, working to defuse tensions. Dunn spent 10 years in prison and was shot twice, the second time in the summer of 2000 as he went to check on a friend who had been shot _ and a s it turned out, killed. The bullets remain in his hip, a medal of honor of sorts in the streets. The new generation, like the old, has grown up conditioned to violence, D unn said. No one thinks they'll ever be shot, and even after they are, t hey don't think it will happen again. You see the signs _ somebody's in your neighborhood who looks shady, fun ny and then, here they come again. The gang interventionists have gotten some government help to fund commun ity centers, and to run music, after-school and other youth programs. "A lot of these youngsters are running around without a clu...
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