2002 LOCAL NEWS: GANG EPIDEMIC BRATTON TACKLES 'DOMESTIC TERRORISTS'.

Byline: Jason Kandel Staff Writer

Gang violence and the city's homicide rate skyrocketed in 2002, prompting the LAPD's new chief, William Bratton, to declare war against street gangs.

Describing them as ``domestic terrorists,'' Bratton said street gangs in Los Angeles have become as dangerous and powerful as New York City's five Mafia crime families once were.

He has promised to assign more anti-gang officers to affected areas and also called for using federal anti-racketeering and tax-evasion statutes against gang leaders, just as federal authorities did in targeting the Mafia.

``You'll find that all drug problems in this city are initiated, protected or managed by gangs,'' he said. ``Almost every incidence of gun violence in this city is directly attributed to gangs.''

Murder and other gang-related crimes climbed in the Valley and the city to their highest levels in years. The Valley saw a 21 percent jump in homicides over 2001, and the city was up 13 percent.

The violence was fed by hard-core gang members out on parole, a new generation of grade-school-age recruits, and police responses hampered by policy changes following the Rampart scandal.

The slayings thrust Los Angeles into the spotlight as the nation's murder capital - ahead of New York and Chicago.

Bratton, a former New York City police commissioner, ordered dozens of officers - backed by state and federal authorities - to hit the city's toughest streets after 20 people were slain during a three-week period in November in South Central Los Angeles. Many of those killings were the result of a gang war.

He tapped his second in command, Jim McDonnell, newly promoted to assistant chief, to head a task force to deal with the problem, and promoted a 34-year Los Angeles Police Department veteran, Mike Hillmann, to deputy chief to head a departmentwide gang unit.

As part of the plan, McDonnell said, LAPD division captains will ensure that deployment is the heaviest at the times when the highest levels of crime occur.

He also said detectives will respond to radio calls in which victims have been seriously hurt, to help ensure a thorough and complete investigation from the beginning.

The Valley got a jump start on the gang war with the San Fernando Valley Coalition on Gangs, which was created in 2001 by Deputy Chief Ronald Bergmann to attack a spike in Valley gang violence.

The coalition brought together parole and probation officers, the U.S. Attorney's Office and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, among others. It also began a pilot project, the Community Advocacy Program, to help keep kids out of gangs in the Northeast Valley, an area with an estimated 3,500 gang members in 30 gangs.

The coalition also helped bring together as many as 50 members of some of the most notorious gangs for weekly talks about laying down their guns.

Bratton, who praised Bergmann's coalition, began incorporating a similar template in South Central.

``Bergmann's efforts are exactly what we're trying to do with the department as a whole,'' Bratton said.