CONGRESS MUST ADDRESS UPSURGE IN GANGS BILL WOULD HELP TIGHTEN SCREWS ON INCREASING SOCIETAL SCOURGE.

Byline: Dianne Feinstein 

ON Sept. 10, 2003, two students at Manual Arts High School in South Los Angeles, Demario Moore and Quinesha Dunford, were standing on a sidewalk with a group of friends when a car full of gang members drove by and started firing bullets at the crowd.

Within hours, the two teenagers - neither of whom was involved with gangs - were dead.

Innocent young people like Demario and Quinesha are killed nearly every day in the United States by gangs who terrorize their communities. These senseless attacks are usually targeted at competing gang members, but gangs are increasingly becoming more brazen.

Just last month, Los Angeles police Officer Ricardo Lizarraga was shot while responding to a domestic-violence call in the Leimert Park neighborhood. A short time later, he died at a nearby hospital, the victim of a reputed gang member's bullet.

In recent years, gangs have become more sophisticated and more violent criminal enterprises. What were once loosely organized groups centered around dealing illegal drugs within a particular neighborhood are now complex criminal organizations whose activities include weapons trafficking, gambling, smuggling, robbery and, of course, homicide.

In 2002, over half of the 1,228 homicides committed in Los Angeles County were gang-related. Similarly, over half of the 499 murders committed in the city of Los Angeles during 2003 were the result of gang violence.

Conservative estimates put the number of separate street gangs in L.A. County at approximately 1,000 and the number of gang members at around 150,000. To the south, Orange County has an estimated 20,000 gang members and comparable numbers of gang members exist in Ventura and San Bernardino counties.

The reach of gangs, however, extends far beyond Southern California.

Indeed, Los Angeles serves as a ``source city'' whose gang members migrate to other communities across the country and set up new criminal entities.

One such operation, the L.A.-based 18th Street Gang, is known to have initiated gang activities all over California, in Southwest border and Pacific Northwest states, and in East Coast states including New Jersey and New York.

In Virginia, a 22-year-old California man was recently charged with recruiting minors into a gang after being arrested at a high school for possession of a loaded gun. The man, a convicted sex offender, had been talking to a 15-year-old student in the school's parking lot when a school security officer called police.

Gang members successfully lure young recruits with offers of protection and easy money. But the gang recruiters have another goal in mind - more young gang members who, if arrested, will face lighter sentences for drug trafficking, assault and other serious crimes.

The result of these aggressive recruitment efforts is a dramatic increase in gang membership nationally, rising from a 1980 estimate of 100,000 to more than 750,000 today. And even as Americans have enjoyed decreases in overall crime for a decade now, gangs have taken a stronger grip on our cities and even many rural communities. Gangs have never been more common, more dangerous or more mobile than they are today.

To address the gang problem nationwide, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and I have introduced the Gang Prevention and Effective Deterrence Act. The bill:

--Authorizes $650 million over the next five years - $450 million to support federal, state and local law enforcement efforts against violent gangs, and $200 million for intervention and prevention programs for at- risk youths.

--Increases funding for federal prosecutors and FBI agents to strengthen coordinated enforcement efforts against violent gangs.

--Creates new criminal gang prosecution offenses to prohibit recruitment of minors in a criminal street gang, and to punish violent crimes related to gangs.

--Enhances existing gang and violent crime penalties to deter and punish illegal street gangs, and proposes violent crime reforms needed to prosecute gang members effectively.

--Enacts a limited reform of the juvenile justice system to facilitate federal prosecution of 16- and 17-year-old gang members who commit serious acts of violence.

Recently, Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton likened gang violence to a sleeping tiger. At a two-day gang-violence summit held in January, Bratton warned, ``When this tiger awakens it's going to explode, and many communities aren't prepared for it. And we have a national government, a Congress, that is not focused on the problem.''

As we've seen from the recent shootings of Demario Moore, Quinesha Dunford and Officer Lizarraga, this sleeping tiger is already lashing out at innocent victims. Gangs present a lethal threat to communities across California and across the nation. And Chief Bratton is right - it is time for Congress to focus on this problem and address it at the national level.