GANGSTER MENACE REVENGE IS PRIMARY MOTIVE FOR ENDLENSS CYCLE OF GANG VIOLENCE.

Byline: Story by Beth Barrett Daily News

Revenge mixed with the high-stakes battle for control of drug trafficking drives most gang violence.

An insult, a confrontation, one incident leading to another, creates a seemingly endless cycle of drive-by shootings and street violence that claims the lives of the innocent as well as the gangster.

The toughest streets in the city seem like a war zone. Gang members patrol their neighborhoods exacting ``taxes'' from nongang members who want to sell drugs or work as prostitutes. Addicts mingle with dealers as ordinary 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, robbery and attempted murder.

``We face violence every day. We hear gunshots and ambulances every day. This is not arbitrary violence; there is a logic.''

His view is echoed by Pete Cavitt, 47, once a kingpin in the East Coast Crips who has seen two of his sons killed and now works as a gang interventionist trying to stop the bloodshed.

``This is a black Civil War in this city that goes back 30 years. It's spread through the city like the plague. There are the haves and the not having, 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. No one wins.''

Tensions between blacks and Latinos, worsening poverty, the lack of good jobs combined with the lingering effects of racism, despair and a host of other problems create the conditions in which joining a gang often provides a sense of belonging that is otherwise lacking

``This stuff is deeply rooted ... the rage is deeply within,'' said Kenny Valentine, 42, a gang intervention specialist with Unity T.W.O. Inc. and former Swans member.

``When you're young, whichever neighborhood you're brought up in, you're poor, there's no field trips, no jobs. That's why they love their neighborhoods so much. If they're disrespected by someone scratching their name on a wall, or someone comes in to mess with a female, that's disrespect. It's totally about respect.''

Law enforcement authorities said the proliferation of semiautomatic and automatic weapons and sawed-off shotguns mixed with vast sums of money at stake in drug dealing and other criminal activity and idealization of gangsters in movies and music have created ever more incendiary conditions.

Gangsters aren't bound by codes of conduct that used to exist and provided some sense of orderliness. For example, the answer ``Nowhere,'' to the question ``Where you from?'' no longer is protection from a gang execution.

``There's no answer (anymore),'' said Superior Court Commissioner Jack Gold. ``They shoot at them anyway.''

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 dress ... and weapons,'' no longer just spray-painting graffiti.

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 probation.

``The appeal of gangs and graffiti needs to be addressed at the grammar school 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, especially boys, as they grow up. Gang leaders are looked up to and imitated and joining a gang is a rite of passage - one that can only lead to ``prison or death'' without effective intervention, said Scott ``Popeye'' Rosengard, a veteran probation officer.

``Gang behavior is an addiction ... It could be controlled.''

Another probation officer, Howard Gold, said treating the addiction requires addressing not only the violent behavior, but also the depression, sadness and hopelessness that drives it.

``Being a gang member today gives status, access to drugs, a girl magnet. There is this view they're the modern-day warriors. You're talking about taking a whole identify away. You have to replace it with something.''

Much of the worst violence and criminality today is dictated by leaders of prison gangs - the ``Mexican Mafia'' in the Southland. Leaders send ``kites,'' or tiny scribbled messages from cell to cell until they can get orders out, use the phone or other means to order killings and other crimes.

Gang experts say prison gangs are becoming more brazen in ordering attacks on cops. Assaults on LAPD officers through the first quarter of 2004 were 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. Ed Wilson, who oversaw the South Bureau gang unit. ``Now a lot of these guys are opting to fire. That's what concerns us.''

Several federal, state and LAPD task forces have been monitoring the activities of some of the area's most violent gangs.

``This has been going on for quite some time,'' Wilson said. ``This has highlighted the realization that gangs are a national problem. They've moved from territory to narcotics to getting a large amount of income...I can't imagine any city in the nation not recognizing the gang cancer.''

A big part of the battle is to break the gangs' intimidation of communities, demonstrated by loitering on street corners, giving residents and cops brazen stares or painting up streets with gang tags to mark drug territories.

Sgt. Dan Bunch, running the Van Nuys LAPD gang team, said the cops know the larger strategy is to keep kids out of gangs, and to get those who have joined out. But his team's job is to arrest and prosecute those who commit crimes by enforcing ``every applicable law.''

``If gangs are standing around, it gives an aura of a community out of control.''

On patrol one summer night, officers spotted a group of teenagers and young men in gang attire arguing in front of an apartment along Vanowen Street.

A Haskell Locos gang member jumped in a car and the cops chased it, radioing their partners to follow up with the gang members still on the street. Officers caught up with the man who drove off and found he had no license and that there was an open beer inside. They called for an impound.

Officers in a second car, back where the chase started, handcuffed Samuel Morales, 21, another Haskell gang member. He was busted in April with a gun and put on probation. Now, he was carrying a bat, another weapon.

``I'm not afraid of nothing; I'm just not,'' Morales boasted as the cops prepared to book him. ``You're going to die; you're going to die somehow.''

A Haskell Street tattoo on his neck, his head shaved, Morales said he's lived in the same apartment all his life; seen his uncle and his friends killed, and has learned to ``torture'' rivals, just like they ``torture'' him.

``Every gang member wants to kill you.''

Next to him was a 15-year-old boy who officers said had been in a gang for only three weeks. Caught between the cops and Morales, the boy alternately looked defiant and scared. And then his mother arrived.

``I need help,'' she told the cops.

The boy was taken to the station for booking on a minor offense, which will 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 you'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 choking on their own blood and the family is screaming,'' said LAPD gang Officer Nick Nemecek. ``You think about it. It never goes away.''

The stretch of West 74th Street in front of Pete Cavitt's home in South Los Angeles has flowed with the blood of his friends and his family for the better part of two decades.

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 gang. Between them, they have spent more than three decades in prison, including time for murder. They bear scars from bullets from the reign of terror they were part of and they share a passionate desire that their sons and daughters be spared any more of this warfare.

``We've buried so much of each other; we've been the death of each other. 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.

``It has to end now, right now. We can make it happen in this city.''

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 affiliated with the nonprofit Unity T.W.O., 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 as 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, Dunn said. No one thinks they'll ever be shot, and even after they are, they don't think it will happen again.

``You sort of look at it like, 'Hey, I have to be a little more sharp next time.' Most of the times I got shot there was warning signs, you know. You see the signs - somebody's in your neighborhood who looks shady, funny and then, here they come again. So you say, 'OK, you got caught slipping, you're shot.' You ignored the signs.''

The gang interventionists have gotten some government help to fund community centers, and to run music, after-school and other youth programs.

``A lot of these youngsters are running around without a clue of what they're doing in the first place,'' Cavitt said. ``You ask them, they can't tell you. If we can enlighten them ... this isn't even their war. The war is between East Coast and Swans, going on for 30 years; that war is at an end right now.''

Cavitt paused as he thought about the possibility.

``What would happen if one day they woke up and there were a bunch of happy people everywhere?''

Beth Barrett, [phone]

beth.barrett(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

7 photos, box, map

Photo:

(1 -- color) Gangster Crip Willie James, ``Flash,'' talks to LAPD Southeast Division Gang Enforcement Officer Mel Hernandez. Many gang members sport tattoos to identify which gang a member belongs to.

(2 -- color) A Los Angeles Police Department officer conducts field interviews with suspected gang members in South Los Angeles. Gangsters are no longer bound by codes of conduct that used to provide a sense of orderliness.

(3 -- color) Peter Vasquez, 26, a ``Hicks Boys'' gang member since he was 13, shows the gunshot wound on his arm he suffered during an attack near his East Los Angeles home.

(4 -- color) Former gangster Albert Perryman, ``Capone,'' is one of the origional East Coast Crips gang members.

(5 -- color) Los Angeles County Sherrif's Department Gang Enforcement Team Deputy Carlos Herrera approaches suspected Nutty Block Crips gang member, Alan Williams. When deputies approached a group of men suspected of smoking marijuana, some of the men ran.

(6) A South Los Angeles gang members sports a tattoo on the back of his neck, identifying the area of Los Angeles he hails from.

(7) Latana Cavitt gets a hug from her grandfather, former gang member Pete Cavitt, ``Pee Pee,'' as she holds a photo of her father, Keyon, who was shot and killed in 2000.

Photos by Hans Gutknecht/Daily News

Box/Map:

KNOWN GANGS & TURF

Sources: Los Angeles Police Department, Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department and Daily News research

Warren Huskey/Staff Artist