L.A. OFFICIALS GRAPPLE WITH GANG VIOLENCE CRIME: IN WAKE OF SURGE, SOME CALL FOR REVIEW OF POLICIES.

Byline: Rick Orlov

Staff Writer

Recent weeks of gang violence -- with victims including a star athlete, students and infants -- drew outrage from Los Angeles city officials Wednesday and calls for the city to review its response.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Police Chief William Bratton also sought to calm fears the violence has been racially motivated.

"This is a city of 4 million people who get along very well, for the most part, every day," Bratton said. "I am well aware of how sensitive an issue race is and we would investigate if there was any indication it was a factor in these crimes. It isn't."

Bratton also said that despite a recent spate of incidents, gang homicides still are fewer this year than last.

But that did not reassure Councilwoman Jan Perry.

"I keep hearing how crime is down and I cringe when I hear that," Perry said. "Crime may be down in some parts of the city, but try telling that to the people I represent.

"They don't believe it. I don't believe it. I feel powerless when I talk to these families."

Perry said 22 shootings have occurred over the past six weeks in one part of her district in South Los Angeles.

Councilman Herb Wesson met Tuesday night with the family of Jamiel Shaw, a 17-year-old Los Angeles High School football player shot to death Sunday night close to his home.

Wesson said the city needs to find more money to deal with gang prevention and intervention.

"It is no longer only gang members who are being killed," Wesson said. "There was a time when babies and civilians were off limits. That's no longer the case."

For some, the Shaw case is particularly troubling because his mother is a sergeant serving in Iraq.

"The week of my inauguration, I planted a tree in front of their house with him and his father there," Villaraigosa said. "And that's where he was shot."

Wesson is seeking a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible.

Police are asking for public assistance in the shooting, but the only description they have so far is that the perpetrators were two Latino men.

In another shooting in the Harbor Gateway area, Villaraigosa and Bratton announced the arrest of two suspects, both Latinos with one suspected of being a member of the Eastside Torrance gang.

In that incident, shots were fired at an African-American man who was shopping for a used car. His 6-year-old son was wounded and remains in critical condition, officials said.

The incidents follow a number of other recent shootings, including one that left eight people wounded at a South Los Angeles bus stop.

"What is particularly galling, what is particularly painful to the city, is the random nature of these shootings," Villaraigosa said. "These (victims) are not gang members.

"They are ordinary citizens minding their own business. What is unnerving for all of us is the random nature of these shootings."

Wesson said he has asked Councilman Tony Cardenas, who chairs the Ad Hoc Committee on Gangs and Youth Violence, to hold a special hearing in his district.

Cardenas said he will schedule a session that will include police, school officials and anti-gang workers. Wesson said he wants to see whether intervention and prevention workers also can be included.

"We seemed to have a peace for a while and something's changed," Wesson said. "I want to know what it is and what we have to do. Do we need to send some workers to the prisons to find out if it's coming from there -- or is it all local?

"We were doing something right for a while and now we're doing something wrong."

City Council President Eric Garcetti said the situation is increasingly grim.

"We are seeing this all too often now. Thirteen deaths in one month. We have seen entire neighborhoods locked down. We have had to evacuate three schools," he said.

"What we have to answer is where is the political will to make the decisions that are needed."

Cardenas said he has scheduled a March 14 hearing on a report by City Controller Laura Chick that recommends putting the mayor in charge of gang programs.

But Cardenas said he is not convinced all the programs should be centered in the Mayor's Office.

rick.orlov(at)dailynews.com

213-978-0390