WHAT KIND OF A HERO? TOOKIE'S LEGACY: BLOODY GANG WARFARE.

Byline: BRIDGET JOHNSON

THE neighborhood in which I was born is decked out in red, white and blue - but there's nothing patriotic about it. The red, as seen on a gang assessment map, is Bloods territory. The white signifies ``neutral'' areas. And the swaths of blue designate Crips turf.

The fathers of the Crips were Raymond Washington, killed in a 1979 gang shooting, and Stanley ``Tookie'' Williams, who now sits on Death Row for four 1979 murders: those of convenience-store clerk Albert Owens, and motel owners Tsai-Shai Yang and Yen I-Yang and their daughter Yee Chen Lin. As death-penalty foes gear up for Williams' looming Dec. 13 execution date, and the focus shifts onto the clemency decision faced by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Williams' legacy rages on in South Los Angeles and beyond.

Williams ruled by terror, brought impressionable youths into his flock, inspired copycat groups and exported his terror across the nation and past borders. The Bloods formed in response to Crips killings, sparking no less than inner-city warfare. Williams helped create a Los Angeles where the evening news barely blinks an eye at the latest gang shooting.

The California Attorney General's Office estimates 10,000 deaths statewide from gang warfare from 1981 to 2001, 75 percent of those in Los Angeles. In a letter discouraging clemency for Williams, District Attorney Steve Cooley said the Crips have ``been responsible for literally thousands of murders in Los Angeles County alone.''

What were suburban neighborhoods were turned into battlegrounds, and to this day low-income families often have little choice but to subject their children to these infested streets. Elderly residents become virtual prisoners in their homes, as rows and rows of houses look more like jails, with bars covering all windows and doors. As Williams has been at San Quentin, the neighborhoods he left behind festered as violence-plagued lockups of their own.

The campaign to spare Williams has quickly meshed into the current hodgepodge of left-wing causes celebre. Williams' spokeswoman, Barbara Becnel, spoke along with anti-war mom Cindy Sheehan, the Green Party's Peter Camejo and Todd Chretien of the International Socialist Organization at a University of California at Berkeley rally on Nov. 18. The ``Save Tookie'' crew has gathered 32,000 petition signatures in hopes of stopping the execution.

They either claim he's an innocent man, or a changed man.

It's easy to declare oneself a changed man when you're behind bars, no longer faced with the temptations of the street and your remorse - though Williams has not confessed to the murders - may be your only ticket out of a date with death.

Yes, Williams has written children's books dealing with gangs. ``The Tookie Protocol for Peace,'' also hailed by his supporters, blames ``the social vacuum (for spawning) urban nihilists like the Crips, the Bloods and many other street gangs.'' Williams points blame at growing up with ``police tyranny'' in addition to myriad ``other social injustices.'' Law enforcement is conspicuously absent from his peace proposal, except to wipe up the blood after a shooting has occurred.

Another argument raised by Williams' defense is that the convicting jury lacked African-Americans. One wonders just how much sympathy the Crips founder would find, though, before an all-black jury gathered from neighborhoods decimated by gang violence.

In a mock funeral procession protesting violence that wound through 26 miles of gang-ridden L.A. streets earlier this month, some participants told a writer for BlackAmericaWeb.com that they feared a violent Crips reaction should Williams be executed: ``If they go off, they'll go off in our neighborhoods,'' said one mother of a murdered son. This should not influence Schwarzenegger's clemency decision, but is another reminder of Williams' lasting legacy to the community.

Whether Williams is truly reformed will never be known. It's hard to judge whether he regrets his actions, or regrets that those actions landed him in San Quentin. What is known is the blue and red turf that has dyed our streets in blood.

If Williams is denied clemency, his advocates will weep. Regardless, many of us will be weeping for his four nearly forgotten victims, as well as for a Los Angeles forever marred by the Crips. I've heard about a more peaceful time on my native turf from older generations. I would have liked to have seen it myself.

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(color) Demonstrations supporting clemency for Stan ``Tookie'' Williams are being held nationwide.

Tim Boyle/Getty Images