TUESDAY | January 23, 2007

With more than 700 gangs and approximately 40,000 active gang members, Los Angeles is, we're told, the world’s epicenter for gang violence. City officials have once again turned their focus to this regional epidemic and the business community is prepared to join hands in this initiative.

Over the past three decades, billions of dollars have been spent on programs to suppress gangs, but gangs keep growing. The monetary cost for this failed war is staggering, but the human toll is much worse. Some neighborhoods in Los Angeles have higher rates of post-traumatic stress disorder than parts of Iraq. The gang culture continues to swallow up young people, even though 23 agencies are spending $82 million in city funds each year on programs to combat gang recruitment.

The Chamber joins with Connie Rice, the author of a recently completed report calling for a comprehensive reform of the city’s current efforts on gang prevention and a new commitment to a major community initiative. Rice’s report to an ad hoc City Council committee recommends a three-pronged strategy that includes prevention, intervention, and law enforcement, all in close coordination with the Los Angeles Unified School District.

At the core of this strategy is the honest realization that we must change the Petri dish in which many of our young people are growing up, so that they see the rewards of staying in school and securing a good job as greater than joining a gang and selling drugs. As Father Greg Boyle of Homeboy Industries says, “nothing stops a bullet like a job.”

The report recommends creating an entrepreneurial, centralized and results-oriented city entity to replace today’s decentralized and uncoordinated approach. Rice emphasizes that this new entity must be held accountable for reducing gang activity and to do so, it must be free enough from civil service rules that resources can be redirected easily to those activities that are showing the biggest results.

This new initiative will require millions of dollars that must be viewed as an investment that will save billions of dollars and countless lives in the long run.

But before we start spending money--and there is already a proposal for a $50 million tax increase circulating at City Hall--we should first measure the effectiveness of the $82 million in city money that is already being spent by those 23 agencies. The public will not look kindly on the creation of a new entity and new taxes if there is no assessment or refocusing of the resources already being spent.

Gang violence is a social problem, it's a law enforcement problem, it's an education problem, it's a jobs problem, and most importantly, it's every Angeleno's problem. We have no choice but to work together collectively on a solution. The future of countless young people and many neighborhoods in our community is at stake.

And that’s The Business Perspective. 

Gary L. Toebben
President & CEO
Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce

The Business Perspective is a weekly opinion piece by Gary Toebben, President & CEO of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, produced with the input of Senior Policy Advisor Rusty Hammer.

by Gary Toebben, President & CEO, Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce

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