Cop Shop: Lee Baca's answer to a 'man-made' disaster

Sheriff Lee Baca is making some waves for his tough talk on what he considers the serious problem of race-motivated gang violence. Baca thinks he has one answer: An emergency operations center to deal with street gangs.

For the last six months, a dozen full-time analysts have been sifting through crime data in the basement of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department's Monterey Park headquarters with one goal: breaking the region’s entrenched gang culture.

But the Southern California Gang Emergency Operations Center, the brainchild of Sheriff Lee Baca, is not just staffed by cops poring over statistics.

It draws on the expertise of numerous professionals -- including educators, social workers and mental health and healthcare workers -- in developing strategies to fight gangs.

Sheriff’s spokesman Steve Whitmore said the clearinghouse is modeled on the county’s emergency operations center, which is activated after a natural disaster or any other emergency requiring a response from multiple agencies.

Whitmore said that, to Baca, street gangs are “on par with a disaster, albeit man-made."

-- Andrew Blankstein