Los Angeles needs to go global to fight gangs, says Rocky Delgadillo

Rocky Delgadillo, the Los Angeles city attorney, oversees the enforcement of 57 gang injunctions, including ones against the MS-13 and 18th Street gangs. In Opinion today, he talks about how combating Los Angeles gangs is not a local challenge, but an international one.

"The two fastest-growing and most powerful gangs in the world are homegrown products of Los Angeles. The Mara Salvatrucha gang, or MS-13, and the 18th Street gang, known in Central America as Mara 18, sprang up in Pico-Union and the densely populated neighborhoods around MacArthur Park. But unlike many local street gangs, these two were entrepreneurial: They recruited Central American immigrants across the city and then expanded farther -- throughout Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. Conservative estimates put MS-13's ranks at 20,000 and 18th Street's at 30,000 worldwide.

"Stopping street gangs is no longer a local matter -- a point driven home to me during a symposium in El Salvador. During the conference, two points of consensus emerged. First, MS-13 and 18th Street have become an international concern -- indeed, even Interpol is now involved in the fight. Second, past strategies to handle these gangs have failed."

Read the full Opinion piece here.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Comments

[realitybiter]

How about capital punishment for anyone caught in any gang related killing? I think this would make repeat offense difficult.

[Southoc]

Death penalty enforced, immigration laws enforced, no welfare, without sterilization, its time to go over the top before these social problems become a class war.

[mbspringer]

5:19 AM 8/19/2008

Let me get this right
1...Immigration tracks gang members down
2..Gang members are arrested and deported
3..We send police to the deportees countries
4..We arrest the deported for crimes
5.. We bring back the people we deported and put them in jail

BRILLIANT

mb springer
Maine USA
04276