The following also appeared in LA Daily News, Sunday, January 19, 2003:

Working Together
Help needed to fight city's gang problem

by Mayor James Hahn and Police Chief William Bratton

Los Angeles has long been a pioneer in fighting gang crime. Ours was the first city to use civil injunctions to curb gang activities that were not typically the focus of law enforcement, such as prohibiting known gang members from gathering in groups and banning their use of cell phones and pagers.

The injunctions resulted in drastic drops in gang activity in the targeted areas and gave community leaders new opportunities to take back their neighborhoods.

Last year we focused on improving recruitment of police officers. Our efforts paid off, and for the first time in years we are hiring more officers than we lose. Police Academy classes are full. This means that soon we will have more officers on our streets and in our neighborhoods working with communities to prevent and fight crime.

Our experience has taught us that no individual or initiative can solve our current gang problem alone. This year, as we work toward our goal of making Los Angeles the safest big city in America, we will focus on renewed partnerships with community leaders, business owners and other law enforcement agencies to find bold and innovative methods of reducing gang violence.

The community's role in promoting public safety is key. We will continue the implementation of the Senior Lead Officer summits in communities across the city to allow increased communication between residents and the police who serve them. We want to involve local residents in identifying crime problems unique to their communities and to provide better input on how we might do a better job of addressing those problems.

We are also working with leaders at federal level to help us secure additional resources to prevent young people from getting involved with gangs, helping gang members who want to get out of gangs, and reducing gang crime in our neighborhoods. Recently, we held a meeting with members of Congress who represent Los Angeles to discuss how we can coordinate our efforts.

One of the opportunities we talked about was pursuing federal funding for our Community Law Enforcement and Recovery (CLEAR) anti-gang teams, which bring together city, county and state agencies to share intelligence on local gang activity and to collaborate on gang investigations. We also spoke about federal funding for after-school programs and other positive opportunities for our youth that take them off the streets and out of gangs..

We are also working with the U.S. Attorney's Office, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to provide much-needed support to the LAPD in targeted neighborhoods of Los Angeles. We believe that by working together, we not only strengthen our ability to secure the resources we need to stop violence, but we increase our efficiency.

We need to do more. This week we will travel to Washington, D.C., to meet with officials from the U.S. Justice Department, DEA, ATF and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to solidify their commitment of assistance in our fight against gang crime. We look forward to working with all our partners -- from local residents to out leaders in Washington -- to ensure safety on the streets of Los Angeles.