LA's race problem
While LAPD Chief William Bratton said that media has been playing up the city's race problem, his counterpart at the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department has a completely different view.
So let me be very clear about one thing: We have a serious interracial violence problem in this county involving blacks and Latinos.Some people deny it. They say that race is not a factor in L.A.'s gang crisis; the problem, they say, is not one of blacks versus Latinos and Latinos versus blacks but merely one of gang members killing other gang members (and yes, they acknowledge, sometimes the gangs are race-based).
But they're wrong. The truth is that, in many cases, race is at the heart of the problem. Latino gang members shoot blacks not because they're members of a rival gang but because of their skin color. Likewise, black gang members shoot Latinos because they are brown.
Here is his full editorial in the LATimes
The one thing about which I agree with Lee Baca: the young Mexican kids in gangs HATE the young black kids in gangs.
Why?
Because in a "fair," one-on-one fight, a black kid is, almost always, pound for pound, a more effective fist-fighter than a Latino kid.
The Latino kids resent getting their butts kicked and getting publicly humiliated, so they take the only logical step that can "empower" them: they band together under the banner of "La Raza," "The ["Brown"] Race."
In turn, the black kids in gangs resent getting ganged up on, and they take the next logical step: they arm themselves against opponents who refuse to fight fair--and they shoot them.
What I don't agree with in Baca's opinion piece is its conclusion: "The unification of information . . . will lead us toward a disarming of the gang culture. And through disarmament, we will make the streets safer."
What Baca really wants is disarmament of the entire, law-abiding population--not just the gang members.
He needs to re-read the Second Amendment and then follow it--by issuing CCW licenses on a shall-issue basis so that the law-abiding citizens of L.A. County stand a fighting chance against criminals of all kinds.