The effectiveness and ethics of Operation HAMMER

[Cheezy the Wiz]

So I was reading an article about Operation HAMMER this morning, which was the massive drug-raid/gang violence crackdown by the LAPD in the late 1980s.

http://eserver.org/courses/spring97/76100o/readings/davis.html

Since this is a massive article, here's the tl;dr. Los Angeles is chosen for the 1984 Olympics, and as part of the security junk surrounding it, LAPD basically turns the gang-ridden poor parts of LA into a military occupation zone to keep the peace during the games. After the Olympics leave, however, Police Chief Daryl Gates gets the idea to maintain the police presence there, and his department revives a series of arcane laws (like turn of the century anti-syndicalist laws that haven't been used in 80 years) to justify their increasingly draconian measures designed to crack down on, prosecute, break apart, and otherwise intimidate gangs and their members into desisting activity, and the surrounding community from helping or acquiescing to their actions. The LAPD is run by and staffed by a large amount of Vietnam veterans, who have no qualms about referring to LA as "the new Vietnam" and instituting their learned anti-VC tactics against the local gangs. They conduct massive "sweep and grab" operations, establish the equivalent of "strategic hamlets" in different neighborhoods, and generally try to intimidate the local populace into not helping the gangsters.

The whole operation is plagued with instances of racial profiling, much of which is an openly-admitted policy by the police. During the biggest event of HAMMER, 1453 Black youth were arrested in one weekend by more than a thousand police officers, during the most massive of the sweeps. 90% of them were let go after a few days with no charges, but during that time they were subjected to humiliating treatment, most of all having been arrested simply because they were Black, and thus "suspected gang members."

Anyway, even though some of the more egregious instances of racism by the cops are prosecuted, most of the sentences are wrist-slaps, and the vast majority of cases just go unpunished. It has been proposed that this decade of racist treatment by the police force was the powder keg that the Rodney King case lit the fuse of, and explains the massive eruption of anger and violence in 1992.

*******

So, my question, and the purpose of this thread, is this: The police tactics embodied in Operation HAMMER were quite successful. They broke apart the power of the gangs and imprisoned many of their members. However, these methods resulted in the treatment of American citizens by their own police forces as a conquered people occupied by a foreign power, with many of their Constitutional rights being routinely disregarded and trampled upon. This terrorization resulted in the enduring emnity of a community, and a whole generation of Blacks, for The White Establishment.

So, was it worth it? Are these kinds of brutal tactics necessary for combating gang violence? What are your general thoughts on this, CFC?

 

[Borachio]

The more recent experience of Boston and Glasgow in dealing with gang violence seems to offer a more optimistic alternative.

I think the main tactics were:
1. assure gang members that they are known, and if they persist they will end up in jail (again);
2. offer them an alternative to gang membership i.e. a real prospect of (gasp) a job.

No doubt I have simplified this to absurdity.

 

[W|M]

That really doesn't work with actual tough gangs like in LA.

 

[luiz]

I don't know the particulars of the LA case, but I do know that fighting entrenchd gangs can be like fighting a foreign enemy. Of course all sorts of abuses should be punished (same with fighting a foreign enemy), but some degree of heavy-handedness by the police is unfortunately to be expected. If it worked in LA, it might have been worth it. We ought to keep in mind that entrenched gangs usually impose a reign of terror in terror neighborhoods, with paralel courts, torture and public executions. Getting rid of them is a great service for the affected communities.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

I don't think anyone disagrees that getting rid of gangs is a good idea, or that gangs can terrorize their communities. But the downsides to the methods used by LAPD arguably caused more trouble than they solved. Sure, they caught a lot of gang members, but they also arrested and harassed a whole lot of innocent people by using indiscriminate and racist methods. There was also a lot of purposeful terrorizing by the police of the neighborhoods as well; in several instances they actually obtained a special kind of warrant, that can be effectively summarized as "wallpaper down, carpets up." They used this to storm entire apartment complexes, evict the tenants, render the place uninhabitable with sledgehammers (the Red Cross actually had to provide disaster relief services to the tenants!), and then say "oh, we were looking for gangster stuff, we had a warrant" and walk away. For each gangster they caught and tried, they arrested around a hundred innocent people also. And like I said, their reasoning for the arrests were almost entirely "he's Black, and so are gangsters, ergo, he's suspicious."

It's rather similar to the case of Sherriff Arpaio out in Arizona now, which is going before the US Supreme Court in June. They have an effective racial profiling law that enables the police to stop anyone with brown skin (Downtown famously pointed out that he would be presumed a criminal in AZ), demand their papers (not just driver's license or ID, but ridiculous things people never carry on them, like Birth Certificate), and if they fail to produce, haul them off to jail until someone else can produce it for them. Sure, it'll catch the criminals, but how many innocent people will have their rights and dignity trampled upon by a system which presumes them to be criminals simply because of their appearance or place of residence?

I should mention that one of the big reasons I posted this thread was because I had previously raged on this forum about the draconian measures I expected the police to take with regards to gangsters, and I wished to create and opportunity for myself to repudiate that position.

 

[luiz]

I agree with the sentiment, it's just that, as I said, fighting gangs can be like fighting a war. The things you wrote (minus the racial aspect) are also quite common in Rio (see this film for a very realitic portrayal of Rio's war on gangs and the blatant human rights violations associated with it), and our results were far less impressive than LA's.

So what other, more benign approach can cities plagued by powerful gangs take? I suppose there is the Peruvian route, very succesful agaist the Sendero Luminoso, relying more on intelligence operations and less on combat, but which also resulted in plenty of extra-judicial assassinations, so not exactly a great case of respect for the constitution.

 

[Formaldehyde]

Not all gangs terrorize their communities either. In some cases, they are nothing more than victims of other gangs which form their own gang to clean up their neighborhood and provide a semblance of protection for themselves and their families.

In some communities, gangs don't resort to much violence at all: If you live in a particular neighborhood, you join. They are much like high school fraternities in suburban communities.

Nonviolent gangs permeate Cleveland County

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

I agree with the sentiment, it's just that, as I said, fighting gangs can be like fighting a war. The things you wrote (minus the racial aspect) are also quite common in Rio (see this film for a very realitic portrayal of Rio's war on gangs and the blatant human rights violations associated with it), and our results were far less impressive than LA's.

Well there are cases where it's almost like fighting an insurrection. I think the problem is to figure out when you're dealing with a social issue and when you're dealing with a territorial integrity issue. Gangsters aren't really creating states within states, until it gets to insane levels like in Mexico. But the understanding I have is that that situation has developed because the gangs became stronger than the police, who had allowed that to happen through a policy of complacency. In a situation like LA, I just don't see the gangs reaching that level of strength, precisely because the police, either local, state, or federal, would never be in a position where they couldn't deal with it if they really really had to. Which gives us the option, nay, demands us recognize the duty, to use less extreme means.

So what other, more benign approach can cities plagued by powerful gangs take? I suppose there is the Peruvian route, very succesful agaist the Sendero Luminoso, relying more on intelligence operations and less on combat, but which also resulted in plenty of extra-judicial assassinations, so not exactly a great case of respect for the constitution.

Well from my understanding, Shining Path (the finest example of "communists" I'd love to have nothing to do with, if there ever was one) is kind of FARC-ish in that they don't always operate inside communities, but rather in the jungle, i.e. in not a way that makes them hard to distinguish from the local populace. Also, I think they're an example of an insurrectionist organization, and not merely gangsters exploiting a situation or addressing community government problems in an ad hoc way. The LA gangsters were primarily centered around protection of the cocaine trade, and so were fundamentally different from, for example,The Mafia, who were running racketeering operations and shaking down neighborhoods and businesses for "protection." One instance is driven by poverty, the other started by community policing during immigrant days when the police didn't care to protect or even go into heavily immigrant areas like Little Italy or Little Warsaw. While The Mafia grew out of that origin to a wholly different character, the LA mobsters were more like common city gangsters in that their membership was driven by a variety of economic and social factors, such as inner city poverty and a lack of a nuclear family to foster good upbringing. So in those cases there's definitely a tried and proven softer approach, while with The Mob there's a clear duty by national police forces, and with Sendero Luminoso by the military in cooperation with the police.

You mentioned the problem with how SL was dealt with; I think that's a symptom of their unique relationship to their country: they're revolutionaries, but also insurrectionists just the same. They want to take over the country, but they've tried to establish a de facto independent part of that country from which to operate towards that goal. It's like they've tried to create a civil war and done a really bad job at it. So are they criminal traitors conspiring against their government, or enemy combatants to be treated as foreign invaders? I don't have an answer.

Not all gangs terrorize their communities either. In some cases, they are nothing more than victims of other gangs which form their own gang to clean up their neighborhood and provide a semblance of protection for themselves and their families.

There are certainly many gangs that have been formed in communities in response to threats and violence by other gangs.

 

[Formaldehyde]

Here's an interesting article which explains why gangs aren't in any way similar to the Mafia, and why Darrel Gates' replacement was almost as clueless as he was.

NY Times: For Los Angeles's New Police Chief, a New World

William J. Bratton has come to town, and the world is watching.

For the second time in a decade, he has taken a job as the top crime-fighter in a rudderless city adrift in a wave of homicide. And just as he did as the leader of the New York City Police Department in the early 90's, Mr. Bratton, the new police chief of Los Angeles, has placed himself squarely in the spotlight with aggressive tactics and tough talk.

In the past month, amid a flurry of gang killings and innocent victims, he has told the citizenry to ''control your kids'' and to ''get angry.'' He has called on federal prosecutors to take on gang members with far-reaching organized-crime laws. He has raised eyebrows by comparing the Crips and Bloods to the Mafia.

''Believe me, having spent time in New York City, the Mafia crime families were no more intimidating or impactful than the gangs of Los Angeles,'' he said the other day at the 77th Street Station in the city's South-Central section, a 12-square-mile neighborhood that has suffered 115 homicides this year, most of them gang related. ''In many ways they're much more of a threat.''

On Wednesday Mr. Bratton named a deputy chief to oversee antigang efforts, reviving a unit that had been disbanded after a police corruption scandal.

Although the crime problems here are nowhere as severe as they were a decade ago, the city Mr. Bratton is policing is likely to end the year as the nation's leader in the total number of homicides. As of Saturday there were 614 citywide, compared with 552 last year.

Sixty percent of the homicides here were gang related, the police said, and more than half of those were committed south of the Santa Monica Freeway, which crosses the city just north of the South-Central district.

Since being sworn in on Oct. 28, Mr. Bratton has consciously magnified the problem of gang violence, particularly in South-Central, in part to build public and political support for aggressive police tactics that could be controversial in a city with a history of police abuse.

''I'm trying to create a vision of where we're going as a police force,'' Mr. Bratton said by car phone Monday evening, on his way to deliver another speech. ''So far, from the public relations standpoint, I've been very well received. Among other things, I'm trying to generate recognition by the media and the feds that we have to work together to stop this cancer that is spreading across America.''

While many Angelenos are grateful that Mr. Bratton is confronting a problem that has festered for three decades, some question whether he understands the complexities of gang life. They are watching with a jaundiced eye and waiting to see whether he will offer more than the iron boot and bellicose rhetoric his predecessors did.

Making comparisons to the Mafia and calling gang members ''nitwits,'' as Mr. Bratton has done, is counterproductive and misinformed, said the Rev. Greg Boyle, a Roman Catholic priest and director of Homeboy Industries, a gang rehabilitation center.

''Gang violence in L.A. is disorganized crime, exactly the opposite of what the police chief thinks it's comparable to,'' said Father Boyle, who has buried more than 100 gang members since the late 80's. ''Al Capone is not what we're dealing with here. It's a shoot-from-the-hip analysis, and it brings back memories of the bad old days of Daryl Gates.''

In the late 80's, when gang violence was spinning out of control, Chief Daryl F. Gates called for a major infusion of police officers into the South-Central section in sweeps known as Operation Hammer. It alienated black residents in particular, as men were swept up for things as routine as traffic violations, but did little to quell crime. Homicides peaked in Los Angeles in 1992 at 1,092. The low point of that era came with the beating of Rodney G. King and the subsequent riots.

The homicide rate dropped steadily after that, to a low of 419 in 1999, until it was discovered that a renegade gang unit from the Rampart Division was planting evidence, racially profiling and, in some cases, shooting suspects without justification. The gang units were disbanded, and the city signed a consent decree that among other provisions uses monitors to weed out corruption and wrongdoing.

Since then, demoralized officers have steadily left the department and the murder rate has steadily increased.

Mr. Bratton was known in New York not only for his crime fighting but also for his cocktail-hour company. He was ultimately fired by Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, a man who seemed to grow taller in the limelight and resented employees who stole it.

The murder rate increases whenever there are so-called "wars on drugs" dating back to the days of prohibition. This is particularly true in inner cities.