Do more to stop gangs

I applaud The Times for running the editorial “.” The first step on the road to recovery is admitting you have a problem -- the second step is actually taking action to correct it. For the last three decades, I have headed the largest civilian anti-crime patrol in the world, the Guardian Angels. In that capacity, my fellow angels and I have spent many nights on the streets of Los Angeles and personally battled the criminals who stalk the streets. Over the last 20 years, I have advocated for a larger and stronger Los Angeles Police Department. Those calls still need to be answered.

The City of Angels is being overrun by the devils, and it is afraid to take the action needed to make the streets safer. Even Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is in denial, declaring during his State of the City address that “L.A. is the safest it has been since the 1950s.” I know he said it because I play it every chance I get while hosting a radio show at KABC. The irony of the mayor speaking from the safe, cushy confines of police headquarters was not lost on me. Instead of speaking at police headquarters, he should have tried to give the same speech on the streets of Van Nuys or South L.A.

No matter how it is spun, the city of Los Angeles still sees great levels of violence that is no longer confined to South Central. This year has been one of the bloodiest ones in the Valley, with the LAPD losing its first SWAT member since the unit’s founding in 1969. The Shaw family knows the city is more dangerous -- 17-year-old Jamiel Shaw was gunned down allegedly by an illegal alien who had been released from jail hours earlier. What was the gang problem on Catalina Island in the 1950s? Were there members of the deadly Florencia 13 street gang terrorizing residents? All of this is happening now, during these renewed Ozzie-and-Harriet days in Los Angeles.

This is the core problem with the city’s approach to policing: It wants to understand its enemies. What it needs to do is to arrest and jail them. These thugs and criminals who are killing, raping and maiming your friends and families only understand one thing -- the power of a well-supported, aggressive police force.

Los Angeles doesn’t support the LAPD. Every week, we hear about a new investigation or punishment meted out in the wake of the MacArthur Park riot or some other incident. Police Chief William J. Bratton is not being supported with enough money, manpower or political will. He did great things on the streets of New York. I was optimistic when Los Angeles hired him, but I have been disappointed in how he has been used as a political pawn by a mayor more concerned about the needs of criminal aliens over the needs of taxpayers. Los Angeles needs to take its streets back. I offered to help a year ago by volunteering to serve as a gang czar, but the offer was declined. Instead, bureaucrats continue to meet and get paid while good kids die. Let me repeat this, you cannot make your streets safer by understanding murderers, drug dealers and rapists -- it only emboldens them.

The Times is right to acknowledge its current emergency. Sadly, the mayor doesn’t see it this way.

Curtis Sliwa is the founder and president of the Guardian Angels and a talk show host at KABC-AM (790).

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