A Bloody West Coast Story

Call it the Good Friday rampage. At twilight on April 1, a brown Cadillac sedan glided up to the corner of Vernon and Raymond avenues in South Central Los Angeles. Words were exchanged between the young men in the car, members of a Crips street gang, and a 16-year-old who was hanging out on the sidewalk. Suddenly, the mobile "gangbangers" blasted the youth. A moment later, they turned their guns on a pedestrian across the street.

The Caddy then cruised two blocks down Raymond, where a small group of youngsters had gathered. Two gunmen stepped out of the car and opened fire into the shrieking crowd. Witnesses later told of a "river of blood" in the street. Deshawn Holly, 5, was hit with four bullets but miraculously survived. Stacey Childress, 19, was less lucky. Of the eleven people shot in the five- minute spree, Childress was the sole fatality. The presumed motive for the bloodbath: a drug deal gone bad.

Gang warfare has bedeviled Los Angeles for more than two decades, but the burgeoning crack trade has lately made such groups as the Crips even more willing to kill for the sake of greater profits. Children of the underclass, weaned on violence and despair, have become bloodthirsty entrepreneurs. Some have made small fortunes marketing the cheap, explosive cocaine derivative -- known as "rock" in L.A. -- while settling business differences with state-of-the-art firearms. Many more have wound up in prison or the graveyard.

"There are a million kids out there who have no skills other than fighting," says James Galipeau, a veteran officer in the probation department. "They are not afraid of the police or jail or of dying." As demonstrated by the Good Friday attack, the gang members also show a grotesque disregard for the safety of innocent people. Of the 387 gang-related homicides in Los Angeles County last year, approximately half were innocent bystanders caught in the cross fire of shootouts.

Since February, Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates has waged an intensive campaign against the crack-dealing street gangs. A task force of 100 has been busting 20 gang members a day and has raided 43 rock houses. But Good Friday made those efforts seem futile. While the carnage on Raymond Avenue took place, 180 police officers stood for roll call at a command center less than a mile away.

Gates launched his biggest offensive yet last week: 1,000-man sweeps of gangland territories. At four command posts around the city, including the parking lot of the Los Angeles Coliseum, jail buses with barred windows and portable booking stations awaited fresh business. Gates had announced the drive with such fanfare that many dealers in South Central L.A. had gone to ground, but on Friday the police still managed to bust 334 gang members citywide on charges ranging from driving without a license to narcotics and weapons possession.