We don’t want to be L.A. East

The problem is here and the problem is real. The problem is gangs.

We may be 3,000 miles from Los Angeles, but we’ve got the Crips and the Bloods, not to mention MS-13 in other parts of Maryland.

While there were already troubling indications of the extent of the problem, the drive-by shooting of two small children in early June lodged the issue squarely in the public consciousness.

A 2-year-old boy and a 3-year-old girl were shot while playing in an inflatable swimming pool in West Baltimore’s Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood. City Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III laid the “cowardly” crime at the feet of gangs.

The commissioner said the neighborhood is the scene of a turf war between Bloods and Crips, and the residents — caught in the middle — are afraid to help the police.

It’s an old story on the West Coast, but if we don’t get our act together fast with some new strategies, we could become L.A. East.

While the problem may be relatively new here, the underlying causes are not. They are the immutable issues that have plagued generations of urban youth — failing education, vanishing job opportunities, deteriorating family structures, crumbling neighborhoods, a dark sense of frustration and estrangement from society.

In this depressing context, young people can see gangs as a way out, an antidote to despair and a bridge to dignity and respect. In a cruel irony, some even see gangs as a means to protect themselves from growing urban violence. 

Baltimore police Lt. Col. Rick Hite knows this scene better than most. He has worked for years to help solve the social ills that breed Baltimore’s young violent offenders, and he believes solutions lie in providing hope in the form of positive alternatives.

“We have to find a quid pro quo relationship for the gangs — something in exchange for what the gangs offer. We have to make sure there is more opportunity for our young people,” he said.

Hite is right, but that doesn’t mean we will take his advice. Far from it. The solutions he seeks take time, money and patience from a public and its elected representatives who are short of all three.

The dilemma is eerily reminiscent of the choice we faced in the so-called War on Drugs. We can either try to arrest our way out of the problem — an approach which has failed miserably in the drug war — or we can combine smart, targeted law enforcement with smart, effective social programs.

Let’s learn from the past and do the smart thing this time around. The next generation of kids in our city is counting on us.

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