Mar 9, 2008 12:19 am US/Pacific
Roundtable Focuses On Recent Gang Killings
LOS ANGELES
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Chief William Bratton was one of the officials speaking at a roundtable discussion on the recent race-related gang killings.
CBS
City officials and community leaders met with families in South Los Angeles in response to the surge in racially motivated gang-related killings.
The family of Jamiel Shaw Jr., the Los Angeles High School football star recently killed by suspected Latino gang members in an unprovoked attack, spoke about peace at the roundtable discussion.
"There's a lot of power in our neighborhood, but we're divided because we're fighting at each other," Jamiel Shaw Sr. said.
More than 74 homicides have been reported during the first two months of this year, up 27 percent over the same period last year, even though gang-related homicides were down 25 percent, according to the coroner's office.
Six apparently gang-related shootings in the past three weeks also might have been racially motivated.
"What we're trying to do here in Los Angeles is to make it safer, and while making it safer, reduce racial tensions," police Chief William Bratton said at a forum organized by the Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable in Leimert Park.
"We need more community involvement," Lita Herron, a South Los Angeles resident, said at the forum. "These are our children. I don't want the gangs killing."
"If a Latino kid happens to kill an African-American kid, it's not right. A black kid kills somebody else -- it's not right," Commander Kenny Garner of the Los Angeles Police Department told the group. "None of it is right, and we can't get so incensed that we lose focus on it's going on on both sides."
"I had no idea it was this big," the victim's mother," Army Sgt. Anita Shaw said. "Being in the military, I'm away. In the military, we don't have situations like this. We have ... the code of conduct. We live by regulations."
Shaw was on duty in Iraq when she received word that her son had been killed.
"He was just awesome," she said. "The best son that any mother could have."
(© 2008 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Wire services contributed to this report.)
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