Truce : Members of 52 Rival Gangs End Violence for the Christmas Season

There was a sense of uneasiness in the air as members of some of Los Angeles’ toughest street gangs filed quietly into a meeting room Wednesday at Our Lady Queen of Angels Roman Catholic Church.

After all, some in the room had been sworn enemies in battles over turf. Members of the Eastside’s Arizona Maravilla gang, for example, sat apart from rivals. Nevertheless, about 125 representatives of 52 street gangs, most of them Latinos, agreed to come together to call a truce in gang violence over the holiday season.

“The guy who shot me might even be in this room,” said Jesus Medina, 14, who was shot in the arm by a rival gang member last summer. “But revenge is not worth it . . . not worth going to jail. We’re not looking for trouble.”

The unusual meeting was organized by the Community Youth Gang Service Project in East Los Angeles as an attempt to stem the alarming increase of gang-related violence in Los Angeles.

Police statistics show 178 slayings in the city this year, the highest since 1981, when 167 died in gang-related shootings. In unincorporated Los Angeles County, 58 gang killings have been reported this year--the same number reported for all of 1985.

Authorities say gang involvement in drug trafficking is mainly responsible for the upswing of violence. “We’re trying to get a handle on that,” said Lydia Lopez, an administrator with the youth gang project.

To allay uneasiness at the meeting, gang members were screened for weapons with metal detectors. None was found. Members of each gang were accompanied by a anti-gang worker to avoid taunts or threats.

The awkwardness of having so many rival gang members in one place evaporated when “Miami Vice” star Edward James Olmos spoke to them.

Olmos, a product of Latino barrios in East Los Angeles and Montebello, gave a moving talk that brought some tears to some in the audience.

“Sabes que . . . ? (Know what?)” Olmos began in street lingo, “I’ve been waiting for this for 40 years. What does it take to say, ‘OK, I am such a strong man, I don’t have to kill brothers to show how bad I am.’

“I’m here to tell you that no one outside of this room may put down his gun. But I pray that you understand that it has taken too many years for this (meeting) to happen. . . . I hope when you have a choice, you’ll put it down.

“I am not smarter than any of you. I’m not more talented than you are. It’s up to you. . . . There are no more excuses.”

Olmos and Mayor Tom Bradley, who also spoke at the meeting, urged the gang members to extend the truce beyond the first of the year. “Let’s make it permanent,” the mayor said.

Some Eastside gangs have been working on truces since Thanksgiving.

Johnny Garcia, a counselor who works with Latino gangs in the Pico Rivera-Norwalk area, said three gangs--Rivera 13, Pico Nuevo and Barrio Norwalk--have maintained a truce since late November.

Members of a fourth area gang, El Jardin, came to Wednesday’s meeting to “check the truce out,” Garcia said. It was too soon to tell whether they, too, would join in.

Father Luis Olivares, pastor of La Placita Church, as Our Lady Queen of Angels is commonly called, distributed loaves of bread to symbolize the truce that those in attendance had agreed to.

The meeting, he said, “was wonderful. . . . Even if the Pope had been here, it would have failed if you hadn’t been here.”

Organizers were optimistic that the gathering was an important step, even though the 52 gangs represented only a small part of the 500 gangs and 60,000 gang members in Los Angeles County.

“It’s not an easy thing to come here and do what they’re doing,” Lopez said.

Members of the 18th Street Gang, in South-Central Los Angeles, seemed to agree with that assessment. Said one, Francisco Lupercio, 17: “I’ve been in the gangs for seven years, and it’s tough. But the stuff has got to stop.”