Gangs were back in the local news last month, and with a vengeance rarely seen in laid-back Los Angeles.

On January 3, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa kicked off a yearlong campaign to combat gangbangers and the violence they wreck in the Southland. He asked U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales for more federal money and prosecutors to fight rising gang-related crime, which rose 14 percent in 2006.

Specifically, the mayor wants federal grants to target gangs in parts of the San Fernando Valley, South Los Angeles and Boyle Heights. Although serious and violent crime dropped 8 percent in the city last year, gang crime rose dramatically in the Valley (42 percent) and South L.A. (24 percent), along with a 3 percent increase in Central L.A.

Mayor Villaraigosa also asked the Feds to step up the prosecution of local gang members, especially going after gangs with foreign roots like Mara Salva Trucha, which has connections to El Salvador, and gangs that commit racially motivated crimes.

A week later, Los Angeles Police Department Chief William Bratton announced a new attack plan on gang violence, zeroing in on leaders and headquarters of the city's "Top 10" worst gangs. Law enforcement officials plan to do this by using a matrix scale that gives extra weight to gang violent crime, interracial crime and assaults on police officers.

Prosecutors will also start using "stay-away orders" against gang leaders. These legal constraints, which are part of offenders' probation requirements, order them to keep away from certain neighborhoods.

Also in January, FBI Director Robert Mueller pledged his agency's help in "strategic dismantling" street gangs plus teaching law enforcement authorities in Mexico, El Salvador and other Latin American countries how to better track "transitional" gangs active across borders.

Not to be outdone, Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca said he would no longer release convicted gang members from jail until they had served their full sentences. And Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo unveiled Project TOUGH (Taking Out Urban Gang Headquarters) by boarding up and promising to seize ownership of a Glassell Park house suspected of being a gang meeting place.

By a unanimous vote, the Los Angeles City Council agreed to draft a ballot measure that would raise $50 million or more every year for gang prevention and intervention programs through a parcel tax.

The race card
And after Cheryl Green, a 14-year-old African American was shot dead, allegedly by 204th Street Latino gang members in the Harbor Gateway neighborhood, Mayor Villaraigosa, Sheriff Baca and LAPD Chief Bratton all denounced the killing as an example of rising racial attacks by local gangs. This was noteworthy, since the role of racial hatred in gang violence has been largely undocumented by social scientists and played down by law enforcement authorities weary about stirring up more conflict.

Much of this heightened anti-gang rhetoric --- and promised activity --- springs from the recent release of a gang activity reduction study. The City Council-commissioned investigation concluded that what Los Angeles is doing to combat gang violence is "designed to fail" because too many officials simply don't understand the very nature of the problem.

And even though L.A. has spent an average of $82 million annually fighting gangs the past few years, these municipal efforts have largely "floundered" because they aren't coordinated, according to the report.

The study recommended that a "gang czar" oversee the current 23 anti-gang programs spread throughout various city departments. Moreover, the root causes of gang involvement - poverty, deteriorating neighborhoods, high school drop-out rates over 50 percent, lack of jobs and other seemingly intractable social dilemmas - had to be not only acknowledged but aggressively addressed.

To be truly effective, a comprehensive approach must emphasize prevention and intervention as well as police suppression of gangs. The investigation noted that law enforcement officials had even agreed they could not "arrest" their way out of the spreading social crisis.

"The City's small and isolated gang prevention program cannot reverse an entrenched epidemic," warned the report, which was directed by acclaimed civil rights attorney Connie Rice for the Advancement Project.

"Comprehensive, neighborhood-based, schools-centered strategies for effective prevention, intervention and community development will be needed in order to substantially reduce gang activity and violence in high crime areas, keep 'tipping point' areas from tipping into routine violence, pull 'sliding communities' with emerging violence back to safety, and keep safe areas safe.

"In short," the report stressed in bold print, "Los Angeles needs a Marshall Plan to end gang violence."

No turning back
Father Greg Boyle, who's been working with gang members in East L.A. for two decades, has seen a multitude of anti-gang initiatives come - and go. On this winter Tuesday afternoon, he is scratching down some agenda ideas on a yellow legal pad, getting ready to run a three o'clock staff meeting at Homeboy Industries, on First Street in Boyle Heights.

The problem is he's also trying to do an interview with a reporter, while fielding a stream of questions from young walk-in workers and visitors. But multitasking doesn't seem to really bother the Jesuit priest, who looks like he wouldn't make a bad, although somewhat-skinny, Santa Claus in his white beard and wire-rimmed glasses. From time to time, there is even a little twinkle to his eyes.

"I think by and large the Advancement Project report is a huge step and certainly good," he says. "And the language about a Marshall Plan is the kind of thing you can hang a comprehensive focus on. I just quibble about how to evaluate programs.

"That's an enormously complex issue," he adds. "A lot of times people focus on what works. I'd much rather focus on what helps. If you do enough things that help, it works."

Father Boyle agrees with one of the study's major conclusions: What Los Angeles is currently doing to stem gangs and gang violence is basically designed to fail. But he does not believe it's because the city's 20-plus programs are not coordinated. Of Homeboy Industries, with its hardcore intervention mission to work with at-risk and gang-involved youth, he quips, "Who do we need to coordinate with?"

With the mayor, police chief and county sheriff all of the opinion that enforcement isn't the sole answer to gangs today, he says there is no turning back from prevention and intervention as being crucial components to any comprehensive anti-gang plan. But he has a big problem with law enforcement still basically running the show.

"If we had a 'gang czar,' for lack of better words, then we would have somebody who could put police exactly where it needs to be --- which is, they are just one stakeholder among many," he says.

"The people who live here know that police are doing the best they can," he points out. "But many officers live in the suburbs, and they're here three days a week. So I don't think it's healthy for a society to say, 'Well, who ought to know better about gangs than cops?' In this community, just about everybody else who lives here does."

'Top ten gangs'
He also feels strongly that the police have no business running prevention and intervention programs like LAPD's highly touted DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) effort. Instead, cops should just do their job, treating people with the same dignity they'd expect from others.

Father Boyle, or "G" as he's known to almost everybody at Homeboy Industries, believes along with local officials that so-called gang "hot spots" in parts of the San Fernando Valley and South L.A. should get special attention. But he thinks coming up with a list of the "top ten" gangs will only backfire with horrific results.

"It's the wildest dream of any gang to make the top ten list," he says, shaking his head. "Injunctions have sort of done that already. Obviously, they're going to target gangs that are somewhat notorious. But you don't want to popularize that with some huge graphic - Here are the ten gangs that we hate the most!"

Concerning racial tensions between gangs - which has made the nightly news lately with the Cheryl Green murder - the priest says "no question" it's an issue, especially in jails. But he believes the media has made race bigger than it actually is on the street with gang kids.

What would a Father Boyle-designed, comprehensive gang program be like? He says his friend Connie Rice did a "pretty complete" job with her "Citywide Gang Activity Reduction Strategy" report.

"I would quibble with the idea that we ought not to be working with gangs ever, only gang members," he says. "We don't work with gangs here. We work with gang members. My sense is there are two pendulums swinging extremes. One is demonizing the gang members. That's one extreme we want to avoid. And the other is romanticizing the gang. That's the other extreme we want to avoid.

"The middle ground really is humanizing the gang member," he explains. "That's where you want to be, with a sense of compassion."

During the first five years of his gang ministry, Father Boyle did, in fact, work with Eastside gangs, arranging truces and cease fires, along with negotiating peace treaties. He doesn't regret that, but would never do it again. The underlying premise was that gangs will always be around, so the best anyone could do was to stop gangbangers from killing each other and innocent bystanders.

But from firsthand experience, talking and listening to hundreds of gang members and their families, he came to realize that gang violence isn't really about territory or drug money or any outside factor. It has to do with the individual's inner struggles and demons.

"No kid is seeking anything when he joins a gang," he reports. "He's fleeing something, often a fatherless home. So if you can address what the kid's fleeing, the guy or gal will not gravitate toward a gang.

"I have never met a hopeful kid who joined a gang. Never. Not ever," Father Boyle stresses. "Cause if he's resilient and hopeful, anchored in a sense of the possibility of what tomorrow might bring, he's not going to join a gang."

Hanging out
Alfonso "Chino" Visuet, 23, joined a gang in East L.A. when he was 14 for various reasons.

He says, "First of all, I was young, immature," in a thoughtful tone, standing on the back stairs of Homeboy Industries, where he works as a tour guide, showing visitors around. "I knew what it was to do the right thing, having morals and education. But I wasn't really interested in that at that time. I was more interested in hanging out with the boys and just kind of being mischievous and getting into trouble - experimenting with things like drugs and dropping out of high school.

"And then, you know, things just escalate as you're hanging out. If you hang out, you might as well get jumped into a gang, because things are still going to happen, whether you're from the gang or not. You see a lot of things, you get involved into a lot of things, so . . ."

Going against the common wisdom of most criminologists, law enforcement authorities and pop culture commentators, Chino was never pressured into joining a gang or felt the need to be a part of some cohesive group to replace his family or thought to survive in his inner-city neighborhood he had to belong to a gang.

"If you see the gang life every day, then more likely there are big chances you're going to get involved in that type of lifestyle," he explains. "The pressure was not like peer pressure, but you kind of feel like you've got to be a certain way. You've got to carry yourself a certain way. You've got to have a certain attitude. You've got to have a certain mentality.

"And most of the time, that doesn't help you make the right choices," he acknowledges with a faint smile. "Cause getting involved into a gang wasn't one of the brightest choices I made."

When Chino was 18, he started to see things differently, though. In fact, his whole thinking process changed, largely because of the steadfast influence of Father Boyle, who he'd known from the time his gang life began.

"Father Greg didn't tell me to get out," he says. "He just tried to guide me to do different things. And he always was there for me when I got into trouble, and still is up to this day. He visited me a few times in juvenile hall, which really impressed me. You know, if somebody would take the time out to go to chat with you when you're locked up, that's nice.

"A lot of things could have happened differently," the ex-gangbanger muses. "But I'm blessed that I did meet him. I'm built upon Homeboy Industries. If I sit here and tell you how much it's helped me, I'll be here forever. The basic thing for me is how to grow, how to mature, how to become a man. So it's good."