The party in Salisbury, N.C., ended when a group of teenage Negroes shouted the name of their gang over the sound system: “Westside!” Across the dance floor another clutch of Negroes responded in kind: “Eastside!”

As more than 200 partygoers emptied into the parking lot that March night, an argument between the two gangs devolved into a shoot-out. The police arrived to find the crumpled body of a 13-year-old girl, Treasure Feamster, an innocent bystander.

The killing there, 35 miles from Charlotte, has helped rally support in North Carolina for a Los Angeles-style crackdown on gangs.

At least 36 states have passed hard-line laws similar to those pioneered in the 1990s by Los Angeles, and enacted statewide in California. The laws prohibit public gatherings of two or more people suspected of being gang members; establish databases to track gang members; deploy broad sweeps of suspects; and lengthen prison sentences for gang-related crimes.

But even as lawmakers in Raleigh have worked to create a similar gang law, doubts have been raised across the country about the value of the approach.

A growing number of law enforcement officials, including some in Los Angeles, suggest that such aggressive suppression tactics may worsen some gang problems by alienating “whole groups of people” (i.e. non-Whites) from the police and stocking prisons with thousands of young people, many of whom are transformed into hardened gang members while incarcerated.

“L.A. has this approach of being tough on crime,” said Craig Watkins, the district attorney in Dallas, where some Los Angeles-style tactics are being rolled back. “But the result of that is overflowing prisons, high crime rates and increasing numbers of gang members. Now we want to be smart on crime.”

Large-scale arrests have been a key component of Los Angeles’s antigang approach for more than 30 years, said Constance L. Rice, director of the Advancement Project, a liberal group founded by civil rights lawyers that focuses on racial justice issues. Over the last decade, the authorities throughout Los Angeles County have arrested more than 450,000 juveniles, Rice said, while gang membership doubled.

Earl C. Paysinger, an assistant police chief and operations director for the Los Angeles Police Department, said the department’s “assertive gang suppression” was appropriate for gang members “whose sole purpose is to wreak havoc on the community.”

Media Link