So far this year, three people have been killed due to possible gang-related crimes in Koreatown.
The most recent shooting in Koreatown left a man in critical condition after being shot in the face. This incident took place on Feb. 16 on West 8th Street, around Jons Marketplace in Koreatown and is suspected to be gang-related.
The first shooting took place on Jan. 20, killing two people. Two gunmen, 24-year-old Alexander Alberto-Rossy Veleche and 19-year-old Jonathan Villamizar, are suspected of the crime. It was reported that they walked up to the victims and shot them multiple times in the driveway of a parking lot at Lucy’s Laundry Mart on West 3rd Street and South Normandie Avenue.
On Feb. 9, the third possible gang-related shooting left one person dead and two injured during a shooting near Wilshire Boulevard and Shatto Place.
According to the Los Angeles Police Department’s Olympic Division, they get handed more than thousands of gang-related cases a year. It is obvious that Los Angeles is one of the major cities that is well-known when it comes to gangs.
Currently in the Olympic Division, there are more than 450 gangs. “The two biggest gangs that we have in the Olympic Division are MS 13 and 18th Street,” said Gang Coordinator Roger Guzman with the Los Angeles Police Department’s Olympic Division.
Guzman explains that MS13 is a gang whose members are primarily from El Salvador, and in Koreatown they can be found on Wilshire Boulevard and Vermont Avenue. Their rival, 18th Street, has a clique that goes along the streets of Shatto Place and Shatto Park.
According to police officers, identifying who belonged to which gang was easy in the past. They could easily tell by what they were wearing and by the tattoos of the gang’s name or signs they had on their body. Now, when there are incidents of gang-related crimes, detecting gang members is not as easy as it used to be.
“Now you see a little bit of a difference by the way they dress and conceal their tattoos. In the past, gang members were usually bald, a skinhead, and had visible tattoos with their gang sign or a logo of their clique on their body,” said Guzman. “Now, some of them grow their hair out and wear clothes like everyone else in order to blend in, and this makes it harder for us to detect who is a part of a gang and who isn’t.”
The youngest gang member Guzman had brought in was a 13-year-old teenager. Kids - as young as 12 - are reported to be joining gangs.
Reynaldo Reaser, who is a former gang member, explains why many young kids may be joining gangs. He speaks from his own experiences during his time in the gang called Raymond Avenue Crips.
“I never felt the love from my mother and father. They never told me they love me. They never really gave me the hugs and kisses as I was a kid. So, when I go to my neighborhood and if I do something in a way that’s normally right in a gang mentality, they give me the pat on the back, embrace me and tell me they love me. You hear those things and you feel those embracement for the lack of what you felt at home,” said Reaser. “A lot of these kids are looking for acceptance within a gang because that is a form of family. They protect you, they feed you and they clothe you. They give you the necessary needs when you need it.”
Reaser first joined Raymond Avenue Crips when he was 15. Along with not receiving the love from his parents, he was also peer pressured into joining the gang by his two best friends, who were already a part of the gang. He ended up joining the Raymond Avenue Crips gang and was a part of it for 25 years, until he got incarcerated.
Reaser decided to turn his life around while he was in county jail, when he found out that one of his best friend was shot to death during a gang war. “I’m sure that if I wasn’t in jail during that time, I would have been killed too,” he said.
Upon his release from jail, he decided to change turn his life around and get out of the gang lifestyle. He is now the executive director at Reclaiming America’s Communities Through Empowerment, or better known as R.A.C.E., a nonprofit organization that specializes in gang intervention and prevention programs. His organization helps people, whether they are young kids or middle-aged persons, who want help coming out of a gang or needs help with controlling their violence.
Since 2010, when R.A.C.E. started its organization, Reaser and his team have achieved to bring down the rate of gang-related crimes in Los Angeles by 70 percent.
According to Guzman, Koreatown is included within the area of where the drop of 70 percent in gang-related crimes take place. “In the Olympic Area, there is a decrease compared to the past eight years, but we still have gang activity," said Guzman. "Now, I believe that the gangs are probably more involved in narcotics dealing than actually going out and committing robberies and shootings, so we have a decrease in that area."
As of now, the Olympic Division’s Gang Unit predicts that the gang-related activities such as, robberies, shooting and violence will drop in numbers.