Mainly black and poor and infested with crack and weapons, this neighborhood and other areas to the east are riddled with gang graffiti, the coded boasts and taunts of Bloods and Crips, Vice Lords and Folks, names borrowed from Los Angeles and Chicago gangs with which some local groups are loosely affiliated. To the initiated, the scrawlings tell menacing tales. With one crack gang lurking eight short blocks from the Governor's mansion, Bill Clinton was well aware of the increasing violence and helped promote countermeasures like counseling and summer activities for teen-agers. But officials here have learned how hard it is to combat trends rooted in decades of poverty, rising teen-age pregnancies, broken families and broken communities. Here, as much as in New York or Los Angeles, more and more killings seem senseless.
Many shootings result from more than gang bravado.
He also noted that one of the most violent gangs is composed of white middle-class children in the southwest part of town. In 1991, as the violence rose, Governor Clinton called a meeting of civic leaders, and the county and city started several new youth programs as well as community policing. But the gangs were already well entrenched. Mark Stodola, the chief prosecutor of Pulaski County, said his office had identified 41 named gangs in the county, most involving young black men but including at least two female gangs and a few white gangs. His new gang unit has identified 500 members by name, but thousands of teen-agers and young adults are believed to be involved to some degree.