Reuters Monday, December 16, 2002; 8:28 PM

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Federal authorities, answering a call from Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton to help fight violent street gangs, pledged on Monday to commit more officers, agents and resources to that battle.

Debra Yang, U.S. Attorney for three southern California counties, emerged from a meeting with Bratton and Los Angeles Mayor James Hahn to tell reporters that her office would use federal laws to crack down on out-of-control gang members.

"Gang violence today is the worst it's been for some time," Yang said. "These random acts of violence and senseless killings have threatened the very way that many citizens live their lives and have taken away their ability to feel safe and secure in their own homes."

Bratton earlier this month called Los Angeles' notorious street gangs a "threat to national security" and pleaded for federal help in crushing the crime organizations, which he likened to the Mafia.

"Your gang situation in this city is unlike anything else in America," Bratton, a former New York Police Commissioner who been on the job in Los Angeles for less than two months. "It will devour this city. It scares the hell out of me how sophisticated, how entrenched they are. The federal government better recognize that and put the same resources into fighting this that they did with the (Mafia) crime families."

Officials from the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms all said they would contribute resources to the fight against gangs in Los Angeles, where the police department is badly undermanned and still reeling from years of scandal.

"We are not going to surrender one inch of turf to the gangs," Hahn told the press conference. "The streets of Los Angeles belong to the law-abiding citizens."

City leaders also plan to redeploy the department's 9,000 officers to the most crime-ridden areas and focus on a group of recently released parolees who hit the streets in the past 18 months eager to reassert their authority.

The LAPD's gang enforcement units, known as CRASH, were yanked off the streets after revelations in 1999 that some CRASH officers engaged in drug dealing, framing and even shooting suspects and planting guns on them.

-- Anonymous, December 16, 2002