Michael Hagan's idea of a good time is to guzzle a few bottles of Olde English "800" Malt Liquor and smoke PCP with his fellow gang members in the slums of south central Los Angeles. There is no telling what might happen.
During one Monday-evening binge, Hagan, 23, and his "home boys" decided to have some sport with a rival gang. Flushed with bravado, five of them piled into a blue Buick and sped toward enemy turf. There they spotted four teenagers, two of them girls, standing at a corner in front of a cinder-block wall covered with gang graffiti. Hagan grabbed a semiautomatic rifle and, with a fellow home boy known as "Baby Monster," strolled to the corner.
When the teenagers saw the rifle, three of them ran. But Kellie Mosier, 17, a lissome, bright-eyed high school junior who worked in an ice-cream store, never got a chance. As she turned to flee, Hagan began squeezing the trigger, methodically emptying all 15 rounds from the fully loaded clip. Just for kicks. Mosier was hit six times in the back.
This summer Hagan was convicted of first-degree murder for the 1986 slaying. His sentencing is set for September. He pleaded not guilty, claiming that the fateful day was blurred by drugs. Witnesses testified otherwise. Like so many other killers churned out each year by the ghetto, Hagan does not really care what happened. He does not care about Kellie Mosier or her family or her dreams of being a model or the fact that she never belonged to any gang. "I done did something, and I'm known," he boasts, smiling broadly as he lounges behind the bars of the Los Angeles County jail. "I consider myself public enemy No. 1."
If many American ghettos now resemble Beirut, urban terrorists like Hagan are largely responsible, acting as roving gangs peddling drugs and violence and terror. Despite the fratricide among gangs, most of their victims are innocent bystanders. Says Lieut. Bob Ruchhoft of the Los Angeles police department's gang detail: "Life is cheap as hell in some of these communities."
Los Angeles is home to more than 200 gangs with some 12,000 members, an increase of about 25% from 1980. There were 187 gang-related homicides in 1986, a 24% increase over 1985. So far, this year looks even worse. Drive-by shootings are more common than smog alerts, and the burgeoning trade in crack cocaine has turned gangs from stray hoods into multimillion-dollar enterprises equipped with Uzis and AK-47 assault rifles.
) Gangs are prospering because crime pays in the ghetto. Many gangs have made the deadly transition from switchblade bravado to organized crime, serving as highly efficient distributors for Colombian cocaine dealers. Stiff competition has prompted bloody firefights in broad daylight over market share, while the influx of drug money provides topflight weapons, fancy cars and high-tech surveillance equipment. Once an adolescent phase, gang membership is now a full-time job, enticing many members to stay well into their 20s and 30s.