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08/09/05
Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --
Los Angeles is known for breeding brutal gangs, but is the problem rooted in other countries?
Alex Sanchez>> I've seen dead bodies and decapitated bodies in El Salvador when I was only five years old and I still remember those images.
Val>> And then, how can you tell if an aggressive dog is dangerous and is there anything you can do about it?
It's all straight ahead on tonight's Life and Times.
Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.
And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.
Val>> You may think that gangs are only a problem in big inner cities, but then again, gangs have a way of spreading. In fact, one Los Angeles gang has now migrated to thirty-three states and its one hundred thousand members have even attracted the attention of the United States Congress.
They call themselves MS 13. In a city with an estimated thirteen hundred gangs, MS 13 has managed to distinguish itself as one of the most vicious. Its members live in the Pico Union area just west of downtown Los Angeles. Police say they extort money from prostitutes and drug dealers and victimize residents and merchants, people like flower seller Susana Antillion.
Susana Antillion>> At about eleven o'clock every night in my neighborhood, they gather together in cars and then they head out to graffiti different places, do robberies, assault people, break windows. It's a disaster, just a disaster.
Val>> MS 13 was born twenty years ago here in Los Angeles, but its roots transcend borders and stretch down to Central America. In the 1980's, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala were plagued by civil wars. The wars created a wave of Central American refugees, many of them children who had witnessed horrific violence in their homelands. Officer Frank Flores is with the LAPD Anti-Gang Unit.
Officer Frank Flores>> Most of these members come in from war-torn countries where, you know, killing was a regular occurrence. Violence, beating people up, stabbing people, seeing people die. I mean, they were desensitized, so when it came time for them to deal with rival gang members, I mean, their readiness to commit a violent act was nothing but second nature.
Val>> The refugee immigrants settled in poor and crowded neighborhoods like Pico Union and Macarthur Park.
Alex Sanchez>> There's about ten gangs in the one-mile area right here.
Val>> Alex Sanchez was a member of MS 13. He now works with an anti-gang program called Homies Unidos. Today he's giving a tour to interns.
Alex Sanchez>> I've seen dead bodies and decapitated bodies in El Salvador when I was only five years old and I still remember those images.
Val>> He says many immigrants arrived in the United States with deep scars from the wars.
Alex Sanchez>> Many of those peoples' parents were involved in the war either in the military or the guerilla, and they came fleeing that war into these communities, you know, where a lot of them were dealing with the trauma of war.
Val>> Sanchez was recruited into MS 13 when he was only in junior high. It wasn't long before he was shot by a rival gang and later imprisoned for car theft and weapons possession.
Alex Sanchez>> So we're coming up on the mural.
Val>> This mural depicts the brutal rivalry between the Eighteenth Street gang and MS 13. Eighteenth Street is a mostly Mexican-American gang who resented the Central American newcomers. The violence between the gangs escalated, fueled by drugs, money and guns. In the late 1990's, the LAPD launched a crackdown on gangs. Prosecutors obtained injunctions that prohibited gang members from gathering in public. And as law enforcement turned up the heat, Central Americans, including MS 13 gang members, moved to other cities. It was a kind of Diaspora of violence.
Officer Frank Flores>> They are so mobile and they are so easy -- I mean, it's easy for them to travel, especially when you have other cities with cliques and you're able to go and find friendly faces and hide out within those communities as well.
Val>> Even as far as Virginia. This is a surveillance tape taken by police in northern Virginia. It's the MS 13 gang. They're taking retribution on a fellow gang member who stepped out of bounds.
Rep. J. Randy Forbes>> This particular tape was taken in one of the most affluent areas in northern Virginia. It was out in daylight in a public park and it shows the brutality that these gangs have. This is activity they were doing to their own members in terms of disciplining those members.
Val>> Virginia Congressman J. Randy Forbes is author of a Gangbuster's Bill, which passed the House.
Rep. J. Randy Forbes>> They're cutting off peoples' heads. They're cutting off their fingers. They're cutting off their arms.
Val>> In 2003, a seventeen year old pregnant Virginia girl was murdered. She had become an informant against MS 13. They stabbed her sixteen times and left her body on the banks of a river. Her murder is what prompted Congressman Forbes' anti-gang bill.
Rep. J. Randy Forbes>> After 9/11, our focus was on terrorism and homeland security and we did lose our focus a little bit on what was taking place with this huge rise of gang activity within our own midst.
Val>> In the late 1990's, the federal government stepped in and started deporting gang members who had committed crimes and were in the United States illegally. Sanchez himself was arrested and nearly deported until the INS made an exception, gave him amnesty and allowed him to continue his work against gang violence.
>> "All right, so the first question, I am asking you to define your self-esteem."
Alex Sanchez>> You know, you still have kids joining gangs as small as junior high and you have kids that are in elementary school already knowing, you know, the gang structure and already knowing about gangs.
Val>> Alex Sanchez has made the transition to peacemaker and the civil wars in Central America have come to an end. Now the question is whether peace can come to gang territories on the streets of Los Angeles.
The deportation, by the way, is only partially successful. Many gang members who are deported manage to cross back into the United States and are back on the streets in a matter of months.
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Val>> It's hard to read the word "steroids" in a headline without also reading the word "athlete", and yet steroids had and still have legitimate medical uses. So how did steroids get hijacked by athletics? Steven Kotler is a reporter with the L.A. Weekly. He talked with Vicki Curry about his cover story on steroids. It's called "What if everything you've been told about steroids is wrong?"
Vicki Curry>> Steven Kotler, in your L.A. Weekly article, you examine a number of issues surrounding the use of steroids. But the first thing I want to ask you is, what are steroids?
Steven Kotler>> Steroids are hormones. When doctors use the word steroids, mostly they mean corticoid steroids which are hormones that break tissue down. When the general public talks about steroids, they're primarily talking about sex hormones. Estrogen which is the female sex hormone, steroids. Testosterone, the male sex hormone, steroid. But when you're talking about steroids in terms of athletes and whatnot, you're talking about testosterone or substances that are designed to mimic testosterone.
Vicki Curry>> In your article, you also look back at the history of steroids and I was surprised to see it goes back to 1767.
Steven Kotler>> It does, though the experiments that were done in 1767 didn't do much besides just peak the interest of general science. It was a hundred years later when an English scientist named Arnold Berthold took a bunch of roosters and he castrated the roosters and he noticed that the defining sex characteristics, the male sex characteristics, their aggression, their interest in females and their comb disappeared, all vanished. The comb atrophied and the other things disappeared. He then took an extract from the testes and re-injected it into these roosters and all of these characteristics came back. That started catching the attention of other scientists.
Twenty years after that, another scientist started taking sheep, guinea pigs primarily, but he used the extract from their testes and began injecting himself with the same substance and noticed an increase in mood and more energy and more vigor. This was also a period of time -- it was the Victorian era. People were very interested in sex and they were interested in having more kind of sexual energy. It was curious to people and that's what this guy started reporting. Though you can't really go tell people to go inject themselves with the extract of sheep testes. Nobody really wanted to do it.
So in the 1930's, a Dutch scientist named Ernst Laqueur, his lab managed to isolate testosterone from bull testicles and, a few years after that, we had synthetic testosterone and then everybody could make it and we were off to the races.
Vicki Curry>> So then in the 1930's with the synthetic steroid or synthetic hormone, suddenly it was being used for medical purposes. How was it received at that point?
Steven Kotler>> Well, very early on, it was almost immediately pulled into athletics. There was athletic promise from the start. There was a bunch of Swedish athletes who started taking the product called Rejuvan in the 1920's that had a little bit of testosterone in it and they noticed an effect. In the 1936 Olympics, there were all kinds of rumors, never being confirmed, that Hitler's athletes were using large amounts of steroids to gain an advantage.
In the 1940's, which is when it got very, very popular, a scientist by the name of Paul de Kruif wrote "The Male Hormone" and that kind of spread everything wide. Most steroid experts now believe that that was the book that kind of broke things open. But testosterone and testosterone derivatives, at that point, were a wonder drug. They were the miracle cure. They enhanced your mood, they gave you must more sexual energy which was really interesting to people at the time. You know, it was a health supplement basically and there was supposed to be a huge revolution in science because of this chemical and it just didn't work out that way.
Vicki Curry>> So it was a wonder drug at that point, a miracle of science. What happened?
Steven Kotler>> What happened was East German athletes, specifically women athletes, started showing up with, you know, unusual body sizes and results. You had women shot-putters throwing shot-puts a lot farther than maybe they should be able to. It caught the attention of a lot of people, specifically the Olympic Committee and the Olympic Committee was very interested in a balanced playing field. Obviously there is a lot of money in the Olympics, there is a lot of history in the Olympics. They want everything equal. They were the first people to say, hey, wait a minute, this is a problem.
In 1977, the problem had gotten to such a point that the American College of Sports Medicine decided to get involved and they decided to spread the word. Unfortunately, what they decided to do is they decided to lie to everybody. For a period of seven years from 1977 to 1984, the American College of Sports Medicine used a bunch of very shoddy science to say that steroids don't do anything. They don't enhance muscle mass. We've known this for seventy years -- fifty years at this point -- but they kept saying, no, it's water retention, it's a placebo effect.
Finally by 1984, coincidentally, there was so much anecdotal evidence to the contrary that they went, okay, okay, it does increase muscle mass, but they're the devil. They're the demon drug and they're going to destroy your lives and kill you. Then they started touting all the negative effects of steroids, again, based on shoddy science or some of it just made up. Most of the really good science on steroids wasn't done until the past ten years ago. That's when we started really looking at it. So we were working on bad science.
The first long-term steroid studies, long-term use of steroids, didn't get started until 1996 when Nick Evans at UCLA decided that he wanted to go to bodybuilders who had been using steroids for ten, twenty, thirty, forty years, looking for any adverse reactions. Didn't find many. There are things that are wrong. Don't get me wrong. Steroids cause problems, especially the massive, massive doses that bodybuilders are taking. But that wasn't done until very recently.
Vicki Curry>> You spend quite a bit of time in your L.A. Weekly article talking about the medicinal uses of steroids. What are some of those?
Steven Kotler>> Steroids have been used with tremendous success in treating AIDS, AIDS wasting. They boost the immune cell count for people who have AIDS. There's a lot of new research that says steroids are very, very good for MS. There's a ton of research that says steroids are a phenomenal treatment for arthritis, very, very successful. Anything that has inflammation issues, steroids are phenomenal. For Alzheimer's, there's a lot of preliminary research that states steroids might be great for Alzheimer's. Lyme Disease, there are some researchers that say steroids are good for Lyme Disease, chronic fatigue symptom, things along those lines, autoimmune diseases specifically.
Vicki Curry>> Well, why is it that there was such resistance to steroids in the sports community?
Steven Kotler>> Sports are a really, really, really big business. There's no way around it. Even if you just move beyond the sports teams themselves and start looking at downstream profits, everything from like Nike shoe sales to the reporters' desk jobs at the Kansas City Star who cover baseball, these are all people who are impacted by the unlevel playing field in sports that steroids supposedly creates. Absolute truth. Steroids do change the level playing field in sports. There's no way around it. Steroids are horrible for kids. So if you want to say that sports set an example for children and steroids are bad for children, fine. If you want to say that you need a level playing field in sports and steroids shake that up, fine.
Vicki Curry>> So it sounds like essentially the big business of sports has co-opted the health uses of steroids.
Steven Kotler>> I think that is an absolutely accurate portrayal of the situation. I don't know what the fix is. I mean, I agree. There should be a level playing field in sports, but the level playing field -- they can jump up and down and have as many Congressional hearings that they want, but they're not going to get a substance out of sports that they can't find in sports. They're not going to develop enough tests for it. Obviously, they need a different solution.
Vicki Curry>> Steven Kotler of the L.A. Weekly, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us.
Steven Kotler>> You're welcome. Thanks for having me.
Val>> We've been reminded tragically how dangerous some dogs can be. In Glendale, an infant was mauled and killed by her grandparents' Rottweiler and, in the Antelope Valley, a rash of pit bull attacks has caused animal officials to crack down. So what can you do if you know there's a dangerous dog in your neighborhood? As Philip Bruce tells us, sometimes you can't do much.
Philip Bruce>> When Erika Walczak moved to the Hollywood Hills, it was partially because the neighborhood offered plenty of good places for her to walk her dog, Skye.
Erika Walczak>> "Hey, Skye, want a treat?"
Philip Bruce>> But then came the attack, two Rottweilers walking off-leash on a trail alongside an owner who did nothing to control them.
Erika Walczak>> I asked him if he would please hold his dogs, very calmly, as calmly as I could, and he didn't. They charged across the street and began biting my dog instantly on the head, neck and back. We were pinned against an embankment, so it was very difficult -- we couldn't get away.
Philip Bruce>> These photographs were taken after veterinarians managed to stop the bleeding and stitch Skye back together. Notice the drainage tubes in his throat and neck, the result of deep bite wounds that severed flesh and muscle.
Erika Walczak>> It took about two to three months for him to recover. I think, actually, it probably took me longer to recover because I didn't realize at the time, but events like these, I think, sort of take hold in your psyche. There was a lot of difficulty sleeping and just a lot of stress around the whole event.
Philip Bruce>> The Rottweilers belonged to one of Erika's neighbors. When he agreed to pay Skye's vet bills, she says she assumed he'd do the right thing.
Erika Walczak>> Until I saw him walking his dogs off-leash again, and this has been going on actually for two years now.
Philip Bruce>> That's when Erika filed not one, but two separate complaints with L.A. Animal Control, the city department that's supposed to deal with threatening or dangerous dogs. But instead of getting quick action, Erika says her complaints got tossed into a bureaucratic black hole and the dangerous Rottweilers continued to walk off-leash in front of her home.
Erika Walczak>> After making my third report to Animal Control and learning that they had lost my previous reports, I realized I was up against sort of a difficult bureaucracy and I made a conscious decision to extract myself from that. I didn't want to have to quit my job and become an advocate for dog violence in the neighborhood.
Philip Bruce>> In short, Erika Walczak stopped trying to get the Rottweilers under control because it was clear the battle would take more time and more money than she had to spend. It's a common dilemma for thousands of people across Southern California who find out the hard way how difficult it is to force a dog owner to control a threatening animal. And if you think the folks at Animal Control have the answer, guess again.
Jackie David>> I personally have a neighbor who just got a large pit bull and I know that these are not responsible people. I have a two-year-old and a four-year-old. I am very scared. I'm very scared, but there's nothing I can do, and I work for the department.
Philip Bruce>> Jackie David is a spokesperson for Animal Control, but she claims she's just as helpless to deal with the threat as the average civilian. While the shelters are filled with strays or abandoned dogs that have been picked up, David says it's often difficult to take action when an animal belongs to someone, even if it's attacked other dogs. So what can you do if there's a threatening dog in your neighborhood?
Jackie David>> Nothing. Just be aware of the dog and, you know, be aware of what to do in case the dog may attack or, you know, to prevent a dog from attacking you.
Philip Bruce>> So you basically have to wait until the dog actually attacks somebody to take any kind of action?
Jackie David>> Basically, if there's no evidence, yes, that's it. That truly is it.
Philip Bruce>> If any case illustrates the dilemma, it's the recent fatal mauling in San Francisco. Diane Whipple died a brutal death outside her Pacific Heights apartment when her neighbor's Presa Canario, an animal bred for aggression, attacked and killed her. Authorities later discovered the dog had a violent history of attacking other animals and most amazing of all was its link to a prison gang that's been breeding and selling Presa Canarios. But the biggest stir came when the dog's owners seemed to suggest that the victim had provoked the attack possibly with her perfume or her actions in the hallway.
Matthew Margolis>> The owners are solely responsible. You have to know they knew this dog was aggressive. He's a dangerous animal. He's killed hundreds of animals, killed goats, killed cats, he was bred to be a fighting dog. What were they thinking?
Philip Bruce>> Los Angeles dog trainer, Matthew Margolis, better known by millions as Uncle Matty, says too many people try to cover up or make excuses when they own an aggressive animal. Today, Tammy Solko has come to him for help with her dog, Lucy.
Matthew Margolis>> "Where is she?"
[Film Clip]
Matthew Margolis>> "Now you can see how aggressive she is near the car. If I would put my hand in there, good night. Now does this look like the family pet? Well, to Tammy, it is. This is her baby."
Philip Bruce>> But then Tammy's baby took a bite out of her hand. That's when she realized she needed help.
Tammy Solko>> I was letting a friend into the house and I thought my dog knew the friend well enough because people that she knows well, she lets in with no trouble. She went for my friend and I put my hand out to stop her and I got bitten.
Philip Bruce>> It was the first time that Tammy got bitten, but it wasn't the first time that Lucy has tried to take a piece out of somebody.
Matthew Margolis>> The problem is, Tammy, if you think about how many dog bites that have happened and she still to this day will say it's like three or four of her friends, she absolutely believes that this dog wouldn't bite some of her closest friends. I disagree with her. I think one day one of her closest friends is going to get bit.
Philip Bruce>> Margolis has spent much of his adult life dealing with threatening animals. In his new book on canine aggression, he says the biggest problem is dog owners who live in denial. Margolis says what the animals truly need is training to bring them under control. Sometimes it doesn't work, but usually it does. After just a few minutes with Margolis, Lucy showed promise. Quite a change from the gnashing of teeth at the car window.
Matthew Margolis>> Truthfully, if this wasn't your dog when you watched that, would you trust that dog?
Tammy Solko>> No, I wouldn't. I know. We had that discussion before. Not if it weren't my dog.
Matthew Margolis>> See, if it's not her dog, it's a whole different perception. It is her dog. All of a sudden, it's wonderful. So it's a good dog with a real bad problem that needs to be helped.
Val>> Since that story first aired four years ago, Erika tells us she doesn't know why, but she hasn't seen those Rottweilers around the neighborhood. As for her dog, it's passed away of old age.
Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, transcripts and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most interesting features. Just go to kcet.org and click on "Life and Times".
Val>> We don't really know what it is and it's hard to describe. All we know is that it's unusual and beautiful. It's at Materials and Application, a center for exploratory architecture in Silver Lake, and we sent our photographer there to capture it on video.
[Film Clip]
Benjamin Ball>> My name is Benjamin Ball. I'm with Ball-Nogues Architecture and Design and we started this project about a year ago. It's Mylar and it has a metallic gold coating on it and kind of an amber tint. It's reinforced with bundles of nylon to give it extra strength and also to prevent it from tearing.
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Benjamin Ball>> It's really about a process and it's about a way of putting materials together and a way of assembling materials and a way of making a shape. I think the inspiration stems from the space that we're in. It really serves a purpose for this particular space, which is to shield you from the sun and to change the environment and the qualities of the light.
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Benjamin Ball>> I think we've actually achieved something here where you don't need to have the framework of a gallery around it to know that you can appreciate it or know that you can experience it. The more people that come through from the community, the happier we'll be. I love to hear about people just discovering it as they're walking their dog down Silver Lake Boulevard. That's like one of the most rewarding things that could possibly happen for me.
[Film Clip]
Val>> That piece is called "Maximilian's Schell" and it will be on display through November at Materials and Applications in Silver Lake. If you'd like more information, you can go to their website at emanate.org. And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.
Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.
And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.
Val>> Next time on Life and Times --
The centers were set up to keep day laborers from gathering on street corners. Why do some cities want to shut them down?
>> It sends the message that the local community countenances this sort of violation of the law, that they're simply going to look the other way at the fact that these people have violated immigration laws and help them find jobs that they're not supposed to have.
Val>> That's next time on Life and Times.
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