Ex-Gang Members, Officials Call for Bloodless Weekend : Violence: Rep. Waters and clergymen ask Crips and Bloods to maintain their truce, and accuse the media of stirring fear.

In the wake of the most deadly month in Los Angeles County history, a group of former gang members, clergymen and Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) made a public appeal Thursday for a “no-killing” Labor Day weekend among African-Americans and the community at large.

They also called for support of a four-month truce between Crips and Bloods, which they maintained is holding despite some reports to the contrary. The appeals were made at a news conference at the Imperial Courts in Watts, one of the housing projects where the gang truce began to take hold before the riots this spring.

Waters, a vocal advocate of the gang truce and of jobs and opportunities for gang members seeking to reform, chastised the news media for what she called irresponsibility in reporting that the truce is coming apart.

“Labor Day weekend is a weekend that causes us all to be concerned,” Waters said. “Innocent incidents in this community fueled by irresponsible reports from the news media could have greater repercussions . . . because of past gang problems.”

Waters referred to some reports last month that suggested that the bloody weekend in which at least 28 people died violently meant the end of the Crips-Bloods truce.

“After meeting with former gang members representing a cross-section of our community, I am convinced there is no basis for news reports that the gang truce had been broken,” Waters said.

With her were gang workers, two Baptist pastors and eight former members of Crips and Bloods factions. The two street gangs, which are overwhelmingly black, have waged a bloody war for nearly two decades. Those in four housing projects in South-Central Los Angeles, however, declared a cease-fire in the weeks leading up to the riots.

The truce spread to other Bloods and Crips in the Los Angeles area, causing a sharp decline in gang-related homicides involving black gangs. Homicides involving Latino gang members, meanwhile, have skyrocketed.

Last month, law enforcement agencies in the county reported more homicides than in any other month. Police listed many as gang-related, although not necessarily involving Crips and Bloods.

The gang members present at the news conference said some Crips and Bloods may have been involved in homicides since the truce, but they contended that those are few in number and are acting as individuals.

“You’ve got to realize we have been in this war for 20 years,” said Tony Bogart, a former Crip who works with a gang reform group called Hands Across Watts. “We’re going to have that and we got to get over it.”

As for the “no killing” holiday weekend, Charles Rachal, another former Crip who helped bring together six former gang factions in a group called South Central Blackness, said the plea applies to all county residents.

“Every killing is not a gang killing,” Rachal said. “We want to make this Labor Day weekend not only one for gang members to stop the killing, but to stop all the killing permanently.”