Police Make Two More Arrests

By Erica Williams and Jorge Casuso
Staff Writer

May 28 -- Police have arrested two more suspects in connection with a string of four shootings in a crime-prone pocket of the Pico Neighborhood this month, bringing the total number of arrests to six, police said.

On Tuesday evening, police arrested Marshall Lipps, a 21-year-old white Santa Monica resident who was the driver of the car involved in a drive-by shooting last Tuesday in an alley behind the 1800 block of 17th Street, police said.

Lipps, who was charged with attempted murder, does not live in Pico Neighborhood, said Police Chief James T. Butts, Jr. His bail has been set at $500,000.

Within 24 hours, police arrested a sixth suspect, Kevin Lamarr Crosby, a 24-year-old black former resident of Santa Monica who lives in Inglewood. Crosby was arrested Wednesday afternoon for an outstanding parole warrant and booked for attempted murder, police said. His bail was also set at $500,000.

The two arrests come less than one week after police arrested four suspects in connection with a string of shootings that occurred a week ago Sunday, Monday and Tuesday and on May 9. None of the shootings resulted in injuries, but one of two shots fired on the night of May 9 pierced the window of a bedroom of an affordable housing project where children were asleep.

The shootings are the result of gang activity between the Graveyard Crips and the 17th Street gang, Butts told the City Council Tuesday night. The police chief was addressing the council in the first of a series of City Budget Study sessions this week.

The Council peppered Butts more about the recent rash of shootings in the Pico Neighborhood and problems with transients that hang out at the Third Street Promenade’s center court than about the department’s budget for the next two fiscally challenging years.

The core problem in Pico, Butts told the council, boils down to “gang rivalries for the sale of drugs. The disputes are over who is going to control the sale of drugs.”

Councilman Ken Genser complimented the department for “doing a great job” of addressing acute problems when they arise.

“I think it’s more than a police problem,” Genser said. “It seems to me that we as a city need to do more.”

The police is doing all it can with its many community outreach programs through the Police Activities League (PAL), Butts responded, adding, “We devote an extreme amount of staff time and neighborhood resources,” to addressing the social problem, but “we’re just a facilitator.”

The vast majority of those arrested for involvement in this latest round of shootings are parolees or individuals on probation, Butts added. When prisoners are released and return to their neighborhoods, the violence returns.

“The reality is that the people involved in these activities don’t go to peace marches or neighborhood watch meetings,” Butts said. “They’re hardened criminals.”

Butts was referring to a decision by Pico residents last week, before any arrests were made, to plan a peace march in response to the latest violence.

Many of the problems, Butts said, are a result of antisocial behavior that begins at an early age. The challenge is to reach kids at school at the first signs of inappropriate behavior.

“The behaviors that we see that are so antisocial tend to be replicated where fathers and brothers were gang members,” the chief said, adding, those “are not counterbalanced by positive influences.

A key place to reach kids is on middle and high school campuses, Butts said, where a lot of the bad behavior starts being played out. But the police’s role with kids and on school campuses is challenging, the chief added.

“When a child through their own behavior becomes involved with the police,” he said, parents become upset with the school and with the police for charging their kids, blaming them for creating the problem “rather the child that did the behavior.”

The school, Butts said, then “develops processes that emphasize the hurt of the parent.”