Gang members would watch the autopsies of slain comrades in a proposed county program designed to tarnish the glamour of gang life.
Supporters say the program, tentatively scheduled to begin next month, would shock youngsters into giving up gang affiliation. Gang violence took more than 800 lives last year in Los Angeles."It is not a very glamorous or pleasant process," said Rob Garrott, who heads the coroner's Gang Diversion Task Force. "You wouldn't want it to happen to your friends, and you certainly wouldn't want it to happen to yourself."
But others argue the program will make gang members more callous to the effects of violence.
"These kids are hard enough," said Los Angeles police Detective Bill Humphry, who leads an anti-gang unit in the San Fernando Valley. "We don't need to make them harder."
He and other critics suggested gang members instead be shown a lifesaving operation or be required to work with people paralyzed by gang gunfire.
The Board of Supervisors still must give the program a final vote of approval. But the supervisors already have appropriated $50,000 for the first year, and approval is considered likely.
The program is based loosely on "Scared Straight," a 1970s program in which teen-agers were shown the worst of prison life by inmates of New Jersey's Rahway State Prison.
That program was widely criticized for including little counseling and follow-up.
Mark Cooper, the coroner's chief of disaster and community services, said participants in the autopsy program would get at least six months follow-up counseling. He said the coroner's office was studying other objections to the program.
One gang member, who identified himself only by his moniker, "Evil," said he thought the coroner's program could help keep children from joining gangs.
"You've got to get them when they're young," he said. "Thirteen years old and they've already watched their brothers and cousins, and they're excited - they like the power, the girls, the glamour."