GANGS' VULNERABILITY TO HIV SHOCKS L.A.

LOS ANGELES - Phillip "Muck" Brown once lived the life of a true gangster.

By 17, he was a professional car thief, a PCP abuser and a "war
chief" for a Crips gang in west Los Angeles. But in the summer of
1987, while he was serving a two-year prison term, his dangerous
living caught up with him.

He learned that he was HIV-positive, a result of shooting up cocaine,
heroin and other drugs.

For years, he lived "on the down low," telling no one but a probation
officer. "It's about pride," said Brown, 48. "When you're a gangster,
reputation is all you have."

Brown is part of what Los Angeles health officials are calling "a
ticking time bomb" in the AIDS epidemic. A city-commissioned study
released in late March identifies gang members as particularly
vulnerable to infection by the human immunodeficiency virus, not only
because of high-risk behavior but also fallacious beliefs about the
disease and a tendency to stigmatize those who have it.

"We were stunned, amazed, that nobody's looked at this before,"
Stephen Simon, the city's AIDS coordinator, said. "Here's a high-risk
population that obviously engages in high-risk behavior, one that is
uninformed and realizes it's uninformed, and there is no data on this
population."

The $75,000 study, among the first of its kind in the country,
surveyed 300 gang members - about half of whom agreed to be tested for HIV .

Just one tested positive. But almost 90 percent said they'd had
unprotected sex in the last 12 months. Also, 31 percent believed that
a vaccine had been developed recently that prevents HIV infection and
54 percent said their friends would stay away from them if they were
infected with HIV; and 91 percent said their communities needed more
information on the virus.

Simon will recommend that his office collaborate with gang
intervention groups and launch an informational campaign.

The report "was shocking," said City Councilmember Tony Cardenas, who
chairs the city's gang violence committee. He supports Simon's
recommendation, which could cost as much as $200,000.

"The first thing that came to my mind is that this is a deadly
bullet, when a gang member's ignorance and macho attitude puts their
lives at risk and (those of) their own family members."

The United Nations doles out thousands of dollars in grants to
organizations targeting at-risk youth - some of them gang members
formerly from the U.S. - for HIV/AIDS prevention. El Salvador-based
Homies Unidos, which has become a refuge for ex-gang members deported
from the United States, received a $36,000 grant to battle the spread
of AIDS among its clients.