LA Police Chief William Bratton has a new strategy for fighting the city's gangs: Calling in the Feds.

Bratton will ask the U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles to charge gang members with tax and racketeering offenses, a tactic, he said, that met with success against the Mob.

We've noticed the police department has a whole new jargon under Bratton:

"The initiative will not mean mass arrests, but targeted policing, said Assistant Chief Jim McDonnell."

"We don't want to come out like we did in the '80s," McDonnell said, referring to "occupying army" tactics favored by former chiefs. "We're planning a holistic, collaborative approach to the problem."

One local minister in South Central LA who works with gang members is not buying the new strategy:

"You're going to fill up the jail up with them again," said Rev. Nathan Holt, who operates the Love and Respect Youth Organization. "Shouldn't there be some training programs or something else?"

Our initial thoughts: The gang problem in LA is out of control. Bratton is committed to reducing crime in LA. His pattern has been the "broken window" system of policing--arresting people for little things to clean up the streetss and get useful information on bigger crimes and criminals.

He has not been a whosale violator of civil rights in the past, although we did have a problem with the targeted arrests of the squeegie operators and the subway turnstile jumpers.

The violence needs to end in LA. Jail terms for petty crimes and even tax evasion are far less than those for crack and murder. We'd rather see gang members receive shorter sentences for lesser crimes so they don't lose their hope for a future. And we think on the whole, you get a better shot at a fair trial in federal court than state court, which is where tax offenses and racketeering cases are tried.

We remain behind Bratton. But we'll keep watching and reporting as well.