Riot breaks out at South Los Angeles High School

The LA Times calls this a brawl?

A fight that broke out at a troubled South Los Angeles school escalated into a campuswide brawl involving as many as 600 students before it was quelled by police in riot gear.

The melee, which students said started around noon Friday between rival black and Hispanic gangs, forced authorities to shut down Locke High School and keep students in their classrooms. After restoring order, they rounded up students who hadn't returned to class and separated them by race, holding Hispanics in the gym and black students in another room.

[...]

Music teacher Reggie Smith described to the Los Angeles Times a chaotic scene where it was difficult to distinguish between trouble makers and those trying to avoid the mayhem.

"The kids were crazy, running from place to place jumping on other kids," Smith said. "Some of my kids were crying because they were walking to class with friends and they got jumped."

Sounds more like a riot to me.

School district police brought in about 60 officers to the scene, while the Los Angeles Police Department dispatched about 50 officers and more than a dozen patrol cars.

[...]

Joseph Sherlock, a senior, called it "my first actual encounter with a riot."

With any luck, since Sherlock is a senior, it will be his last encounter but it's no sure thing.  According to the article Locke has been marred by almost daily fights during much of the academic year.

Out of control.  Ain't diversity grand?

About 65 percent of the 2,600 students enrolled at Locke are Hispanic...

Many black families are leaving South Los Angeles, trying to get away from the gang violence, where in many cases Latinos target blacks.  Cheryl Green's family found out, tragically, the gangs are hard to escape. 

Who "started" the gang fight at Locke is anyone's guess since both a Latino gang and a black gang were involved.  But with a 65 percent Latino population and daily fights during much of the school year, it seems fair to assume that odds are the Latino gangs are the major source of the problem.   How many of the Latino gang members are illegals is also anyone's guess.  I'd guess it's quite a large percentage.  In 2005 Heather Mac Donald testified before Congress:

No one knows for certain the percentage of illegals in gangs, thanks in large part to sanctuary laws themselves. But various estimates exist:

--A confidential California Department of Justice study reported in 1995 that 60 percent of the 20,000-strong 18th Street Gang in southern California is illegal; police officers say the proportion is actually much greater. The bloody gang collaborates with the Mexican Mafia, the dominant force in California prisons, on complex drug-distribution schemes, extortion, and drive-by assassinations.  It commits an assault or robbery every day in L.A. County. The gang has grown dramatically over the last two decades by recruiting recently arrived youngsters, most of them illegal, from Central America and Mexico.

--Immigration and Customs Enforcement conservatively puts the number of illegals in Mara Salvatrucha as a “majority;” police officers, by contrast, assert that the gang is overwhelmingly illegal.

--Law enforcement officials estimate that 20% of gang members in San Diego County are illegal, according to the Union-Tribune. 

-- The L.A. County Sheriff reported in 2000 that 23% of inmates in county jails were deportable, according to the New York Times.

--The leadership of the Columbia Lil’ Cycos gang, which uses murder and racketeering to control the drug market around Los Angeles’s MacArthur Park, was about 60 percent illegal in 2002.  Francisco Martinez, a Mexican Mafia member and an illegal alien, controlled the gang from prison, while serving time for felonious reentry following deportation.

Considering Los Angeles is a sanctuary city, things are likely to get much worse.  Nice job, Mayor.