LOS ANGELES — One of South Los Angeles's best-known gang-intervention figures is sitting in jail on $2 million bail. Clifford “Skipp” Townsend, 62, a longtime leader of the violence-prevention organisation 2nd Call, was arrested by Los Angeles police on Wednesday, November 4, and booked on suspicion of conspiracy — in a case the Los Angeles Times reports involves an alleged conspiracy to commit murder. No charges had been filed against him as of the latest reporting, and the allegations have not been proven.
Townsend was arrested at around 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday outside the office of 2nd Call, in the 5100 block of Obama Boulevard in South Los Angeles, according to the Los Angeles Police Department. Video posted on social media showed him being led in handcuffs to an LAPD patrol car. Jail records showed him held in lieu of $2 million bail, MyNewsLA reported.
Source: MyNewsLA / City News Service
What police have — and have not — said
The LAPD has released almost nothing about the investigation. According to the department, Townsend was booked on suspicion of conspiracy; police gave no details about the circumstances that led to the arrest, and there was no immediate indication that any criminal charges had yet been filed against him. Everything beyond the booking itself comes from reporting by the Los Angeles Times, which said the case involved conspiracy to commit murder — but that the intended victim was unknown.
Four other people arrested in the same case
The Los Angeles Times reported that four other people were also arrested in connection with the investigation. It named Lenita Sinna Dee Lewis, 28, and Shamond Bennett, 49, among those arrested in the case, and said two more people — Nichole Aaliyah Smith, 23, and Jeremiah Abdelhameed, 25 — were arrested for allegedly being accessories after the fact. Police have not said how any of the five are alleged to be connected to one another, or what the alleged plot is said to have involved.
Source: Los Angeles Times, as reported by MyNewsLA
Townsend and the four others were arrested on suspicion. Arrest is not a conviction, no charges had been filed in the reporting available, and all five are presumed innocent unless a court finds otherwise.
Who Townsend and 2nd Call are
For years, Townsend has been one of the public faces of Los Angeles's gang-intervention world — the network of former gang members and community workers the city relies on to mediate conflicts, calm retaliation cycles and steer young people away from violence. The organisation he leads, 2nd Call, describes itself as a “community based organization designed to save lives, by reducing violence and assisting in the personal development of high-risk individuals, proven offenders, ex-felons, parolees and others who society disregards.” An arrest of a figure of his standing, outside his own organisation's office, has stunned colleagues across that world.
Three months after his co-founder was shot dead
The arrest comes three months after another co-founder of 2nd Call, 51-year-old Reginald Foreman, was fatally shot in the area of South Crenshaw Boulevard and West 59th Street in the Hyde Park area of Los Angeles. Foreman was killed on August 6. It was unclear whether any arrests were ever made in that killing, and — importantly — there is no indication that Townsend's arrest is in any way connected to that case. The two events are linked only by the organisation and the neighbourhoods it serves.
Why this matters beyond one arrest
Gang-intervention workers operate on trust: their entire model depends on being credible both to the communities where violence happens and to the police and city agencies that fund and coordinate with them. A murder-conspiracy allegation against one of the field's most senior figures — even an unproven one — therefore lands far beyond a single courtroom. It raises immediate questions for the organisations that work alongside 2nd Call, for the public money that supports intervention programmes, and for the fragile truces those workers maintain on the ground in South Los Angeles.
What happens next
The next step belongs to prosecutors, who must decide whether to file criminal charges against Townsend and the others arrested, and what those charges would be. Townsend remained behind bars in lieu of $2 million bail in the latest jail records reported. The LAPD has so far declined to release further details of the investigation, including who the alleged intended victim was. This report will be updated as soon as a filing decision or an official police statement is made.