All of a sudden police, politicians and preachers have mobilized to fight street gangs.

Ironic that no one seemed to care much when the gunfire was in East Bakersfield. But now that a gang murder happened here at Valley Plaza, everyone's talking tough.

Too bad we're going to fail miserably.

Kids join gangs because of complex societal, moral and economic problems we're never going to fix. The absolute best we can hope for is to keep gangs out of our schools, most of our neighborhoods, and public places like shopping malls.

23ABC says we should start by giving each security guard here at Valley Plaza a home video camera. Security guards should tape anyone who looks or acts like a gang member and hand the tape over to police.

By the way, that's called profiling -- and yes, some dipstick's going file a lawsuit claiming he was harassed. But maybe good kids will stop dressing and acting like gang bangers and real criminals will go back into the shadows and at least we can go shopping again.

According to Police Chief magazine, a mall in Virginia equipped its security guards with cameras and a lot of their problems went away.

It's a lot like what happens to cockroaches when you turn on the lights. They tend to scatter.

That's our take now it's your turn.