Commander Patrick Gannon, who is the officer in charge of the notorious South LA area, has been accused of being a "thug hugger" because he encourages former criminals to intervene to convince young gangsters to turn their backs on crime.

Gannon, whose great grandfather emigrated to America from Dungannon, Co Tyrone, also cautioned against the use of bugging devices against criminals, warning they could be abused unless they are tightly controlled by the courts.

The Minister for Justice, Brian Lenihan, last week said that the government was considering legislation permitting gardai to place bugging devices in the homes and vehicles of gangland criminals.

Commander Gannon has seen 126 murders in South LA so far this year in an area of less than 30 square miles.

Although this murder rate is far higher than Ireland's it is less than a third of what it was in the early 1990s.

He warned that flooding particular trouble spots with police after murders or other violent events is not the way to defeat criminal gangs and says this tactic will backfire in the long run.

Speaking to the Sunday Tribune from Los Angeles, Gannon said: "It does work but not in the long term.

It will stop violence for tonight but I can't afford to flood the area with officers every night. You have to be smarter and go about it a certain way."

Gannon believes the smart way is to encourage ordinary members of the public to cooperate with police while using people respected by criminals to try to influence them.

"You need people to broker discussions and they cannot be seen to be agents of police or government.

They may have dabbled and may even have been in prison at one particular point and know in their heart of hearts they want to effect some change.

"That's a hard sell in the states with many police officers who think I'm just a thug hugger that is condoning some of their previous behaviour by asking them to help now.

"We're not condoning anything that they did before, we're not trying to minimise the death and destruction but on the other hand we have to understand that there is a role there for people who have some credibility with the gang members to effect some sort of peace brokerage to curb violence."

Gannon described bugging as an effective policing tool provided it is supervised properly. In California, taps are authorised by a judge who has to see all the evidence against the alleged criminal before granting permission.

"I think it can be very effective under those kind of controls so that it isn't abused. There is a part of me that says 'hey, just do it' but in the past we've had people in our profession who haven't followed the rules all the time and we have certain rules to follow.

"I'm a little hesitant on just allowing police to bug people's phones without some sort of oversight to that.

"It may be effective on one end but it will destroy the trust of the community in other ways if you're not careful with it and if you do that you're going to screw it all up and you will never be able to solve your problem."

Gangland murders are not being solved in Ireland because people are afraid to come forward with information.

Gannon says the only way to take on gangland is by people joining together.

"I would say cooperate. You've got to help the police and you have to trust them.

"If people become so frightened that they don't report things that they see and don't do the right thing then this problem that Ireland has will spiral out of control.

"There has to be a sense that this problem is so bad that people are not going to stand for it anymore. If communities act collectively as a group they can overwhelm gangs. They need to say 'we're not going to take this any more and we're going to cooperate'. Amazing things can happen then.

"But we generally don't get that until something tragic happens. A police officer is shot or a little kid is hit by a stray bullet. Something like that develops a kind of rage among people to actually start to do something.

"You hope to get that momentum from the community long before something tragic like that happens, " he added.