Baby Insane and the Buddha

The tale of a San Diego street gang's drug deals, robberies of retail stores and, especially, its drive-by shootings is related by Los Angeles Times staffer Sipchen in this exhaustive book. He focuses on overweight cop Patrick Birse (``Buddha''), dedicated to eradicating drugs and gangs in his city, and homeboy, druggie and teenage gangster Kevin Glass (``Baby Insane''). Birse, who developed affection for the ghetto youth and was able to convince him to serve as an informant and undercover drug buyer, resulting in dozens of arrests and convictions and the crippling of the Crips, one of the city's two major street gangs. Despite much irrelevant detail, this is a powerful book. (Jan.)