STANDING UP TO STREET GANGS
Reclaiming a Neighborhood
Stephanie Raygoza was riding a scooter back
and forth in front of her Boyle Heights home
when, down the street, tires screamed. A van
full of young men, who police say were out for
payback because a rival gang had tagged their
turf with graffiti, started blasting. The gunfire
killed a 19-year-old in a driveway. One bullet
ricocheted into the 10-year-old girl.
The neighbors had seen shootings before. As
Stephanie's father lifted his daughter, the
growing crowd shouted advice: Pick her up.
Leave her still. Even now many recall the
father, stooping and straightening, stooping and
straightening, eyes blank with shock.
With Stephanie's death, the neighbors said,
"Enough." After dropping for seven years, gang
killings began to climb in 2000. Remembering
the bloody days of a decade back, when gang
battles in Los Angeles County killed 803 in one
particularly bad year, some neighborhoods are
finding new courage and tenacity to stand up to these home-grown
oppressors.
One, just east of downtown, is distinguished by aging public housing
projects, the poorest church in the Los Angeles Archdiocese and at least
three rival gangs that, until that evening in October 2000, shared turf
with a fifth-grade girl who dreamed of becoming a teacher.
Even before cross-fire killed Stephanie, dozens of Boyle Heights
residents had begun marching each Friday night, defiant proselytizers
for peace. After her death, the number of protesters swelled to
hundreds. Neighbors who had never met, in part because their fear of
gangs kept them indoors, started talking. And started pushing.
We need speed bumps, they told the city. Give us three months, came
the reply. The neighbors took pillows and blankets and bedded down in
the streets. Raised asphalt humps went in a week later, slowing the cars
that might harbor murderous boys and men.
The neighborhood asked to barricade an alley used as a drug market and
getaway route. We need the permission of the people who live next to it,
the bureaucrats said. In just three days neighbors gathered 190
signatures.
Two dozen residents, mainly women, signed up for leadership training
from the neighborhood Catholic church, Dolores Mission, and the
nonprofit Pacific Institute for Community Organization. Their neighbors
began to call them los lideres, the leaders. "We learned how to build,
how
to work, how to create a new community," Arturo Lopez said. "For
Stephanie, and all the people who died."
The gangs kept shooting.
The leaders set a new goal: Form a partnership with the Los Angeles
Police Department's Hollenbeck Division, which patrols the area. "I have
never seen an officer get out of his patrol car and go talk to a resident,"
said community organizer Mario Fuentes. More than 500 residents
crowded into the church in November to meet with Chief Bernard C.
Parks. The leaders asked for a yearlong pilot project that would help
cops work more closely with the neighborhood, on foot and bicycles.
Activist Rita Chairez recalls a conversation in which an officer said,
"If
you have it, other people are going to want it." Her reply: "Well, yeah!"
Parks pledged his support. But now, with a nudge from Mayor James K.
Hahn, he's leaving, continuing the endless rotation of decision makers
that has frustrated the community for years. Last week, the mayor
announced an anti-gang initiative that would put 100 more police officers
on the streets. Now he needs to name an initiative director who can bring
the cops together with neighborhoods like this one.
The people stirred to action by Stephanie's death deserve the city at
their side. The homicide count in the Hollenbeck Division already stands
at 23, and it's only May. How many more children will young gangsters
murder before adults with the power to change this city forcefully
intervene?
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