Mired in violence at Ramona Gardens

By Paul Pringle

Feb. 16, 2007 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

School was out, and the municipal gym jumped with the wholesome noise of girls and boys slapping basketballs onto the hardwood. Then came the clatter of a helicopter overhead.

“LAPD -- you see?” said Jose Saucedo, in a voice too weary for his 18 years. He stood at the gym door, eyeing the police chopper as if it were a storm cloud.

“What’s the reason for the helicopter? Why?”

The simple answer is that the gym sits in Ramona Gardens, an Eastside housing project that has seen countless confrontations between the police and its home-grown street gang, Big Hazard. The cycles of seething standoffs and bursts of violence stretch back generations and have defeated every effort to bring lasting security to the neighborhood.

Caught in the middle are Saucedo and his fellow ballplayers, along with about 2,000 other folks determined to lead normal lives in the sprawl of barracks-like, World War II-era masonry buildings.

Some say they feel under siege more from the police than the gang, because of what they contend are heavy-handed tactics, a characterization that the Los Angeles Police Department disputes.

“Growing up here is as close as you’re going to get to living in a police state,” said Jose Navarro, 29, a USC doctoral student from Ramona Gardens.

Earlier this month, the routines of residents were disrupted again after a reputed Big Hazard member died in LAPD custody. The death of Mauricio Cornejo, 31, who was arrested in the project, ignited yet another round of police-brutality accusations and countercharges of gang intimidation.

Two people said they saw officers beat or kick Cornejo in the head. The LAPD denies it and cites a preliminary coroner’s examination that found no signs of serious head injuries. The police also say they are often targeted by Big Hazard. The gang has at least 260 members, including those in prison or living outside Ramona Gardens, and has connections to the Mexican Mafia, according to the LAPD.

Twice since January 2006, the police say, gunmen have fired at patrol cars in Ramona Gardens, with bullets narrowly missing officers.

“Every time we walk away from our car, it’s going to be vandalized,” said LAPD Capt. William Fierro. “I just don’t know how to get the roots of that gang out of there.”

None of this surprises housing experts. They say that Ramona Gardens, squeezed by railroad tracks and the San Bernardino Freeway, has become a field laboratory for housing policies gone wrong and that any solution would require razing the buildings and starting from scratch. The city’s oldest project, Ramona Gardens opened in 1941.

“It has outlived its useful life,” said Rudy Montiel, executive director of the Los Angeles Housing Authority, which runs the project. Rents for the 497 residences are based on income and can be as little as $50 a month.

Montiel said Ramona Gardens typifies a failed model, because it piles poor families on top of each other and is separated from the surrounding community -- hothouse conditions for predatory crime. He said the old Aliso Village project nearby was in similar distress until it was replaced with a combination of low- and middle-income housing. That could ultimately be Ramona Gardens’ fate, he said, although there is no specific plan for such an undertaking.

“This is an area that has been neglected for years,” said City Councilman Jose Huizar, whose district includes Ramona Gardens. He pledged to begin meeting regularly with residents.

A litany of ills

The project has witnessed shootings, a thriving drug trade, shakedown schemes that victimized delivery and bus drivers, apartment squatting by gang members and street skirmishes that rained rocks and bottles on police, according to the LAPD.

Last week, as tensions mounted over Cornejo’s death, the threat of more mayhem charged the air. About 100 riot-equipped officers rolled into Ramona Gardens to disperse a group of 40 to 50 Big Hazard members -- some of whom were drinking beer and smoking marijuana -- and residents holding a curbside carwash to pay for Cornejo’s funeral.

Because the gang members melted away without incident, LAPD officials declared the operation a success. But it left mixed emotions among residents. As police prepared to pull back, Fabian Puente, 21, who was born in Ramona Gardens, walked onto Lancaster Avenue to applaud them. “These officers are just doing their jobs,” he said. “We are living in our houses like prisoners.”

Many other residents declined to answer a reporter’s questions or even give their names, seeming to show that they were afraid of the gang, the police or both.

The most vocal complained that the police stopped them for nothing and issued jaywalking tickets to teenagers heading home from school. Several accusations were directed at an officer assigned to monitor Big Hazard.

Miguel Jurado, 18, who grew up in Ramona Gardens, said the officer recently ticketed him for riding his bicycle without lights.

“He told me I looked like a gang member,” said Jurado, a carpentry student who added that he doesn’t belong to a gang and has never been arrested.

Fierro said the police do not detain residents without probable cause, and he defended the lead gang officer. He also dismissed a common belief in the project that rookie officers are deployed in Ramona Gardens as part of their training.

But Fierro acknowledged that there might be truth to an assertion that officers do not have enough contact with residents to quickly judge who is and isn’t a troublemaker. “That bothers me, and I want to see if we can change that image that we have,” he said.

Fierro and other police officials said they had been making strides in that direction -- last year, an LAPD team played residents in a basketball game -- until Cornejo’s death.

On Feb. 3, LAPD spokesmen say, officers tried to apprehend Cornejo, but he led them on a foot chase and tossed away a .45-caliber pistol.

They say Cornejo, a wanted parolee, then fought with officers and was struck with a baton on an arm and leg. After he was handcuffed, Cornejo continued to kick at the officers, according to Lt. Paul Vernon. At the LAPD’s Hollenbeck station, Cornejo developed breathing problems, and the police called paramedics, Vernon said. Cornejo was pronounced dead shortly afterward.

Two women have said they saw the police strike Cornejo in the head and body after he was handcuffed, and a third woman said she saw officers drag him through a station hallway and kick him. The police say that is untrue.

Complete autopsy results are pending.

History repeats itself

The recriminations over Cornejo’s death are history repeating itself at Ramona Gardens. Eleven years ago, a crowd pelted officers with rocks and bottles after the police shot a suspected gang member to death. In 1991, a similar eruption occurred when a sheriff’s deputy fatally shot an unarmed gang member, who authorities said had assaulted a second deputy with a flashlight.

Each time, residents said the police and sheriff’s officials had ignored harassment complaints and were out of touch with the community.

The residents do not downplay the presence of Big Hazard. But many say the gang members, for better or worse, have family ties with those on the right side of the law.

The police insist that Big Hazard bullies residents into silence, while dealing drugs and committing robberies.

“Ninety percent of the people in there are good, hard-working people,” said LAPD Deputy Chief Cayler Carter. He said the department has resolved to “take that community away from the gang and give it back to the people.”

Carter and Fierro said the 2006 shootings at two patrol vehicles were on their minds when they marshaled a military-strength convoy to break up the carwash last week.

Current and former gang members say the police exaggerate the danger. Gabriel, 42, who asked that his last name be withheld, said he joined Big Hazard at age 12, has served multiple prison terms and has been employed under the table since his 2004 parole.

He said Big Hazard does not prey on residents. “It could be better, but it’s a nice community,” he said the day after the police operation.

Gabriel said that he expected the police to constantly eye him, if only because he is thoroughly branded with gang tattoos, but that the LAPD hassles too many innocents.

“These kids see it,” he said, gesturing to the youngsters at the gym.

He said he followed his father into the gang, but the family had its triumphs: A brother is a civilian worker for the Sheriff’s Department, and a sister is an apartment manager. “You can emancipate from this,” Gabriel said, “but it takes a lot of discipline.”

Discipline pays off

Navarro, the USC doctoral student, had the discipline. At the carwash, he wore a pullover from his alma mater, UC Berkeley, and told of being reared at Ramona Gardens by his aunt, Maggie Aguilar, who helped keep him out of the gang.

“I’d have kicked his butt,” said Aguilar, whose daughter, Kristy Alvarez, is Lincoln High School’s reigning homecoming queen.

Navarro, who was a friend of Cornejo, said the police use the gang label to “dehumanize” young people in the neighborhood. “There’s little difference between me and the so-called gang members,” he said.

He was standing on Lancaster Avenue as the third day of the carwash wound down. As it grew dark, Navarro chatted with another childhood friend, Gerard Hernandez, 27, remembering happier times. Hernandez once visited him at Berkeley, Navarro said.

On this night, he said, Hernandez joked about someday attending Harvard.

Half an hour later, Hernandez was shot near the gym and staggered out to the street. He died at the hospital.

Fierro said that Hernandez belonged to Big Hazard and that the killing was gang-related.

paul.pringle@latimes.com

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Profile of a project

Background

Opened in 1941, dedicated by California Gov. Culbert Olson.

About 2,000 people live in 497 apartments, which are spread over 32 acres.

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A history of tensions

August 1991: The shooting of an unarmed gang member by a sheriff’s deputy triggers a tense standoff with residents.