The War Grinds On in Santa Ana

I have never covered a war, yet here I was in Santa Ana shortly after daybreak, lumbering toward the front in John Gonzalez’s assault vehicle.

As we turned onto Raitt Street and headed north into enemy-held territory, the signs of the enemy became evident: curious squiggles sprayed onto walls and fences and gates and doors and windows and roofs and posts and signs and bus benches and curbs and sidewalks.

Like so:

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It is the enemy’s code, and Gonzalez, who has been fighting this guerrilla war single-handedly for almost 4 1/2 years, knows how to read it.

The first part is a territory marker sprayed by one of Santa Ana’s more than 50 neighborhood gangs--in this case, the Fifth Street Gang. The first letters are “FIFTH ST” and the horizontal lines enclosing a “V” mean varrio, a misspelling of barrio. In other words, this is Fifth Street’s turf.

Right after is a “W” over an “S,” meaning West Side. Spraying that was an act of courage, for it means that some member of the adjoining West Side Gang came two blocks into Fifth Street territory to challenge the Fifth Street territory marker. Its purpose is to test Fifth Street’s reaction, a possible indication of how strongly it intends to defend its boundaries.

The rest is the reply, large and bold: “FSRSA” meaning “Fifth Street Rules Santa Ana.”

Regardless of what it means, Gonzalez’s job is to remove it all. That was why the City of Santa Ana hired him in December, 1980, and he has had no other assignment in all that time.

The city park department cleans up the parks, and another city program pays property owners for cleaning up private property. But except for infrequent reinforcements, Gonzalez is the city’s only graffiti soldier patrolling the streets.

His weapons are slow and cumbersome compared to the highly mobile and potent spray-paint can of the guerrillas.

On the trailer pulled behind his van is a sandblasting outfit. Its gun erases graffiti from concrete, brick and pavement, but like an eraser, it never entirely removes the line.

If you can’t sandblast, you paint. In the van is a spray-painting outfit but only two colors of paint--off-white and dark beige.

I asked how the war was going. Gonzalez answered by taking me on a tour of the worst-hit residential sections west of downtown.

The alleys were utterly covered in graffiti. “We stay away from the alleys,” he said. “It’s too much work, and it’s all back the same night. We go about 25 feet in, that’s all.”

Some houses were clean, others slightly marked, but one was coated by graffiti, even on the roof. “They won’t call the police, and the gangs know it. Illegals live there,” Gonzalez said.

Some neighbors fight back. They yell at kids caught spraying and paint over their graffiti. Sometimes they even call police. But often the response is like the one Gonzalez pointed out on a driveway gate:

“Danger DT. Do or die.”

It’s a warning from the Downtown Gang. “In other words, if you paint over our graffiti, there’ll be trouble,” Gonzalez said. “These people probably don’t want to repaint.”

If a neighborhood rises up against the graffiti, “they sometimes can keep the place pretty clean,” he said. But single homeowners have been driven out of neighborhoods by the harassment and threats of the gangs.

One homeowner, building a concrete block wall along his front yard, was only half done before it was covered with graffiti. There was graffiti on blocks that had not yet been laid into the wall. There will be new graffiti as soon as each new course of blocks is added.

“They (the neighborhood gang) want to be the first to hit it,” Gonzalez said. “They want to show it’s their territory.”

Gonzalez, who grew up in Santa Ana and at age 25 still looks like a teen-ager, has developed a certain rapport with the enemy, he said.

There were mild confrontations at first, but “they’re all pretty much getting to know me, and they’re, like, friendly now,” he said. “I say, ‘Well, let me do my job.’ I’m not going to tell them not to (spray graffiti). Some of them get offended.”

If a neighborhood remains reasonably clean, Gonzalez stays away to prevent provoking graffiti. But then the weekend comes, and the freshly painted and sandblasted walls often are covered again. When school recesses for the summer, it will be even worse, Gonzalez said.

There has been an overall improvement, he said. “Four years ago, just about every major street in Santa Ana had graffiti everywhere. We have been winning.”

The city has signed up some mercenaries--a private graffiti removal service that will help for six months. Officials are hoping to gain ground on the graffiti and afterwards at least stay even.

Maybe, but as Gonzalez sees it, “It seems like they’re never going to stop. Sometimes it frustrates me, but a lot of times I just figure it’s job security.”