Residents Rebel, Fight Drug Dealing in Condo Complex

It was last Thursday evening when, after months of frustration and fear, Don Moore and a neighbor settled onto a courtyard bench to talk again about driving the drug dealers out.

Their West Side apartment complex had been a haven for hard-working, middle-class families. But in recent months a handful of young toughs had rented apartments and begun to brazenly hawk drugs from within the development’s security gates.

Moore, a social worker, and the neighbor, an educator’s wife, talked quietly. She had had all she could take, she told him. The night before she had stretched out in fear along the floor as someone tampered with her windows.

As the nervous woman spoke, not 15 feet away and within the same narrow courtyard, a gang member from central Long Beach began to argue with a youth from Los Angeles. Within seconds, the one from Los Angeles had opened fire with a revolver.

“I was shocked,” said Moore, 39, an infantry veteran of the Vietnam War. “I was looking down the barrel of this gun. I could see the smoke coming out of the barrel.”

With the first words of argument, the woman had scooted to safety. And now Moore jumped for cover. But he heard the screams of 4-year-old Danny Walker and snatched him from the line of fire before hunkering against a patio fence.

“We were still dodging,” said Moore, “because he’s just firing wildly. I rush past the guy that’s firing and I throw the kid into his mother’s arms.”

Then, after at least four shots, the firing stopped. One bullet had torn into a staircase next to a young mother, Natalie Turner. Another struck Cynthia Trujillo, 27, in the hand while she was inside a Laundromat across busy Santa Fe Avenue.

As both the gunman and his target fled, Danny Walker’s mother, Deborah Coats, a clerk at Todd Shipyards, cradled her young son. “He was shaking and I was shaking. But after a little while he just said, ‘Mommy, he wasn’t shooting at the little boys.’ ”

Shooting Mobilized Residents

Tenants and owners at El Capitan Apartments, just north of Silverado Park, were stunned by the tragedy that had almost occurred. And the Thursday shooting mobilized them like nothing before it.

By early this week, angry residents, by picket and organized protest, had forced the horde of drug dealers from their courtyards and sidewalks, though several still live in the complex. They had also secured assurances from the Police Department--which for at least six months had failed to effectively respond to calls for help--that the situation would never again be allowed to get so bad.

Twenty-four hours a day the dealers, some newly arrived because of a police crackdown at Silverado Park, had hustled passing drivers, laughing, arguing over customers, playing radios loudly, and occasionally firing shots from revolvers, residents said.

A few young dealers, occupants of the 163-unit El Capitan complex, used at least two of its seven courtyards as illicit marketplaces. Locks on the security gates were constantly plugged. Strangers wandered in and out.

Owners of the mostly well-kept apartments, which had been converted to condominiums six years ago, tried to sell out and flee, but found no buyers. One dropped his price from $85,000 to $62,500, but received not one nibble. Another said she might just walk away from her property to escape her constant fear. The homeowners association tried to force the eviction of the dealers, but had no luck.

Last fall, homeowners and renters asked Councilwoman Eunice Sato for help, and she said she contacted Police Chief Charles Ussery, who lives just a few blocks away. But when a police sergeant turned up at a homeowners’ meeting, he explained that their situation of wide-open drug sales was not unusual and that it was mostly up to them to help themselves.

The two black-and-white patrol cruisers that work the West Side are in no position to document drug sales, and the department’s special drug-control unit was working more serious cases, police now explain.

So the homeowners, about 20% of whom live in their condos, hired a series of security companies and a Los Angeles police officer to patrol part time at night. But the drugs continued to flow, said Albert Watkins, vice president of the homeowners association.

Until last weekend, however, it was the residents themselves who failed to force the issue, Watkins said.

‘They Don’t Come Out’

“There are a lot of working people here. I don’t know if they’re too busy or afraid or just don’t give a damn. A lot of people come home and close their doors and that’s it. They don’t come out.” said Watkins, 56, a mason.

Moore acknowledged the same problem.

“We allowed this to happen to us,” he said. “It wasn’t until they started shooting over here that we said we absolutely did not want to live this way, and we were not going to live this way.”

Moore, a social worker who teaches parents the Tough Love approach to curbing juvenile delinquency while directing county-funded Long Beach Youth Enterprises, was speaking confidently after a weekend of successful picketing.

But his organizational efforts had begun modestly Friday evening, when a half dozen apartment residents, desperate for a change, had met to make signs and plot strategy.

Jolanda Castro, 45, an inspector at Bell Helmets in Norwalk, had come home from work early that day because she had not slept the night before and couldn’t do her job. “I cried all the way home,” she said.

Castro, who with her husband, Carlos, has been trying to sell their condo for months, described how each weekday morning at about 4:30 she must weave her way through a dozen or more drug dealers to catch a ride to work.

“It’s 4 in the morning and they’re saying things to me. Oh, it’s scary,” she said. “I have to walk through those guys every day, every day. The lady I ride with, they get around her car and ask her, ‘Do you want it? Do you want some (drugs)?’ And now the people at work, they know what it’s like where I live. Oh, it’s sickening. It’s so embarrassing.”

After the shooting, Carlos Castro, 53, a welder, confronted the dealers and threatened them with an air rifle, he said. The dealers called the police, who forced Castro out of his apartment with his hands up and confiscated three firearms, said Castro and several neighbors.

Moore said he, too, had been ineffective in trying to work directly with the street pushers. “Last Wednesday I said, ‘Come on, I don’t want to deal with this tonight.’ And they said, ‘You punk . . ., you get in your house or we’ll beat your ass.’ ”

Another woman, the neighbor with whom Moore was talking when the shooting occurred, said she is afraid to open her door. “I’ve got to go just anywhere but here. Something terrible is going to happen here,” she said.

By noon Saturday five residents had taken to the sidewalks, carrying placards that read: “Wanted: Police Action,” “Owners: Know Your Renters,” “Say No To Drugs,” and “Drug Infested Area.”

“The dealers stood around and teased us for a half hour or 45 minutes,” said Moore. “They said, ‘This is not going to do any good.’ And a couple of people drove by waving dollars at us and saying, ‘You can’t stop this.’ ”

But the dealers moved across the street and then around the corner. By mid-afternoon the marchers had swelled to 22. People drove by and honked their horns in support, Moore said. They marched until 6:30 p.m., and were back again the next day, he said.

At about 2:30 p.m. Sunday, Sato stopped by, and, despite some heated words with Moore about a poster in his window favoring her opponent in a City Council campaign, she called in the police. She had also notified top police officials on Friday after Moore called to tell her about the shooting, police confirmed.

Since Sunday afternoon, police have been highly visible, moving loiterers along and asking for identification, Moore said on Tuesday. “Last night about 10:30 I heard some hollering, and I went outside and there were four police cars there. They had at least four or five people laying on the sidewalk,” he said. “It’s been so quiet around here I’ve slept the last two nights. That’s the first time in months.”

Sudden Change

Things have suddenly changed at the El Capitan Apartments because the Police Department has now made it a “priority” location for law enforcement, said Cmdr. Gene Brizzolara, who heads the Patrol Bureau.

Brizzolara said he became aware of the drug problems there when Sato called him on Friday. Later that day, Brizzolara said, he ordered the special Narcotics Enforcement Team to the apartments and authorized undercover operations.

“I didn’t personally know there was a problem there,” he said. “But this is (happening) all over. These street drug dealers are becoming less and less guarded and more reckless, because they know it’s difficult for us to take any action because of the sheer numbers of them out in the community. . . . We’re constantly putting out these little fires.”

Sgt. Ray Nelson, an officer for the area that includes the West Side, said his officers have been aware of the drug dealing at El Capitan for more than a year, but the problem had not been serious enough until the last few weeks to justify use of the narcotics team or undercover officers.

“We probably had 20 such locations on the West Side alone,” Nelson said. “If we have a specific problem such as a shooting, that’s when these specialized units become involved.”

Crackdown at Nearby Park

The drug problem at the apartments has increased dramatically because of a crackdown for the last six weeks on dealers at nearby Silverado Park, Nelson said. Some dealers simply moved down the street, he said.

For two weeks the Narcotics Enforcement Team and undercover operations have included the apartments, Nelson said.

Both Brizzolara and Nelson warned that drug problems may return to El Capitan if the law-abiding residents stop working with the police.

But Brizzolara said the apartments are now targeted and that if the dealers come back, the police will respond.

For their part, Moore and his neighbors say they will not hesitate to take to the sidewalks again. And, they said, they now know the way to City Hall.