A Summer of Stray Bullets

“Summertime and the livin’ is easy,” the old song says, but not in Santa Ana--or anywhere else in the county where gangs cruise the streets shooting down people and terrorizing neighborhoods with their brand of urban violence known as drive-by shootings.

Police say they always anticipate more gang violence at the beginning of summer, but the recent proliferation of guns and flying bullets on Santa Ana streets, most of it attributed to gang violence, is too much for the community to accept as summer gang activity.

During a 16-day period in Santa Ana last month, there were five drive-by shootings. And Santa Ana is not the only community plagued by them.

In a report to the City Council last Monday, Santa Ana Police Chief Raymond C. Davis said there had been 12 gang-related shootings in June. He also noted that in some years gang activity was involved in more than half of the city’s homicides.

Last Sunday, in yet another Santa Ana drive-by shooting incident, two teen-agers were shot as they stood in front of a house with several other people.

They are not the only victims.

Residents are frightened. They are worried that someone in their family will be shot intentionally or hit by a stray bullet, like the one that wounded a 10-year-old child in Santa Ana last month. Some want to leave, but they can’t afford to. So they stay and live in fear, with mattresses against windows and walls facing the street and sleeping on the floor in the back rooms of their homes where they feel safer than in their beds.

It’s an awful way to live.

Police in Santa Ana are trying to curb the violence. They have taken officers off other duties and reassigned them to the anti-gang program and have beefed up street patrols. They investigate the shootings and sometimes can gather enough evidence to make arrests. Their efforts are hampered, however, by the fears of many residents, and their reluctance to testify as witnesses.

There must be more community cooperation to go along with strenuous police operations and vigorous prosecution against gang members. That could help ease the immediate problem. But it won’t be enough.

What is also needed is much more effort to prevent violence as well as stopping it, to identify and deal with its causes, and to divert young people away from gang life before they become dedicated, hard-core members. Maybe then people could feel safe sitting in their living rooms and sleeping in their beds without worrying about passing cars and stray bullets.