Crime Breeds Decay in an Old Placentia Barrio : Older Residents of Latino Santa Fe District Say New Immigrants Are Importing Violence

It is a small Mexican-style village that still holds much of its old-town charm. Twisted wrought-iron bars decorate the windows of popular ethnic restaurants, and Spanish-language signs mark the entrances to a corner grocery store and the neighborhood butcher shop.

From its beginnings amid a cluster of citrus groves in the 1860s, this barrio of about one square mile in southwest Placentia--known as the Santa Fe district--became the city’s first commercial center when wealthy landowners brought the railroad to town 50 years later.

But Latinos who are longtime residents of the district say the old is clashing with the new. Illegal aliens from Mexico--the single men, in particular--are bringing increased crime and violence to an area that residents once prized as a family-oriented neighborhood, they say.

“It’s the newer breed that doesn’t have any respect for other people and their property,” said Lupe Ventura, 45, a lifelong resident of the district who lives with her 90-year-old father, a Mexican immigrant.

When Ventura’s father came to settle in the area around 1915, most of the Mexican immigrants who worked in the nearby orange groves and packing houses lived in the adjacent neighborhoods of La Jolla to the south and Atwood to the east.

By the 1920s, however, the flood of immigrants had spilled over into the Santa Fe Avenue district, and the enclave became a mix of families that included the Anglo growers and newly arrived farm workers from Mexico.

As citrus groves have given way to development, the once bustling commercial strip and modest residential district centered around the packing houses and railroad loading docks have become surrounded by condominiums to the east and west, an industrial complex to the south and a mainstream retail area to the north.

And the bars along Santa Fe Avenue, the district’s main thoroughfare, are attracting a more violent crowd, say residents who complain of drunks urinating on the sidewalks and passing through fenced yards at night.

When Lupe Ventura was growing up, it was different, she said, because the area “didn’t have the drinking as bad as it is now with all these men in the street. . . . It was more peaceful.”

The dangers are more than an occasional trespasser, said Joe Aguirre, whose home is about 200 feet behind the Santa Fe Avenue taverns. At a recent City Council meeting, Aguirre recounted how two men in their 20s have been murdered near the bars within the last four months, and a third was stabbed.

After meeting with Mayor Arthur G. Newton and Police Department representatives last week, several residents agreed to help patrol the district through an aggressive Neighborhood Watch program, wherein neighbors would become more vigilant about reporting suspicious activities, Newton said. Currently, officers originate police calls in the area almost twice as many times as residents, Newton and police officers said.

Residents of the area--bounded generally by Chapman Avenue on the north, Murray Street on the west, Bradford Avenue on the east and the railroad tracks on the south--will meet with the mayor again in about a month to talk about how the program is working, Newton said.

For Cecilia A. Hernandez, a resident of 33 years, living in the district has become “a nightmare,” she said.

Although the district has always had nightclubs, Hernandez said she remembers the days of the mid-1950s when “people would come from all over the county to drink and dance and have a good time. You could bring your kids.”

At that time, Santa Fe Avenue was still an active business center with a string of retail shops, diners, a Bank of America branch and a major supermarket lining the thoroughfare.

It wasn’t until a decade or more later that an outdoor shopping center was built a few blocks to the north on East Chapman Avenue and many of the businesses on Santa Fe Avenue closed, said Fullerton historian Virginia Carpenter, who wrote a book chronicling Placentia’s growth.

Along with the businesses, most white residents also left the district in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Carpenter said.

What’s left is a few mom-and-pop stores, a pair of popular Mexican restaurants, boarded store windows and the bars--bars that Hernandez said have become a haven for drug dealers and revelers who “start drinking, go crazy and start shooting off their guns.”

As a Latina, Hernandez said, she has “nothing against those who come here to do better and raise a family,” but she blames “those men (who) drink up all their money and cause problems.”

Police records indicate that area arrests for being drunk and disorderly or under the influence of narcotics may be down this year from last but that assaults are running slightly higher. Police said they have arrested 52 people in the Santa Fe district between Jan. 1 and March 19 for being under the influence of heroin or drunk in public, while 36 have been arrested for assault. During the same period last year, the corresponding numbers were 105 and 31.

Because of residents’ chronic complaints, the bars and some restaurants on Santa Fe Avenue are under investigation by the state Alcoholic Beverage Control Department--the agency that regulates liquor licenses--for possible code violations, said Kristine Proctor, an enforcement supervisor for the agency in Santa Ana.

But it’s the “outsiders,” not the nightclub regulars, who cause trouble in the street, said Larry Zavala, an owner of Zavala’s Place, a pool hall and bar in the 300 block of Santa Fe Avenue.

As five women and about 25 men sipped beer and shot pool on a recent rainy Saturday afternoon, Zavala sat wrapped in a blanket in the middle of the room and characterized his patrons as “good, friendly people” who merely come in after work to enjoy themselves.

“This is one of the few places they can come where they feel comfortable,” Zavala said. “They don’t have to get all dressed up. It’s a typical Mexican bar.”

A pair of weekend visitors to the bars said the incidence of drug-related crimes and violence is “not that bad,” as some longtime residents believe. They did acknowledge that there are late-night fights, but many times men who have lived in the district for a while are involved, not just newly arrived aliens, they said.

The residents who blame the bars for the crime in the district are those “who don’t remember what they did when they were young,” the 47-year-old Zavala said. “I did things, stupid things, when I was young, and I think back on it now . . . but the old ones don’t want to remember. They want to set a good example for their kids.”

Jess Rangel began by describing crime along Santa Fe Avenue as “the same” since he opened his grocery store in the 200 block about 11 years ago. Then he pointed to three spots along the street where men have been stabbed or killed in the last year as a result of petty arguments.

A man once stabbed his roommate “because he ate the other’s tortillas,” Rangel said. “It has gotten worse. It used to be (fistfights) one on one but now they’re carrying guns.”

Aguirre said the police and city government knew about the crime as early as 1978, when a consultant’s report for a scrapped revitalization project described the bars as representing an “unsavory element.”

“It is now nine years after that study was presented to the city, and the problem has not only persisted, it has greatly worsened,” Aguirre said.

However, the City Council never received the report, said Joyce Rosenthal, Placentia’s director of development services, because the revitalization project was abandoned after residents demonstrated against it.

While the district “has been somewhat of a problem area for years,” heavy crime “seems to go in spurts,” Police Chief Hal Fischer said.

With three homicides and a stabbing in the district within the last year, Fischer said he agrees that residents should be concerned about safety in their neighborhoods.

Fischer noted that all three murder victims were illegal aliens, as are the suspects who were arrested in the cases. Aguirre said one officer told him that the aliens coming to the district are from a part of Mexico where disputes are settled with fists and guns.

In general, police feel they are doing the best job they can for the area.

“The police are giving adequate patrol down there,” said Sgt. Ken Gardner, a field supervisor for officers working the Santa Fe District during the afternoon shift. “We’re out there in droves.”

Gardner added that the force “has always needed help from the community and now they’re doing it” with the Neighborhood Watch program.

Still, Fischer said he plans to put more officers in the area, especially at night, when things “get stirred up a bit.”

Aguirre and others who spoke to the City Council were hesitant to discuss the problems with the press because they feared retaliation from the groups of men who they say have terrorized their neighborhoods.

“It’s scary,” Aguirre said. “People just don’t go outside after dark anymore.”