Church, Struck by Crime, Refuses to Turn Other Cheek

For 36 years, the red brick school of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and the church nearby, stood unmolested in East Los Angeles; even the most riotous of street gangs left them alone.

In the 37th year, matters changed abruptly.

Since last July, the church and school have been broken into half a dozen times, Principal Sister Maura Ryan said--once while she was inside. In the various attacks, several hundred dollars was stolen, the office ransacked, the sacristy robbed of public address equipment and “a good vacuum cleaner,” a pink-glass windowpane in the sanctuary broken, a teacher’s purse snatched off her desk by a teen-ager who clambered in a window.

“We’ve never had to be afraid before,” Ryan said. “If the church is not safe, what is?”

Theirs is not the only churchly victim. Several other East Los Angeles churches and church schools have recently been burglarized, she said. In El Sereno, at another Our Lady of Guadalupe, thugs broke in five times in eight months, stealing expensive computers and typewriters, said school principal Sister Renee. One time, they took the priest’s television set and radio from his residence as he lay in bed.

“I’m convinced they’re after money, or items that will bring in money for drugs,” said Renee, who, like Ryan, said preventive measures, including bars and burglar alarms, are “very expensive,” double or triple the burglary losses.

Parents of Guadalupe schoolchildren--who pay the tuition and the costs of the mayhem--agree fervently. And Wednesday night, about 300 of them gathered at the school to find out what they could do about it.

“Be concerned--crime in YOUR community is on the rise,” read a handmade invitation to the meeting pinned up next to an etched-glass window detailing the Last Supper.

For parents, what has happened to the churches simply dramatizes the low state that matters have sunk to.

Alice Collier has seen drug sales “shifting from corner to corner” and now this mini-crime wave. “What’s happened to the respect we used to have? . . . How do you explain to a 7-year-old?”

One church neighbor who asked not to be identified said that in 60 years there, “I know the changes that have been taking place” and “it’s like in every block, they’re dealing with drugs, and I have grandchildren and great-grandchildren here.”

Church crime “is something fairly new in some respects,” said Sheriff’s Department Cmdr. William Baker. He was invited to the Wednesday meeting, at which Victor Griego, a representative of the United Neighborhoods Organization, presented Baker with five sealed envelopes: addresses of local drug-dealing “hot spots,” some of them “very near” the school. Griego also asked Baker to explain Sheriff’s Department response time in the area.

In that part of the county, Baker said, the response time “is under 3.5 minutes on all the calls, so deployment is really a non-issue. The primary issue is letting us know what’s going on” in the neighborhood.

To that end, Baker said, a protocol for handling anonymous information from residents is being revived. This is a communications network among neighbors, UNO, the district attorney’s office and the Sheriff’s Department.

“This (church and church school crime) is a new experience,” he said, and with the help of the protocol arrangement, “we think we can handle it.”