Crime and Charity: An Uneasy Mixture : Olvera Street Tries to Resolve Conflict Over Sanctuary Issue

Things may soon be getting better on Olvera Street.

This is news because for some time, things have not been going entirely well.

Olvera Street, the brick-paved lane of Mexican craft shops and restaurants, described in the history texts and on shopping bags as “the birthplace of Los Angeles,” has in recent months been vexed by crime beyond the range of normal: cars broken into, purses snatched, locals and tourists panhandled in sometimes violent fashion, muggings, and among the criminals themselves, drunken night-time fights, even stabbings.

Across from Olvera Street and its leaf-shaded historic park is La Placita, a venerable 171-year-old Roman Catholic church. In recent years the church, also at the heart of the original Mexican settlement of Los Angeles, has declared itself a sanctuary, first for Central American refugees and later for aliens who found themselves homeless, unemployed--and unemployable under new immigration laws. As many as 200 such men may spend their nights and some of their days there.

The crime wave and the closeness of the immigrants have formed the groundwork of a quandary: Who is committing the crime here?

Are there wolves in sheep’s clothing among the illegal immigrants in the church shelters? Or are they felons, some of them ex-cons and parolees, who loiter in parks or outside the church--or sometimes even in it--men who brawl and drink and harass women and beg intimidatingly, stealing even from priests’ cars, taking brazen advantage of La Placita’s charity?

An Economic Question

It is not a matter of crime and punishment alone; it is an economically loaded issue. Olvera Street is a major Southland tourist attraction, with 2 million visitors a year, and unique in its open-air, inviting pedestrian ambience that draws locals on lunch breaks and busloads from Kankakee.

Olvera Street is also on the verge of major redevelopment: improvements under the city’s new ownership of the park, a $25-million commercial and retail redevelopment on county land nearby and a vast hotel-office-shopping complex at Union Station. It does not need a reputation as a place awash with hostile homeless, much less with crime problems that a private security official has characterized as “like Dodge City before Wyatt Earp came in.”

Indeed, one developer who asked not to be identified says his loan request got a “direct turn-down” because of the problems. “I’m not saying it’s 100% the fault of the church per se,” he explained. “What I am saying is that area in the last year to 18 months has gone from a minor derelict-homeless problem into a major . . . from very passive homeless people to a very active, aggressive combination of homeless and Hispanics.”

The subject is politically touchy as well. Some are reluctant to be publicly critical, lest they be labeled anti-homeless or anti-church. Yet there have been moments when Main Street, which passes between Olvera Street and the church, has been a sort of 38th Parallel, across which icy looks and hostile accusations have flown.

“Everybody’s tiptoeing around,” said one merchant. “It’s a dilemma because nobody wants to take on the Catholic Church, no one wants to disagree with their neighbors.”

Variety of Interests

Yet everyone wants something done. The matter became acute enough recently to bring together--at a table at Olvera Street’s La Golondrina restaurant--merchants, churchmen, police, the Mexican consul general, developers, city political and homeless services officials, even LosAngeles Beautiful, a civic beautification group.

The result is an ambitious work-program proposal that tries to accommodate the church’s goals and Olvera Street’s needs. It would identify who “belongs” at the church and who does not.

It would provide showers for the men, set rules about panhandling and drinking, offer counseling and weekend activities, like English language classes, and organize the men to keep them busy--painting, erasing graffiti, sweeping, even re-planting a trampled church garden with foliage donated by LosAngeles Beautiful, in exchange for food and clothes (payment would violate new, stricter immigration laws).

The plan would also build and ask the Los Angeles Police Department to staff a small police substation on Olvera Street. It would add more private security guards, and request that police “enforce any violations of the law, regardless of the violator’s status as a resident of the church or enrollee of the work program.”

The implicit message is, get with the program, or get out.

Despite murmurs that the plan is only a stopgap, or might attract even more homeless, Vivien Bonzo, restaurateuse and granddaughter of one of Olvera Street’s pioneers, is applauded for getting it started.

“I know someone will criticize,” she said, but “we can’t afford to wait much longer. We need to begin to address this issue.

“One of the reasons this might work is because everybody has so much at stake,” she said.

Bonzo talked to about 130 of the men, at least 80% of them Mexican. She found them eager, “willing to paint, plant, to have something to do. They understand there are bad elements among them. They said they’d even be their own patrol force.”

Thus, men who some allege are part of the problem “will be part of the solution,” Bonzo said hopefully, of a program that area Bishop John Ward gives “five gold stars.”

Beyond the friction that stems from any concentration of homeless, police say Olvera Street has had more than its share of robberies and car break-ins. A businessman said the local joke is that a lawyer found his car broken into, then, walking to report the theft, was offered his own car radio for sale.

In 36 recent working days, a police special problems unit in Chinatown-Olvera Street made 81 felony arrests, mostly for theft. Of the 81 arrested, 70 were undocumented aliens, said Central Division Patrol Capt. Greg Berg, “and all 70 claimed to be from the church.”

Sincere Objective

Berg believes the pastor of La Placita, Father Luis Olivares, is “very sincere in wanting to provide relief for people who need it, but very naive in not understanding the large number of thieves there.”

“There’s a lot of good people in there trying to upgrade their lives,” said a police officer who works the area, “but unfortunately we’ve got the ones using that guise to say ‘Hey, we’re here under the sanctuary.’ ”

Inside the church patio one afternoon, men sat quietly talking and smoking. Out in front, a boozy-smelling man grabbed at a man walking his little girl down the street. A man in a dirty pink shirt shook his fist at a passer-by who spurned his plea for money.

A Salvadoran political refugee at the church remarked, “The people who do the bad things are not from here,” he said in Spanish. “The church tries (to control it), but it’s too much for the church to do.”

It has been suggested that sanctuary is a generous idea grown out of hand, attracting many more people than could be accommodated by a small church which can only offer sleeping quarters, occasional medical checks and three meals a week.

Fixing the Blame

“I don’t think (Olivares) knew what he was getting into,” said merchant Rudy Madrid. “I don’t think he can be blamed for anything. People have said, ‘We’re not against what you’re trying to do, we’re just against the element (sanctuary) you brought in.’ ”

At first, the church was “pretty well able to handle about 40 or 60 a night,” Olivares said. “After the (immigration) law passed we all presumed that people would hesitate to keep coming (over the border) but it has not happened.

“I’m not so naive to think these (sanctuary) guys are not a problem,” the priest said. But “it’s a problem we bear some responsibility for if we (society) don’t address these questions of their having something to eat, somewhere to stay.”

The church, he agreed, has been taken advantage of by malefactors who victimize even their fellow homeless. They sleep out front when the gates are locked, and set trash fires perilously close to its walls.

He has tried to enlist some of the refugees as a self-policing force, but “their last word to us was, ‘no way--they’ll kill us.’ They’re very intimidated by the whole situation themselves.”

ID cards suggested by the merchants may help to identify Olivares’ transient flock.

“The only questionable element is that these guys, even the best of them, (are) prone to sell those things because they’ve got to eat,” as men have been known to do with the church-issued shelter passes. “That’s part of the survival system,” he said. “We’ve got to talk about those things.”

Two Different Groups

Police and security guards have been “unwilling to make the kind of distinction that I have been making all along, that we have two different groups operating here.”

But some private security officers say that some church transients are the thieves and muggers. They charge that Olivares has sometimes protected men they were pursuing.

“Every time they steal something here, they run to the church,” says an exasperated Jose Carmona of Coleman Security Service, which took over security duties for the Plaza this spring.

A veteran Los Angeles police officer was chasing a strong-arm robbery suspect “right into the church” when “the secretary said, ‘You can’t come in here.’ We said ‘I’m sorry, lady, this is not like a consulate or something, this man is wanted.’ ” On another occasion, he said, “we followed (suspects) across the street into (the church) patio area. (Olivares) walked out. We tried to issue a citation, and he kept interceding.”

Maturing Attitude

But Olivares’ attitude, said the officer, has matured.

“When I first came here, the problem was not so critical,” Olivares said. “And I very much objected to police chasing an indigent person into our grounds just because he jaywalked,” and “terrifying” men who didn’t know police from immigration authorities.

“When I objected to them writing tickets for jaywalking, they interpreted that as saying that I would not allow cops to come into our property when they were chasing somebody that obviously had committed some kind of a heinous crime. Those are the kinds of things that get miscommunicated. I have asked police to do a walk-through of the patio on a regular beat, just to let these (bad) guys know they’re around.”

It would be “cutting my own throat,” the priest said, to shield criminals.

It is friction at the seam, between one of downtown’s few pedestrian areas and one of its poorest. In a spot with “such historic significance,” says Coleman Security’s vice president, Charles Stalter, “we are concerned someone will be seriously injured or killed, and I don’t want this to happen.”

Sunday Mass attendance and baptisms at the church are strong, although Olivares acknowledges that weddings and quinceaneras-- popular 15th birthday celebrations for Latinas--are down. “It is unseemly to be all dressed up in your finest and be milling around . . . the poorest of the poor that don’t smell very nice, that don’t look very nice, that sometimes don’t act very nice.”

But complainers should examine their own attitudes, the priest believes.

“I hate to lash out at people, but our American system of doing charity is, here’s five bucks, now go away. That doesn’t help here.”

Keeps a Bat Ready

Others share the concerns of Augusto Godoy, who for 13 years has operated his leather shop near the head of Olvera Street. He keeps a Louisville Slugger handy for when he escorts the older women to their cars.

“At this church . . . it’s like a Mafia. They control the place,” he said.

Marlene Gardner sells popcorn and sodas from a large circus wagon in the plaza. Her daughter was accosted at knifepoint by a man who hung around the church, and when he got out of jail two days later, he “sat over there and stared at her.”

If she were a visitor, “I’d be afraid to get off the (tour) bus,” Gardner declared. Sanctuary or no, she said, they are “still homeless, still jobless.”

Olivares has hopes the proposed program will do something about that. “Even though it’s not the ultimate solution,” it gets everyone talking, perhaps “developing new attitudes toward the men.”