Casualties of war : Gang Members Here Follow the Same Code as Gang Members All Over, and Often Die in the Same Way Too.

Shadow and Peewee were just two of the largely unknown 8,000 gang members who ply their trade on the Westside of Los Angeles defending their turf, their honor and, mostly, themselves.

But in one night, at a festival in Culver City this summer, they went from quiet anonymity to gang immortality. All it took was an unexpected run-in with a rival gang armed with knives, a 2-by-4 and a longstanding vendetta.

To their own gang, they are heroes, remembered in “rest in peace” writings alongside their gang’s graffiti. To the detectives, they are two of the 13 gang-related homicides that have occurred in the Westside so far this year, and are remembered through grisly police photos as casualties of war.

The only difference between their deaths and most of the nearly 500 gang-related killings that police estimate will occur in Los Angeles County this year is the location. Although the Westside is known for its exclusive neighborhoods, upscale shops and general excesses, it is not known for its gangs. But as Shadow and Peewee’s “homeboys” can attest, Westside gangs are very real. Their members live by the same code as gang members in the Eastside or South-Central Los Angeles, and often die in the same brutal fashion.

Vast Scale of Problem

The murders of Shadow and Peewee, known to their families as Eric Aquino, 19, and Mario Isaac, 17, as well as a recent highly publicized gang killing in Pacific Palisades, point out the vast scale of the county’s gang problem. Although Westside gangs constitute just a small portion of the county’s gang population, with less than 15% of the estimated 70,000 gang members and their associates, they contribute to the same growth industry. Police investigators estimate that the number of gang members has tripled in the area in the last decade. In the last year alone, they say, gang-related crimes are up 37%.

Police and gang experts are quick to add, however, that the Westside is probably as safe as any area in Los Angeles County, with only a tiny portion of the gang members truly hard-core criminals. But they admit that gang activity is creeping into million-dollar neighborhoods along the beach and in the hillsides.

Some of the Westside gangs are among the oldest in the county, dating back close to 40 years. But as is the case with gangs everywhere, things are different today. Gangs are more violent, they are more transient and they are less focused on turf than they are on drugs and money.

Although the Westside gangs continue to thrive in the pockets of poverty that often border streets of great affluence, police say the things that attract home buyers and tourists to the Westside--the beach, the weather, the public parks--are the same things that attract gang members, increasing the potential for trouble.

A weekend stroll at the beach is all that is needed to confirm it. Roving gangs from Venice, Santa Monica and West Los Angeles, most in their middle to late teens, can usually be found strutting their stuff on the boardwalk, “dressed down” in their club colors, the blue and white of the Venice Shoreline Crips or the black and white of the Little Locos. But the gangs also come from Compton, Pomona, Inglewood and Lennox, causing enough concern that gang patrols have been beefed up along the beach recently.

Still ‘Pretty Safe’

“Overall, the Westside is still a pretty safe place, as safe as any,” said Sgt. Al Thatcher, of member of the West Los Angeles Police bureau’s anti-gang unit, Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums (CRASH). “But there are certain areas here that are as dangerous as any in South-Central L.A.”

Westside gang investigators insist that the gang activity is limited almost exclusively to poorer areas, noting that Bel-Air, Brentwood, Beverly Hills, Malibu and other exclusive communities are virtually untouched by gangs. But affluent areas such as Pacific Palisades, which were little affected by gangs until recently, are now occasionally the site of isolated gang battles, such as the ones that led to the recent murder of Efigenio Vital on July 29 and the slaying in Westwood Village of an innocent bystander, 27-year-old Karen Toshima, last year.

Gary Fowler, a Del Amo Hospital drug counselor who lives in Pacific Palisades, says the Santa Ynez Canyon Trail, part of the state park system near Palisades Highlands, has become a popular hangout for numerous Westside gangs.

The hiking trail is filled with gang graffiti, and a main hangout for the gangs is located just a few hundred yards from a private colony of multimillion-dollar homes in the Highlands where such celebrities as Chevy Chase live.

“I tell people up there that there are armed gangs hanging out there, drinking and doing drugs, and they look at me as if I’m crazy,” Fowler said. “They say things like, ‘in the Palisades?’ But all you have to do is go there at night or look at the graffiti. The entire trail is turfed out.”

Police say they are not surprised. Sometimes, they say, it seems as if the gangs are everywhere.

Trying to Plug Dam

“We’ve just got our finger in an overflowing dam right now,” said CRASH Sgt. Wayne DeBord. “And all we can do is to keep trying to plug it.”

On a recent night, there was barely a trickle, and that made the 12 officers in the six CRASH patrol cars cruising Oakwood extremely anxious. If the gangs weren’t at their regular hangouts, where were they?

Oakwood is the historically poor and notoriously crime-ridden section of Venice, about 15 blocks in area, that police say is the site of some of the most conspicuous drug-dealing and drive-by shootings in all of the Westside.

A surprise sweep of an apartment building at 5th and Broadway that afternoon had resulted in five arrests in five minutes, with police confiscating 20 “rocks” of cocaine and nearly $900 in cash from the suspected street dealers.

But an early evening return produced only a few more arrests, including a surprise bust of four junkies for stealing a car.

As two CRASH officers held guns over the junkies, two young men watched from a neighboring porch, drinking beer and watching the street scene unfold. It turned out to be a bad view: One of the CRASH officers went over and grabbed the two young men.

“When did you get out of prison?” the police officer asked.

“Couple weeks ago,,” the man replied, his speech slurred. His partner remained silent. The officer put them up against a fence and patted them down for weapons. “Aw, man, I wasn’t doing nothing. I don’t do no (gang)banging here any more.”

Numerous Tattoos

The officer raised the man’s shirt, revealing numerous tattoos, including a woman’s name and figure, a skull and the logo of the Venice 13 gang. The other man had a similar tattoo scrawled across his stomach.

“You know you shouldn’t be hanging out here,” the cop said. “You’re just looking for trouble.”

The two men were handcuffed and arrested for a parole violation: hanging out with known gang members. It is done without protest and with little fanfare, a routine for both the gang members and the police. It is likely they will meet again.

“I know this guy with the tattoos,” Thatcher said. “But something must have happened to his head from the way he was talking. Might have been a bullet or angel dust (PCP), but he’s just not the same.”

A few more circles around the neighborhood ended with the units converging on the Oakwood Recreation Center, where the officers searched for a gang member who had assaulted a retarded boy who was riding his bike to the beach. They detained five members of the Venice Shoreline Crips, then released them after a 20-minute interrogation and a warrant check.

“I think we sent everybody underground for the night,” Thatcher said.

As have other units of the LAPD throughout the city, the CRASH unit has been engaging in sweeps of gang territories and arresting hundreds of suspected gang members. But they are just a small band attacking a monstrous problem, and police admit that the sweeps do little to combat the underlying social and economic factors that contribute to the gang proliferation throughout Los Angeles.

Gang-Related Homicides Up

Law-enforcement officials estimate that there are at least 15 more gangs operating in the Westside than there are officers in the CRASH unit, which has had the same number of officers, 30, that it had when the unit was created in 1981.

Lt. Ron Dina, head of the CRASH unit that covers four LAPD divisions, Hollywood, Pacific, West Los Angeles and Wilshire, said the 13 gang-related homicides are up from 12 at the same time last year. There were 21 gang killings in each of the previous two years, prompting Dina to note that “right now we’re ahead of schedule.”

Dina said the jump in the number of crimes reported is due in part to an increased awareness of the Westside’s gang problem and more expertise among police in dealing with the gang underworld. He said with the exception of certain areas, such as Oakwood and the Mar Vista Gardens housing project, residents are cooperating with police in spotting and reporting gang crimes.

“The reason some people are hesitant to report crimes is because of the potential for retaliation,” said Salvatore Grammatico, president of the Del Rey Homeowners Assn., which represents residents near Mar Vista Gardens. “We’ve had more than seven different gangs operating out of Mar Vista Gardens over the years, but the violence is getting worse because now there’s more competition for the drug sales.”

Some nights, neighbors say, the area resembles a scene from “Apocalypse Now,” with police helicopters swooping over the projects, looking for shooting suspects and parole violators on the run. But some residents offer another reason for their reluctance to help police in highly visible drug-dealing areas like Mar Vista Gardens and Oakwood. They say that the police target everyone--not just gang members and drug dealers--in the sweeps, and that law-abiding citizens are often rounded up with the gangs and the pushers.

“Almost every youth they have out here, they affiliate with being in a gang,” said Melvyn Hayward, a youth counselor at the Didi Hirsch Community Mental Health Center in Venice. “The good are just thrown in with the bad. When CRASH comes out here, they go crazy on everybody.

“The problem is we don’t have the type of relationship with the police that we should have out here. They’re not involved in the actions of the community and they should be. What they really need to do is to (sensitize) the Police Department. They just get too big a kick out of all of it.”

Activities Not Separated

Al Ortiz, a Venice drug counselor, agreed. He said any individuals who deal drugs in Venice are immediately labeled as gang members, which creates more conflict in the community. Gang investigators say that although many gangs, particularly Latino gangs, still operate as traditional turf-defending rogues, most black gangs, such as the Venice Shoreline Crips, focus primarily on drug sales.

“The police out here believe that if they look like a duck and walk like a duck, then they must be a duck,” Ortiz said. “But they don’t separate drug activity from gang activity, and I believe that an apple is an apple and an orange is an orange . . . and that you’ve got to treat them differently.”

For their part, members of the CRASH unit say they feel as if they are under siege. CRASH officers cover a 122-square-mile area that includes numerous gang hot spots. And they say there have been 10 sniper incidents on police in the Oakwood area alone in the last year.

“The whole gang thing is out of control,” said CRASH Detective Bill Humphry. “Almost on a nightly basis you hear shots fired.”

Over the years, the gang wars have taken a toll. At the CRASH headquarters in West Los Angeles, a grim photo display of all the gang members killed in the unit’s coverage area during the last nine years hangs on the wall. There are 103 pictures on the wall, and officers are running out of room.

Santa Monica police have a similar board, which, paralleling the city’s gang problem is much smaller in size. Keeping such grim lists helps gang investigators do their job, for knowing which gang had the last pay-back will help them figure out which gang is due for the next hit.

But even with the aid of the board, Santa Monica gang investigator Errol Southers can’t remember what the score is.

Ill-Prepared for Random Acts

“All I know is that the last person who was killed was on our side,” Southers said. Usually he and his partner know. Southers and Hector Cavazos, are the only two gang coordinators for the Santa Monica Police Department and they make it their primary mission to get to know all the gang members in the eight-square-mile city, usually on a first-name basis.

But as with all gang investigators, they are ill-prepared to deal with the random acts of violence that are a staple of gang life.

Robert Parga, 17, of Venice was stabbed to death in a midday attack across from Santa Monica College in April. Police said it was a pay-back for an earlier attack by Santa Monica gang members on Venice rivals. The attack was photographed by a passer-by, but rarely do the police receive such compelling evidence. Usually, they must sort through mounds of information on various gangs and their members while searching for suspects. They also try to track release dates for imprisoned gang members.

“Any time we make a stop, we take names, get as much information as we can and we always seize any gang paraphernalia,” Southers said. “If the gang members want it back, we tell them that they have to come in with their parents so we can have a talk.”

If they decide to return for their belongings, Southers and Cavazos advise the youths and their parents of the dangers of gang life and strongly urge them never to don their gang colors again.

“We explain to them that if they want to wear their colors, they might as well just be wearing a target on their back, because it has the same effect,” Southers said.

The two officers spend most of their days checking the regular gang hangouts, talking to gang members and checking the latest changes in gang graffiti, which serve almost as billboards for a gang’s size, movement and attitude toward rival factions.

Usually, they know the targets. The Santa Monica Gang has been battling the Venice 13 and a West Los Angeles gang for more than a decade, but deadly flare-ups during unexpected gang encounters are a staple of the life style.

“The gangs do have their priorities,” said Cavazos.

Easier Ten Years Ago

Ten years ago, when there were fewer gangs, fewer weapons and defense of neighborhood turf was the primary mission, it was much easier to know which gangs were at war.

Los Angeles Municipal Judge John Ouderkirk, who was a Santa Monica patrol officer in the ‘70s and later joined the district attorney’s Hardcore Gang Unit, which prosecuted cases involving the most dangerous gang members, said he can remember when gangs were not even an issue.

“There were always drive-bys and such, but it wasn’t that big a deal and it wasn’t nearly as violent,” he said. “Back in those days, there was an ongoing shooting war between the Venice and Culver City gang, but that was primarily it.”

The gangs remain primarily an outlet for bored youth, looking to join with a group, any group. “These kids are ‘wannabes,’ like any kids,” said Southers, who, with help from Santa Monica city officials, is attempting to divert some of the youths from gangs through a series of classes and sports programs offered by the Police Activities League. “In this day and age, you have to join something. You’re either a gang member, a jock or an outstanding student.”

All three of these pursuits offer the prospect of recognition. Jocks and honor students just rarely have to die for it.

“If you can find a picture of Shadow and Peewee together, it’s like having an original Babe Ruth baseball card,” Southers said.