Neighborhood Has Learned Coexistence Secret

This neighborhood south of MacArthur Park looks like a lot of others in Los Angeles where people with legal and illegal livelihoods coexist. Neon McDonalds and Carniceria signs compete for attention with the spray-painted advertisements of the 18th Street Gang and the Street Criminals.

For the most part, it was business as usual Thursday morning in the Pico Union district as police launched their “Neighborhood Rescue Operation.”

On a stretch of 11th Street, near the heart of one of the most drug-plagued parts of the area, a young couple pushed a baby stroller past a woman who was already passed out on the sidewalk at 11:30 a.m. Shopkeepers exchanged pleasantries with neatly dressed customers while two glassy-eyed vagrants took wild swings at each other on the sidewalk. Rap star Tone Loc’s “Wild Thing” echoed from an apartment window.

Chol Ho, who owns Lake Liquor on 11th Street, shared the feelings of many long-time residents and business people in saying that he welcomes the increased police presence. He almost forgot to mention the shiner that has turned his right eye purple.

“All I did was ask them to close the ice cream freezer,” he said with a shrug.

In an alley across the street from Lake Liquors drug users reacted slowly if at all to the growing police presence on the streets Thursday.

The “Neighborhood Rescue Operation” is an attempt by police to eliminate drug dealing in the one-square-mile area by cordoning off intersections and dispatching an additional 60 patrol officers daily.

A wild-eyed man in a red baseball cap shouted incoherent threats and obscenities at a couple spread out under a blanket lean-to. Ignoring him, another man sat on a crate spooning chicken noodle soup from a tall Styrofoam cup, the smell of the soup mixing with the scent of urine in the alley. “An old Chinese lady passes the soup out every day,” a man said.

Down Lake Street, a pleasant-looking lane lined with the sort of old, two-story Queen Anne-style houses favored by Yuppies, long-time residents talk about the “dime runs” that go down every night when drug buyers take off without paying.

The drug dealers put up a cry, which is passed down the street, said Edwin Diaz, 26, who has lived in the neighborhood for 12 years. “As the car drives by, everyone runs out in the street and nails it with rocks and bottles. They bust up the car, slash the tires, then drag the guy out.” The offending buyers are often badly beaten and robbed, and within minutes the dealers strip the cars of everything from the radio to tire wrench, he said.

The area did not always resemble a militarized zone, residents say.

Burton Salveson, 61, one of a handful of Anglos living in the area, recalls it as a tranquil, blue-collar community made up mostly of whites and African-Americans. “A couple of movie stars used to live around here,” said Salveson, who has lived in the neighborhood since 1969.

Salveson, who manages the six-unit apartment house where he lives, said the quality of the neighborhood nose-dived when crack cocaine invaded its streets more than five years ago.

On the corner of 11th and Alvarado streets, an 18-year-old member of a gang known as the Street Criminals maintained that his “home boys” neither sell nor use drugs.

“People think all the gang members are drug dealers, but we’re not,” said the youth, who declined to give his name. “We just kick back and hang in the barrio. The drug dealers are down there (across Lake and 11th streets). We run them out of here.”

The teen, clad in blue Nike sweats and a black Pittsburgh Steelers cap, said that his gang has about 500 members and is the strongest of the four major Latino gangs that call the neighborhood home.

“They want to take the gangs off the street, too, huh?” he mused. “I hope they get the drug dealers. They can stop that. But they won’t stop the gangs.”

A 37-year-old woman who identified herself only as Pura stood in the parking lot of a Laundromat on 11th Street and described the neighborhood as poor but close-knit.

“It’s a good neighborhood,” said Pura, her long, auburn hair in a bun. “We try to take care of each other. We sell drugs to live.”

An admitted crack peddler and drug user, Pura said she rents rooms by the night in the neighborhood or stays with family and friends. A mother of three, Pura said she used to work for the Department of Housing and Urban Development but life in the fast lane cost her her job.

Later, Pura scoffed at Los Angeles police who set up barricades for Thursday’s “Neighborhood Rescue Operation.”

“We’re already working on another street,” she said. “They can’t stop us.”