Police Barricades Give Peace a Chance in Drug-Torn Area

Inside Los Angeles’ newest gated community--a 12-square-block area cordoned off by police earlier this month--the shouts of children playing have replaced the bursts of gunfire that commonly shattered the peace when drug dealers ruled the streets.

“It’s so much easier to sleep now that they closed off the neighborhood to the drug addicts and sellers,” said Rosalena Jimenez, a 39-year-old housewife who said that in the past her family was frequently disturbed by the sound of screeching cars, raucous street brawls and gunfire. Now that the tide of drive-by drug traffic has been halted, “I don’t have to watch my boys like a hawk anymore when they play outside,” she said.

Police put up sawhorse barricades last week at four of the five entrances to the Sepulveda neighborhood to deter drug buyers. The roadblocks, similar to those in the Pico-Union area west of downtown, have been so successful that police want to permanently barricade the streets and erect a guard station at the corner of Sepulveda Boulevard and Rayen Street to admit only residents and their guests.

Closing the streets permanently would require approval from the City Council and the cooperation of the more than two dozen property owners in the area who would have to donate money to set up and staff the guard station.

A diverse group of mostly low-income tenants, many of whom are elderly, Hispanic or recent immigrants, live in the neighborhood. Fed up with the steady stream of drug buyers, they appear to strongly support the proposal, although a minority say they are embarrassed to be living in an area police have deemed a “narcotics enforcement zone.”

“I personally want to move out because it looks real bad to live here,” said Cheryl Insalaco, 25, a clothing store manager who lives with her mother. “The people I work with found out I’m from there and they said, ‘Geez, it must be a pretty bad area.’ ”

But Cayetano Guerrerro, 67, an ice cream vendor who also lives in the area, said the transformation of the neighborhood into a peaceful enclave is worth any stigma.

“Just take a look and you can see--it’s much better now without those cholos hanging around pretending to buy my ices whenever the police go by,” he said. “I don’t always have to watch out for thieves.”

Guerrerro’s route takes him past a jumble of new and old apartment complexes in the area, most of which are already gated to keep drug dealers from using parking lots to hawk their wares. The neighborhood also contains an 84-unit complex for senior citizens and Penny Lane, a nonprofit home for more than 100 emotionally disturbed children age 6 to 18, some of whom have been convicted of drug possession.

One 16-year-old Penny Lane resident lounging this week with friends outside the one-story stucco facility said she used to sell drugs on nearby Columbus Avenue, also known as “C Street” because of the heavy traffic in rock cocaine there. Since the barricades were erected, she said, she finds going outside “less of a temptation because there aren’t any drugs nearby. Maybe the dealers go somewhere else, but I don’t care as long as they’re not in front of my place.”

A spokesman for the home said the blockade is “great. We’ve needed something like this for years because every time the police would leave, the dealers would come back.” He asked that his name not be used because drug dealers have threatened him in the past after he asked them to move away from the home.

Residents of Rayen Park, a gated apartment complex for senior citizens, also applauded the closure of the neighborhood.

“Columbus Avenue is a nasty street,” said Lesley Blackstone, 87, a retired jeweler who uses a cane. “We’re always afraid the dealers will go after us. I’m glad the police are finally doing something to protect us.”

For the past two years, a 10-officer task force working undercover and in uniform patrolled several high-crime Sepulveda neighborhoods, including the Columbus Street area, said Capt. Mark Stevens of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Devonshire Division.

To further increase police presence in the neighborhood, six to eight officers were assigned to Sepulveda on foot patrol during a brief pilot program in September to test the effectiveness of the technique.

But Stevens said police officials realized that more than foot patrols were needed when a drive-by shooting wounded two visitors to the community late last month on Columbus Avenue.

Inspired in part by the success of the Rampart Division in temporarily barricading a Pico-Union neighborhood, Stevens said, he set up the roadblocks Nov. 7 in Sepulveda.

At least one person is not happy with the change the barricades have wrought. Oscar Barnett, who drives a catering truck in the area, said the street closures have cost him money because there are fewer people in the neighborhood now that drug customers are shunning it.

“I say, ‘Sock it to the cops,’ ” Barnett said. “The Constitution allows the highways and byways of this nation to be open to anybody.”