Leaders Applaud Decision to Overturn City Penalties Against 3 Liquor Stores

Northeast San Fernando Valley leaders say they are elated over a court decision overturning Los Angeles City Council penalties for three of 22 Pacoima liquor stores that followed community-set guidelines to curb crime.

“The big-stick image that was used by the City Council to beat liquor stores over their heads wasn’t necessary,” said Fred Taylor, head of the San Fernando Valley Community Advisory Board, which helped set up the voluntary guidelines last year.

“It puts us in a bad negotiating spot with other liquor stores that are not part of the group. When you ask someone to assist you, you don’t turn around and kick them in the behind for helping you. We want to send a message to other stores: We want them to come and sit down and work together,” he said Friday.

In overturning the decision Tuesday, a Superior Court judge said the City Council usurped the authority of the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board in restricting the hours and types of alcoholic beverages three Pacoima liquor stores could sell.

The liquor outlets--Leon’s Liquor, John’s Liquor and Pacoima Food Market--had been declared public nuisances after police testified that they made many arrests near the stores for offenses such as public drunkenness, narcotics sales and prostitution.

In August, merchant and neighborhood leaders created 16 guidelines to be adopted voluntarily by liquor stores. Developed to break the cycle of children drinking alcohol as well as to discourage drunks and drug addicts from loitering, the guidelines limited hours of operation and types of alcoholic beverages to be sold. They were adopted by 22 liquor stores.

Taylor and other Northeast Valley leaders announced that those guidelines were just the first step in renewing the area.

The leaders had formed Focus ‘90, an umbrella group of 20 Northeast Valley organizations representing Arleta, Lake View Terrace, San Fernando, Hansen Hills, Sylmar, Panorama City and other communities. Its mission is to attract new and better services to revitalize the area, which the group’s leaders said are kept away by its image of poverty and crime.

“For the first time, businesses, community organizations and block clubs are working together toward one goal; that’s something new for Lake View Terrace and Pacoima,” said the Rev. James Lyles of the First United Methodist Church of Pacoima.

Focus ’90 leaders said they will campaign for a library, a bank and more public bus service. They also want to shut down Lopez Canyon landfill if it cannot be operated safely. But one of their biggest dreams is creating a help center--for rehabilitation, employment, baby-sitting and homeless services--in Lake View Terrace.

“What we’re trying to do is make the environment around the area livable,” Lyles said. “It makes a difference to get a library, a bank to come to this community. We have an abundance of social service agencies in the community.”

Social service agencies “import” drug addicts and alcoholics into the area for treatment and do not deal with all the problems such people cause, he said, charging that “Lake View Terrace and Pacoima are treated as dumping grounds for the whole city of Los Angeles.”

Taylor, president of Focus ‘90, said residents should combat problems before they become unmanageable.

“We’re a little nervous about the new drug coming down the pipeline, ‘ice,’ ” he said. In the mid-1980s when he warned others about a coming cocaine epidemic, Taylor said, “everybody looked at me as if I stepped off the spaceship.”