Gang Violence Shows Signs of Mobility : Huntington Beach Crackdown in One Area Causes Problem to Resurface Elsewhere

Huntington Beach Police Chief Ronald E. Lowenberg expressed relief the other day at one aspect of a grim incident that recently took place in his city. His department’s investigation had concluded that the shooting death of a teen-ager at a birthday party held at a local Boys and Girls Club was not gang-related, as originally suspected. Police arrested a 17-year-old suspect last week on a murder charge after he allegedly shot the victim, said to have been an old adversary.

At one point after the shooting, Councilman Peter M. Green had worried aloud that the shooting in the affluent Education Lane section might signal that a new area of town was being invaded by gang violence. In this instance, at least, the fear proved to be premature.

Still, the threat of spreading gang activity remains a genuine concern. And there is no guarantee that areas outside poor neighborhoods in the county, which may previously have enjoyed immunity, will be spared in the future.

Several months ago, for example, stunned housewives in a quiet Irvine cul-de-sac looked on in broad daylight as police rousted a robbery suspect from the vegetation in a greenbelt outside their homes. One said an officer had asked her to keep an eye on the suspect, before he was apprehended, while he looked for others. Police later said that Asian gangs had preyed on a family living in the neighborhood, part of a pattern of such robberies.

So the potential for bystanders to be dragged into such gang incidents as witnesses, or worse, victims, is real. Huntington Beach, for its part, has been a model for its attention to the problems of gang activities and their destructive influences on neighborhoods. But when enforcement is good, the problem may simply pick up and move elsewhere.

Huntington Beach was so successful in its crackdown on drug sales and gang activity in the old Commodore Circle area that one neighborhood’s victory resulted in another’s headache. Police later opened a substation in Oak View to fight the increase in crimes that resulted there from transplanted gang and drug activity.

Police recently have made more than 40 arrests on drug-related charges in the Florida-Utica-Jay Circle area of Huntington Beach. So even if the subsequent birthday party shooting proved to be a false alarm, it prompted attention to a continuing problem, the potential for gang violence to spread out and be as mobile as a teen-ager with a new set of wheels.