Targeting Gangs : Camarillo: Efforts to rid one neighborhood of youth crime and graffiti is yielding results. Residents say the city seems more committed to improving the area.

An aggressive program to keep gangs and their graffiti out of Camarillo’s Barry Street neighborhood has won praise from residents and the owner of the area’s only market.

Camarillo city workers sandblast or paint over the scrawled messages and symbols within 24 hours after their appearance, preventing gang members from advertising for new recruits or starting fights with rivals, law enforcement officials say.

The city recently paved the dirt alleys that once collected rainwater and trash, contributing to what was an overall rundown appearance of the neighborhood east of Arneill Road and south of the Ventura Freeway

Also, Crime Prevention Officer Rodney Mendoza said he regularly visits schools that serve the predominantly Latino neighborhood. He said the visits are intended to help keep students in class and away from drugs and street games.

The program has kept the current generation from following elder brothers and neighbors into the kind of trouble that gave the Barry Street area a bad name 10 years ago, Mendoza said. Now, most of the street toughs who once caused such crimes as beatings and burglaries and problems such as harassment are gone, Mendoza and residents said.

“They used to be called the bad guys,” said Armando Fernandez Delara, a 10-year resident of the neighborhood who knew many of the rabble-rousers. “Some of the guys who used to write on the walls and cause the trouble, they have good jobs now.”

Gabriel Magana, who grew up on Barry Street, said: “A lot of people grew up and got married and some of the other guys are still in jail.”

Thomas Guerra, a Lomita Street resident, agreed that the area is much calmer now than in recent years. He said the city seems to be more committed to the neighborhood, which numbers about 1,000 people, through the removal of graffiti, cleanup of alleys and a quick response from police on calls.

In one of the more visible signs that the neighborhood is coming back, the former Deleon’s Market, now Chole’s Market, is free from spray paint and writing that two years ago marred the two-story building at Glenn Drive and Lomita Street.

The sign at the market, which offers a variety of Mexican specialty food items, is repaired and remains intact. No longer do groups of teen-age boys and young adults hang around while drinking beer, talking loudly, fighting and scaring away customers, said Chole’s owner, Patricia Flores.

“At one time, they wanted to take over the neighborhood,” she said. “They wanted my store for their hangout. But I’ve been able to talk to my people and I say ‘Look, it’s not good for my business and it’s not good for you.’ ”

Flores, a 26-year-old neighborhood newcomer from Oxnard, who bought the store 18 months ago, said the first year in the neighborhood was the toughest.

“But now, I pretty much know everybody by name,” she said. “I just keep talking to them, treating them like people. If they break my sign, I find out who it is. Then, when he comes in my store to buy a soda, I ask him, ‘Hey, what’s wrong, don’t you like me?’ ”

The confrontations usually end in an understanding, if not an admission of guilt, she said.

The police back her up when she needs them, Flores said.

Still, Camarillo’s onetime rough end of town is not problem-free. A few of the toughs are still around, and not every resident feels as positive about police protection as Flores.

Barry Street resident Lupe Bernal needed help from police recently when a relative, she said, became drunk and threatened her. But no one responded after two calls for help, she said.

“ ‘It’s just Mexicans over there,’ they think,” Bernal said. “ ‘Let them stab one another.’ ”

Bernal’s grown daughter, Angelina Jacquez, who lives with her family on Ventura Boulevard a few blocks south, said police respond quickly in her neighborhood.

“When I call them down to the boulevard, they are quick,” she said. “I think the police are just fed up with the whole Barry Street area.”

Police said there was no record of calls from Barry Street on their logs.

Those problems aside, both Bernal and Jacquez like the clean, new look of the neighborhood and are grateful that most of the area’s youths seem to stay out of trouble.

“We have seen an improvement with the graffiti,” Jacquez said. “And we have been real lucky not to have any gangs.”

Police say it’s more than luck. They make it a point to know the names of the youths who are potential gang members in both of Camarillo’s predominantly low-income neighborhoods, said Ventura County Sheriff’s Cmdr. Ray Abbott, who heads Camarillo’s law enforcement team. And they keep track of their activities.

“We’ve got the makings of some gangs,” Abbott said. “We’ve got the Barry Street Boys and another group over on Raemere Street,” he said, referring to the city’s other predominantly low-income area, a single street of duplexes west of Arneill Road. “But we believe at this point it is more of a turf thing than gangs.”

Abbott said there have been no significant disturbances in the Barry Street area in the past two years since a group of boys overturned a car belonging to a woman on Lomita Street.

And police still watch the city’s onetime third problem area in west Camarillo, off Las Posas Road, where a group of white supremacists who called themselves Skinheads harassed neighbors 18 months ago. The area is quiet now, police said.

Abbott said the outlook is good for a continued recovery of the Barry Street neighborhood, which consists of small houses.

“More people are taking pride in their homes and their community,” Abbott said. Raemere Street is almost exclusively a rental area where the same pride does not exist, Sgt. Paul Oechsle said. He added, however, that Raemere Street never had the crime problems that the Barry Street area had.

Meanwhile, back on Lomita Street, Guerra said he liked his neighborhood. He looked out from his front patio, where he was lounging with friends, and saw a man ringing a small bell and pushing an ice cream cart down the street.

“We even have door-to-door ice cream,” he said. “What more do you want?”