Plan to Control Cruisers Set for Street in East L.A. : Neighborhoods: Traffic barriers will be used to reduce Friday night drive-throughs and rowdiness on Union Pacific Avenue.

Union Pacific Avenue--a wide, quiet and normally deserted industrial street in Boyle Heights--would seem an unlikely place for one of the city’s biggest cruising hot spots to develop.

But locals say hundreds of cruisers with sporty cars and boom boxes blaring have turned a quarter-mile stretch of the brick-walled and barbed-wire lined street into a fearsome block party of yelling, drinking and the sound of gunfire.

They throw bottles, break factory windows, spray graffiti, urinate in yards and, business owners and residents say, steal valuables from shops and homes.

“They leave Union Pacific looking like the day after a Desert Storm ticker-tape parade,” said James Martinez, 67, who has spearheaded an effort to drive the cruisers out of his neighborhood of 40 years. “It’s not gangs. They are rebels who like to aggravate people.”

On Tuesday, the City Council came through for him. The council approved the placement of barriers and deployment of extra police officers to the street beginning Friday night.

“The problem has reached a point where it is creating havoc for the residents of this area,” said Councilman Richard Alatorre, whose 14th District envelopes the area. “We had to take drastic action.”

The council approved closing streets entering the area, bounded by Olympic Boulevard and Indiana, Noakes and Esperanza streets, from 10 p.m. Friday to 2 a.m. Saturday.

It also directed the Department of Transportation to provide barriers for the temporary closures, and teams of traffic control officers.

The problems began when hundreds of cruisers in automobiles and on motorcycles began showing up at about the time dozens of machine shops and manufacturing plants along the street would close for the weekend, Los Angeles Police Capt. Robert Medina said.

Medina figures that they came to the secluded two-lane street seeking freedom from crackdowns in Whittier, Hollywood, Pico Rivera, Van Nuys, Montebello and numerous East Los Angeles locations.

Although the Police Department has begun issuing citations to the interlopers for “anything we can,” Medina said, “the barriers will have a tremendous effect here because the cruisers won’t have entry from side streets.”

One machine shop owner, who asked that his name not be used, praised the City Council’s action. “I’ve got so much graffiti on my walls they can’t find room to put anymore on,” he said.

“It’s more than just cruising,” said James Garofalo, who owns a machine shop nearby. “They are chasing business away.”

Others were waiting for the day when they could leave their homes on weekends without fear.

“On Friday night we lock the doors and windows and then peek out the window,” said Irma Mendez, who shares a modest apartment fronting the street with her husband and 2-year-old daughter. “I wish they would get out of here once and for all.”

Bonnie Brody, an aide to Alatorre, said the crackdown aims to do more than just push the cruisers into someone else’s jurisdiction.

“The Police Department’s plan, which we support, is to stop them from cruising by hitting them where it hurts--in the pocketbook,” Brody said. “They’re going to cite them for every infraction of the law and impound their cars.”