Identity Crisis : Group Says All Avenue Youths Equated With Gangs

The leaders of a Ventura Avenue community group say they are fed up with what they perceive to be disrespectful treatment of Latino teen-agers in Ventura by racially insensitive law enforcement officials.

The prevailing mentality in local law enforcement circles, they say, is that all Avenue youths should be treated as dangerous gang members because they are mostly Latino and poor.

“A lot of people are confusing a barrio with a gang. Just because a kid lives in a neighborhood and dresses like the other kids in the neighborhood, he should not be subject to harassment,” said Steve Padilla, a former gang member who last June founded Renewed Avenue Pride, a group that works with area youths.

Group members said this week that Avenue youths are routinely identified as gang members because they dress like Latino youths: white T-shirts, black baseball caps and jackets, short hair combed back.

They said the official criteria used by Ventura police to identify gang members are racially biased, and that recent events have compounded historical differences between Latino residents and law enforcement officials.

“We’re concerned about the improper labeling of our youth as gang members,” said group Chairwoman Lorraine Sanchez.

Ventura police officers and Ventura County district attorney’s staff denied the charges.

“It doesn’t matter how you look,” said Sgt. Carl Handy, head of the Ventura Police Department gang detail. “We don’t make judgments one way or another based on appearance.”

However, Handy said, Ventura police will continue their policy of aggressively pursuing gang members--Latino or other--as part of the city’s zero tolerance approach to gangs.

Renewed Avenue Pride members said the Police Department’s and prosecutors’ recent handling of the fatal stabbing of Ricardo Hernandez has aggravated feelings.

At a meeting Monday night, about 40 group members voted to organize a countywide rally and march from the doorsteps of the Ventura Police Department to the County Government Center to air their grievances.

Hernandez, 14, died of stab wounds in the back after a fight in Grant Park on Oct. 9. Police later arrested Eric Jones, 19, on suspicion of murder.

But prosecutors eventually absolved Jones of wrongdoing in the fight, saying he acted in self-defense. Last week, three teen-agers who either live in or frequent the Ventura Avenue area were charged with assault for taking part in the fight.

Prosecutors said they filed the charges because Hernandez and his friends attacked Jones and his friends.

But group members accused the district attorney of selective prosecution. “If an Avenue kid had done the stabbing, I guarantee you the D.A. would go after him,” Padilla said.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Jim Ellison, who filed the charges, said nothing could be further from the truth.

“I can say unequivocally that race had nothing to do with it. It was strictly a legal determination on whether the individual was justified in using deadly force in self-defense,” he said.

Group members also charged that Ventura police showed bias and insensitivity, first when an officer at the scene of the slaying allegedly said, “One down, 79 to go,” and later at Hernandez’s funeral, at which a police officer photographed those who attended, ostensibly for gang intelligence purposes.

Ventura Police Capt. Randy Adams, who oversees the department’s field operations, neither confirmed nor denied that comments were made by officers at the scene of the killing. But at the Renewed Avenue Pride meeting Monday he apologized for “any comments made by our officers that could be perceived as insensitive.”

As for the photographs of the funeral, Adams said the officer was acting on his own initiative.

Ventura police initially identified Hernandez and his friends as members of the Ventura Avenue Gangsters but did not identify Jones as a gang member, although he was later identified by a friend as a member of the Mid-Town Satanic Criminals gang.

Adams said the Ventura Avenue youths had been identified as gang members because they were involved in gang activity when the stabbing occurred.

“Whether they are official card-carrying members of a certified gang or they chose to associate with gang members is beside the point,” Adams said.

As for Jones, Handy replied that while the Oxnard teen-ager had belonged to a gang in the past, he told police that he no longer did so and there was no evidence to the contrary.

Adams, Handy and Ellison said gang labeling is based on technical criteria used by law enforcement officials countywide that identify gang members by such characteristics as tattoos depicting gang affiliation and mode of dress.

Roberta Payan, a Renewed Avenue Pride steering committee member, said those criteria would mark her as a gang member although she was never affiliated with a gang.

“I still have my tattoos, I associate with gang members and I dress like them too,” she said.