Officials Try to Put Brakes on Cruising in Pacoima : Laurel Canyon Blvd.: The arrival of gangs--and violence--has prompted L.A. police to propose a ban.

Kevin Logan drove all the way down from Palmdale to show off the 6-month-old Chevy he had tricked out with low-riding wheels, smoked glass and a glossy fire-engine-red paint job.

But shortly after the 18-year-old wheeled the pickup truck onto Laurel Canyon Boulevard in Pacoima and joined the long line of cars on the traditional Sunday night cruise, his flashy truck caught the wrong kind of attention.

Los Angeles Police Officer John Smith signaled Logan into a pullover lane marked by road flares and tow trucks. Logan was lucky this night. His license was in order and he got to keep his truck. But Smith still wrote him up. The pickup was too low to the ground, its windows were tinted too dark.

“You see, Kevin, we are trying to encourage you not to come down from Palmdale to go cruising,” Smith told Logan as he wrote up the citation.

And so it went a week ago on the most popular cruising strip in the San Fernando Valley, if not all of Los Angeles County. The 11 1/2-mile stretch from Paxton Street to Rinaldi Street draws hundreds of cruisers each Sunday night.

By far, the wide majority of them are car enthusiasts and local teen-agers looking for innocent fun, police say. But in the last six months, violence on cruising night has escalated as gang members from all over the county have been drawn to the strip.

Competing gang members often end confrontations with bullets. Police report numerous shootings along the cruise strip and three killings during the period--the last one two weeks ago.

The rise in violence has in turn brought about a rise in law enforcement--like the pullover lane where Logan was snared, no-parking zones along both sides of the street and the use of roadblocks to reroute traffic off the boulevard onto the Golden State Freeway.

Police are also proposing a plan to completely shut the street to all traffic on Sunday nights, a move that would require approval of the Los Angeles City Council.

“We have kids dying out there. I think we need to shut it down,” said Capt. Tim McBride, head of the Foothill Division, which includes the cruise strip.

The council has not yet given approval for a complete shutdown, but if such a plan is ultimately approved, it would mean an end to a tradition many local teen-agers have grown up with.

“I’ve been cruising here since I was 13,” Nancy Guerrero said on a recent cruise night.

The 18-year-old had mixed feelings about the changes.

“It’s not as much fun any more,” she said. “It’s gotten dangerous. You have to watch your back all the time.”

But Guerrero and others said they do not want to see the strip closed. She said the increase of the police presence in recent weeks has largely controlled the gang violence. They want the good times to keep rolling.

“They don’t have to block the road,” Guerrero said. “I feel that having the police out here is enough.”

The cruisers have the sympathy of police. Most officers concede that cruising is a time-honored tradition and many acknowledge that they did it in their own communities as teen-agers.

“Everybody has cruised,” said Officer Michael Windsor, who was working the anti-cruising detail on a recent Sunday. “But the gangsters have gotten into it and it has become a dangerous situation.”

McBride said the complexion of cruising has been completely altered by the intrusion of gangs. It is no longer a 1950s-era innocent pastime.

“The involvement of gang members has taken away the peaceful exchange of youthful exuberance in cruising,” he said. “We have had an escalating trend of out-of-area gang members coming to the area. We have had escalating violence.”

Ray Magana, a field deputy to Councilman Ernani Bernardi, said the councilman’s office receives numerous complaints from residents and business owners, mostly on Mondays, about cruising on Sunday nights.

“Cruising apparently went from Van Nuys to Whittier to Hollywood and now to Laurel Canyon Boulevard,” Magana said recently. “It seems to be the biggest cruising site left in the Los Angeles area.

“There are hundreds of cars coming. They are cruising at a diminished speed. It creates gridlock. And while the great majority of the cruisers are young kids just looking for a diversion, you do have gang members mixed in there. Rivalries do exist and when gang members see each other, it is a setup for confrontations.”

The result, McBride said, is a need for a heavy deployment of officers on cruise night.

By strictly enforcing motor vehicle regulations, rerouting some traffic off the strip and prohibiting parking along the street, the city has in the last two months made it difficult to cruise.

On four successive Sundays beginning Jan. 19, 30 cars were towed, six people were arrested and 214 traffic citations were issued, according to statistics from Bernardi’s office. Two weapons were also seized by police during traffic stops.

While police acknowledge that many of those being cited for motor vehicle violations in the recent crackdown are not gang members, they said that if the non-gang members--such as Kevin Logan of Palmdale--are discouraged from returning to the strip, then gang members will ultimately stop coming as well.

Though the intensive police operations have no doubt been successful in reducing the number of cruisers, McBride said a complete shutdown on the street may be necessary. He explained that the intensive police operations on the strip are expensive, often requiring as many as 30 officers, and they have not completely eliminated gang problems. He worries that other areas in the division are being neglected while so many officers are focused on Sunday night cruising.

The council has not taken up McBride’s request to close the street entirely but has supported the other efforts that police and city transportation officials have taken in recent months.

Those familiar with the cruising phenomenon--police, politicians and cruisers themselves--say that ultimately the police action may move the cruisers off Laurel Canyon Boulevard, but it will not end the popular pastime. As has been the tradition for years, the cruisers will seek another strip and the cycle will begin again.

“I think what the police are doing to make it safer is good,” said 19-year-old cruiser David Ross on a recent night.

“But they are not going to stop cruising. We can be forced to go somewhere else, but they can’t stop cruising.”