Parish Compiles List of Gang ‘Hot Spots’

Jose A. Cardenas stood Monday evening before more than 300 parishioners at St. Anne’s Catholic Church and grieved.

He talked about his 20-year-old son, Alex, who was shot three times in the chest on the night of Jan. 29 by unknown assailants as he stood in the garage of a neighbor who is a gang member. Friends and family members said Alex was not a gang member; he just happened to be in the wrong place.

Diego Calderon, a father of eight, also rose to complain about gangs that have ruined not only his former neighborhood but his home.

Two of his sons are gang members, said Calderon, who recently moved to Orange. One son, he said, was recently released from a juvenile detention center, and the other was told to leave home when he refused to drop his gang activities after being shot.

Paralyzed by the fear that drugs and gang violence have created, the members of St. Anne’s Parish gathered to tell Police Department officials that they have had enough.

Leaders of the St. Anne’s Parish Community Organization presented police district commanders with a list of 19 “hot spots” within their neighborhoods where drug dealing and gang activity run rampant.

“It’s time we do something for our children of Santa Ana,” Cardenas said during the meeting, which included the three Police Department lieutenants in charge of the city’s south side.

Kathy Hernandez, a mother of four children who led the meeting, said the presentation of the list was “just the first step.”

“We are meeting with police officers in our area to let them know we are with them. We want to be working with them,” she said before the meeting, adding that the group hopes that police officers investigate the locations and begin to clean them up within two months.

The police lieutenants agreed to report back but could not promise results. The problems related to drugs and gang violence have developed over long periods and cannot be solved overnight, they said.

“It has to spread to the families,” said Lt. Jose Garcia, who supervises the center of the city, where drugs and gangs are most prevalent. “For us to expect that law enforcement alone is going to take care of the problems is a little unrealistic, and we have to have a community effort.”

Before the meeting ended, the audience stood and applauded the lieutenants.

Lt. Mike Foote, who commands police patrols in the area just north of South Coast Plaza, said his district is plagued by auto thefts and burglaries. But since January, when his officers began a crackdown on gang members, car burglaries have dropped 49%.

Some “hot spots” are locations that the general public drives by every day, such as major intersections along Bristol Street and the parking lot of a well-known grocery store on South Main Street. Others are the home addresses of known gang members and drug dealers.

“We have a place where drugs have been offered to elementary school students,” said Sister Guadalupe Hernandez, referring to an alley behind Monte Vista Elementary School.

The list was compiled during a six-month investigation by community leaders that included meetings with 300 families in the parish, bounded by 1st Street to the north, Standard Avenue to the east, Sunflower Avenue to the south and Bristol Street to the west.