New Homeboys on the Block : Police Detail Combats Gangs in Placentia

On a recent Friday night, about 10 young men sat in a gazebo at La Placita Park in the La Jolla neighborhood of the city.

Police Officer Tom Valentine recognized some of their faces--they were members of a gang from a nearby city. When Valentine, a member of the city’s year-old anti-gang detail, requested identification, the young men rose to their feet and scattered in all directions without uttering a word.

Just a few years ago, such a scene would not have been common in Placentia.

But now the once-favorite picnic spot is marred by graffiti on its sidewalks, benches, trash cans and gazebo. Picnickers have been all but displaced by delinquent youths. And other neighborhood parks have also become graffiti-splashed havens for the growing gang presence in this suddenly besieged city of 42,000. Police Chief Manuel Ortega says eight gangs with 400 identified members and associates call Placentia home--about 3% to 4% of the county total.

“It’s pretty dangerous,” said Pat Phanvongsa, who has lived near the park for the past two years. “I see guys hanging out in the street.”

Another neighborhood resident, who declined to give her name for fear of retaliation, said she avoids driving by the park except during the day, and then only when absolutely necessary. “Before, I used to go for walks,” she said. “But not anymore. I don’t like it at all, but I have to live with it.”

The sharp rise in gang activity in Placentia came quickly, surprising city officials, law enforcement personnel and citizens. Now, authorities are scrambling to fight the gang presence, which has long been part of the municipal fabric but never to the extent achieved of late.

“We’ve had gang problems for as long as we can remember, but last year definitely caught us off guard--’91 was a banner year” for gangs, said Officer John Armstrong, the second half of the two-man anti-gang detail. “The activity has leveled in the last few months, but the problem is like a roller coaster and things could pick up at any moment.”

Gang activity has decreased so far this year, according to city law enforcement estimates. Gunshots ring out only occasionally in contrast to last year, when a shooting seemed to occur “literally every weekend,” Armstrong said. There have not been any gang-related deaths in 1992.

The relative calm constitutes a considerable improvement over last year, which was kicked off by a bloody New Year’s Eve. After the gunfire and sirens quieted down, three residents lay shot, one fatally. Seven suffered stab wounds. Two days later there were drive-by shootings.

Community outcry over the gang violence of January, 1991, prompted authorities to establish the special police detail, with Valentine and Armstrong assigned to the task of identifying, investigating and suppressing the growing gang presence.

Police Chief Ortega attributes some of the reduction in activity to arrests in the past year that landed some of the hard-core gang members in jail.

“You start taking people off the streets and the guys on the edge back off,” Armstrong added.

Although figures are still being computed, Lon Erickson, a senior district attorney investigator, estimates that there are between 10,000 to 12,000 gang members in the county. Erickson said his office prosecuted 40 gang-related cases involving Placentia last year, ranging from attempted murder to malicious mischief. Although the figure is twice the number of cases for Brea and Yorba Linda, it is still much lower than neighboring Fullerton, with 112 cases, and Anaheim, with 250.

Since Officers Armstrong and Valentine got the anti-gang detail assignment in Placentia a year ago this month, the team has become a familiar presence, especially among youths like those hanging out in the park that Friday night who know the officers by name.

“Sometimes they’re cool, but it’s like being under the gun all the time,” said a 19-year-old who requested anonymity.

“They look at us as gang members, but we prefer to see ourselves as homeboys,” said a 21-year-old wearing a Raiders cap. “We’re just protecting our families, our neighborhoods.”

This notion of “protecting” the neighborhood keeps three of the city’s long-established gangs busy engaging in drive-by shootings and other homicidal acts. But the violence has more to do with defending turf than anything else. Armstrong and Valentine say Placentia’s gangs--unlike many in Los Angeles--are not actively involved in the street sales of narcotics.

The homeboys pledge allegiance to their own barrios in the predominantly Latino neighborhoods to the south--Atwood, La Jolla and La Plas.

Valentine said that according to district attorney officials, the most notorious of the three neighborhood gangs is considered the fifth most criminally active in the county. The gang has a “close alliance” with one of La Habra’s gangs, entering each other’s territory regularly and committing retaliatory deeds for each other, eliminating the risk that witnesses might recognize someone they know.

“They might suspect they’re from (a Placentia neighborhood) but they’re not going to know the individual by name,” he added. This interaction has resulted in La Habra and Placentia police teaming up to combat gang activity.

Three other Latino gangs have been identified, but are made up of “taggers”--youths who primarily spray-paint their “tags” or neighborhood identification in the city, as well as in other cities.

The detail also counts a neo-Nazi faction that occasionally hangs out at Tri-City Park in the northern, more affluent area of the city but does not claim it as its turf. When these skinheads terrorized park-goers last summer, residents living nearby turned out at City Hall to complain and got quick results.

Another gang has developed in a crowded, low-income neighborhood primarily inhabited by Asians. This group tends to spend more time in areas with Asian-owned businesses such as Little Saigon in Westminster, the gang detail’s Armstrong said.

Mario Navarrete, owner of the Old Towne Hair Salon, grew up and still lives in the Santa Fe neighborhood. He knows many of the local homeboys. They are his customers and the sons of neighbors he has known for years. While he cuts their hair, he listens to their stories about fights among youths from different barrios.

But Navarrete, 36, said “the majority that act real bad are the new ones that don’t speak much English. They’re the ones doing all this trouble and giving the neighborhoods a big name.”

The “new ones” are a factor in an active rivalry many residents see as more culturally than geographically motivated. The battle raging within some of the barrios even divides youths who share a common heritage.

“There’s little spin-off gangs with Chicanos seeing themselves different from first-generation Mexicans who are trying to belong,” Melissa Albidrez said. “We even have to start focusing on the girls.”

A third-generation Santa Fe resident, Albidrez, 34, joined the city’s Drug and Gang Prevention Advisory Committee because she believed that the gang influence in her neighborhood was slowly affecting her own children.

Although the eight-member task force, which was formed last July, has come under fire for not coming up with quick solutions, its members say that their mission was not to take action.

In a report delivered to the City Council in late January, the committee suggested hiring an outreach counselor using county block grant funds. But the council opted to make capital improvements and low-cost housing funds their first requests, listing the counselor second.

This is no surprise to many residents and officials who have taken to publicly criticizing the City Council on a regular basis for acting too slowly or not spending enough money to address the gang problem.

One of the most vocal critics is Councilwoman Maria Moreno.

“We have to keep up with the pace that the gangs have set,” Moreno said. “We need more police visibility.

A monthly ritual for Moreno has been requesting the council to commit more funds to hiring another officer to handle the detail’s paperwork, thus freeing Armstrong and Valentine to spend more time walking the beat.

But Albidrez and other residents are not waiting for the council to act. They say the solution lies in a “triangle of parents, school and police working together as a whole” to get the problem under control.

“Right now I see it as a fight between the gangs and the residents,” Albidrez said. “We’re definitely trying to do something about it.”

Officer Armstrong agrees with the triangle concept. “We just can’t do it alone,” he said. “The community has got to get involved.”