Catering Truck Owners Unite Against L.A. Law : Business: Vendors’ association formed after the 1991 slayings of five workers. It hopes to fend off complaints from merchants and new one-hour restriction on parking.

Jose Martinez’s eyes still fill with tears when he talks about the five catering truck workers who were slain in December, their bodies dumped in a remote canyon in the San Fernando Valley.

Martinez, 47, a catering truck operator for 10 years, never met the victims, he says, but he probably had waved to them as they passed each other on the street.

Discussing the slayings is painful for Martinez because the subject reminds him of the dangers his family faces in its line of work. His wife, Guadalupe, has twice been robbed at gunpoint while working late in his catering truck.

The killings were instrumental in bringing Martinez and other frightened catering truck owners in the Valley together to form the Latin Catering Truck Assn. But members now want to build on that newfound unity to fight a Los Angeles city law that prohibits catering trucks from staying in one spot for longer than an hour.

The members also want to fend off criticism from local businesses and break the stereotype that all street food vendors operate illegally, sell drugs and leave litter in their wake.

“Maybe the lives that were lost were not in vain because something came out of it,” he said in Spanish.

But the formation of the new association has done little to appease some merchants and community leaders in the Valley who complain that catering trucks and other street vendors drive local restaurants and markets out of business by luring customers away.

“The majority of the markets and liquor stores in the Pacoima area in particular are owned by minority owners . . . and there is a very fine line between success and failure,” said Fred Taylor, president of Focus 90s, a coalition of homeowners and business groups in the Valley.

While Taylor supports the idea behind the catering truck law, which was approved by the City Council last August, he said he believes many vendors are breaking it.

“You may have a handful of people who are trying to abide by the law, but a vast majority of them are not,” he said.

Indeed, the new restriction on catering trucks came after a 1990 report by the Los Angeles Health Department found that 40% of catering trucks didn’t have the required city health permits. Under the law trucks can park in residential areas for a half hour and in commercial areas for an hour before being required to move at least a half-mile away. Violators can be cited.

Los Angeles Police Capt. Tim McBride, who met with members of the fledgling catering truck organization early on, said the association is important because police realized after the killings that they had no way of contacting catering truck workers. More importantly, he said, the association can help catering truck owners police themselves.

“It’s really, from my point of view, the formation of a partnership between the community and the police,” McBride said.

Police have made no arrests in the slayings of the five catering truck workers, who were shot and stabbed and found Dec. 10 near La Tuna Canyon Road. Their catering truck was found ransacked and abandoned in North Hollywood.

The new group boasts a membership of 75 truck owners and requires each member to have up-to-date driver’s licenses, health permits, vending licenses and insurance--at a cost of up to $12,000 a year. The members meet regularly to discuss problems and to help new members arrange for their permits and licenses.

Catering truck workers say they oppose the vendor law because it hurts their business by making it hard for regular customers to find them. They also say it puts the workers in danger because they are sometimes forced to park in unfamiliar neighborhoods.

“What we want to do is work, that is all,” said Ramon Gallardo, the association’s treasurer, who operates a catering truck in North Hollywood.

“If they give us the opportunity to work unhindered, we could put others to work for us,” which would benefit the economy, Gallardo said.

Angel Saldibar who operates a truck in Reseda and plans to join the association, agreed. “The people who work hard, pay their taxes and keep everything clean should be allowed to work,” he said. “Those who don’t keep everything in line should be removed.”

An emblem that association members plan to post on each truck depicts two hands breaking a chain--a chain that Martinez said represents the law they despise.

But catering truck owners say the city law is only one example of many problems they face daily.

For example, Martinez said that for a year the manager of a market on Laurel Canyon Road in Pacoima pressured him to pay $485 a month to park his truck on the street next to the market. Martinez said he paid because he feared the manager would call the police.

Martinez eventually stopped paying and told police about the scheme. Police are investigating the incident, but McBride said he is not sure whether police can file charges against the store manager because there is no law on the books against renting a public street.

Martinez believes the association can help prevent such incidents. “We were suffering because we didn’t know each other while the established businesses were powerful and had influence,” he said.

He also has designed a security system for vending trucks that notifies police in the event of a robbery. Martinez hopes the system, which has been approved by police, can be installed on the trucks of all association members.

“I don’t doubt that there are two or three trucks that work outside of the law,” he said, “but we are not those people and we want to work with the police.”