Gang Outrage Tests a Fragile City Alliance : Dialogue: Playground slaying has set Santa Ana council bickering, but there are signs of hope in a new coalition of grass-roots activists.

There he sat in an Orange County courtroom last week, his head in his hands, behind the wire mesh separating the accused from the accusers.

Dressed in mustard-colored jail clothing, the slender man with a slight mustache did not stand out among other prisoners.

But Uciel T. Murgo, 19, is different.

Accused of being the gunman in the April 15 murder of a father of three in a Santa Ana schoolyard, the onetime gang member’s alleged actions became the spark that ignited a citywide debate about how to attack the growing problem of gang-related violence.

Shocked by the killing of Mauro V. Meza, 31, and the wounding of three of his relatives after a pickup game at an outdoor Santa Ana High School basketball court, citizens as never before are demanding that their elected leaders try harder to curb or rechannel gang activity, while also seeking ways to become involved themselves.

But for all of the public’s resolve, there are those who wonder whether the issue will become a political football--whether a rare opportunity to unite the community behind proposed solutions will be lost in the divisive bickering that has often characterized City Council debates.

In a city with a 65.2% Latino population, the gang issue is a complex and frustrating problem.

Mayor Daniel H. Young, City Council members and other community activists last week said they hope that the issue does not fall victim to political rivalries and gamesmanship. If citizens are serious about developing a gang prevention program, leaders should be equally intent on working together, they said.

But the political give-and-take toward a unified front did not get off to an auspicious start.

“At the outset, the Latinos did not trust the Anglos, the Anglos did not trust the Latinos, the gangs do not trust any of them, and the one thing all three have in common is that none of them seem to trust the politicians,” observed John M. Raya, a member of the Rancho Santiago Community College Board of Trustees.

City Councilman John Acosta ignited the council debate three days after the shooting when he declared that white council members neither understand nor care about the problems facing minorities in Santa Ana.

The mayor responded by sternly calling for an end to allegations of ethnic bias, then appointed Mayor Pro Tem Miguel A. Pulido Jr. to head City Hall’s study of the issue.

By attacking the white council members, Acosta--who is usually on the losing side of a 5-2 split on major council votes and who hopes to challenge Young in the November mayoral election--deepened the mayor’s mistrust of his motives, and perhaps made other whites mistrust him too.

“John is trying very hard to turn this tragedy into racial strife in hopes that he can become mayor, and I think that’s a horrible, tragic thing,” Young said.

But Acosta defended his allegations of ethnic insensitivity, saying they pressure the city to make the gang issue a top priority.

Acosta also attacked the mayor for appointing Pulido, another Latino, to head the city’s search for proposals on the gang problem.

Pulido, Acosta said, “is not a spokesperson for (the Latino community), and he refuses to stand up and represent them in a time of need.”

Acosta added that a more “acceptable” action would have been for the mayor to lead the effort, with both Acosta and Pulido at his side.

But Pulido said if Young had done that, the effort “would become nothing but a battle between John Acosta and Dan Young.”

Instead, Pulido said, he is committed to winning the trust of everyone while ignoring criticism leveled against him. And he promised to consider all proposed solutions, regardless of who offers them.

“A lot of folks like me, a lot of folks don’t,” Pulido said. “But even those that don’t have to admit that I am bicultural, that I am bilingual.”

Despite the political friction, community leaders point to hopeful signs. A week after Meza’s death, an unusual collection of about 100 citizens--including neighborhood association leaders, Latino activists, Councilmen Robert L. Richardson, Pulido and gang members--gathered for a brainstorming session in a local YWCA gymnasium.

Some participants said they could not remember a time when white neighborhood leaders had been in the same room with gang members, or when Nativo V. Lopez, director of an immigrant rights group, had participated in a meeting sponsored by residents whose stand on code enforcement his group has fought in court.

Names and telephone numbers were exchanged and relationships begun.

Guy Ball, a Wilshire Square neighborhood leader who publishes the city’s community newspaper, Eye on Santa Ana, said he invited Lopez to write an article about his organization, Hermandad Mexicana Nacional.

If the Latino community does not buy into any proposed program, Ball said, the plan will be doomed to failure.

The mayor also said the gang issue may present “the first real opportunity” the Latino community has to join forces with neighborhood groups.

“The Hispanic organizations have said, ‘Will you reach out your hand and care?’ The (white) neighborhood organizations have reached out their hands and said, ‘I want to care.’ And now is the time for hands to couple together,” Young said.

But while the first meeting was applauded, community activists later found themselves asking, “Now what?”

Santa Ana attorney Alfredo Amezcua, who pushed the council to make the gang issue a top priority even before Meza’s killing, has been meeting with gang members, political activists and anyone else willing to help. In addition to the 14-point plan he presented to the City Council, he hopes to set up a weeklong retreat this summer at an area Boy Scout camp for local gang leaders.

Pulido said he is contacting everyone who has offered ideas and is working with city staff members to prepare a plan for communitywide review. The mayor said a proposed plan could be presented to the council in two weeks.

Acosta and representatives of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the League of United Latin American Citizens and other groups plan a gang awareness forum in mid-May.

Los Angeles gang experts are being invited to educate local citizens on the issue. And Jim Walker, who heads the Sandpointe Neighborhood Assn., pointed to the smiling faces of children of all races who played games together at the association’s fair last weekend.

“For me,” he said, “it showed what happens when a neighborhood functions well.”

Amezcua said political leaders, not politics, are needed to implement the ideas forwarded by the community. “If they (politicians) are using this issue to make this their own agenda and develop a platform for their own needs, then I am very concerned,” he said. “This movement is bigger than anybody.”

Raya, the Rancho Santiago College trustee, summed up the prevailing sentiment this way: “I am as confident as I can be that we are going to see good things come out of this. I have to believe that.”