Mean Street : Cleaned-Up Oxnard Neighborhood Slips Back Into Crime

Oxnard’s Aleric Street, where a 1988 crackdown showed how police can clean up crime, has again deteriorated into one of Ventura County’s toughest neighborhoods.

And the current high level of crime on the two-block stretch of low-rent apartments demonstrates how fleeting success can be when intense police presence gives way to routine patrol.

“You have to have some type of maintenance program for something like this,” said police Lt. Jeff Young, who has worked the Aleric Street area. “You can’t do these sorts of things with a quick fix.”

Just three years ago, the street was targeted by the Oxnard Police Department as a test case of what could be accomplished by a concentrated assault.

The city spent more than $100,000 on foot patrols to show Aleric’s residents that it was serious about cutting crime.

Aleric Street was painted over, cleaned up and virtually cleared of the prostitutes and drug dealers who made life there so violent and unpredictable.

City fathers even changed its name to Cuesta del Mar Drive to spruce up its image and bury its past. Police and local residents, however, still tend to call it Aleric Street.

Today, with police activity diminished, the street has returned to its violent old ways.

Statistics for robberies and serious assaults reflect Aleric’s roller-coaster ride from crime to cleanup and back again.

The tiny crime grid that includes Aleric peaked at 44 robberies and aggravated assaults in 1987, dropped to 23 in 1989, then rose to 59 last year.

In 1991, one of every 27 robberies and serious assaults in Oxnard occurred on that short street, at adjacent South Winds Park, or on two nearby cul-de-sacs. That may make the area the most violent of the city’s 500 crime-reporting districts, analysts said.

Farm worker Ramon Gomez, 37, has felt the return of strong-armed crime up close. Two long cuts on his face marked the encounter.

Gomez, who has lived in a Cuesta del Mar apartment for three years, said two young cholos jumped him from behind one evening last fall as he returned with groceries from a market one block away.

“They hit me in the face,” Gomez said. “They took my wallet and all my (immigrant) documents. They scattered the food.”

His wife, Emiliana, remembers that her husband “came back bleeding. The whole side of his shirt was full of blood.”

Not long after the attack, the couple’s car was stolen from their apartment carport, which is open to an alley where residents say drugs are sold, tenants are robbed and hoodlums hide from police.

The couple, who have six children, pay $425 a month for their 200-square-foot studio apartment. They hope they can one day afford to move to La Colonia or El Rio.

“It’s nicer over there, it’s more calm,” Emiliana Gomez said.

“This is a bad neighborhood, boy,” said Bill Hites, who manages the couple’s gated apartment complex. “I want to move, but my wife thinks she can calm this down. I tell her there’s been experts try that before.”

Two blocks away, just north of South Winds Park, Linda Martinez said she is heartbroken by the decay of the neighborhood into which she brought her family 22 years ago.

“It’s so sad to see it deteriorate,” said Martinez, who asked that her real name not be used. “It’s just messy. It looks like the Bronx. The kids have no respect for anyone anymore.”

Martinez resents the bunker mentality that she said now defines her neighborhood: She is afraid to walk the streets or allow her children to use the park.

She relented recently and let her 14-year-old son go to the park to play basketball, the first time he had been there in five years.

“He said this boy just hit him in the face and bloodied his nose,” she said. “I didn’t report it, because they’d just come and retaliate.”

Martinez said she and her close neighbors--an island of homeowners among a majority of renters--are fighting a battle they cannot win.

But on Carlisle Court, a short sprint from Cuesta del Mar’s dangerous back alley, homeowners recently won a struggle to regain control of their part of the neighborhood.

Carlisle Court is a cul-de-sac with 15 homes. Owners live in most of them. So they responded when a newly arrived renter began to have dozens of visitors a day and regularly hosted noisy parties late into the night.

Suspecting drug dealing, the residents tracked the activities. One used a camcorder to tape the comings and goings. Then, a total of four young men were stabbed in front the house on two consecutive weekends in June.

“A guy got stabbed in the face here last night,” said a 21-year-old at the rental recently. “Here in the front yard. It was over money. There’s a lot of people from L.A. moving up to Oxnard. They’re trying to get away from the violence. But they’re bringing it up here.”

Three more men were stabbed the following Saturday in what was apparently a racially motivated confrontation. The victims were Latino and the assailants black.

After the stabbings, police mobilized. Officers hosted a meeting of residents at the local skating rink. Bike patrols were sent into the area. Police met with the owner of the rental house and the troublesome tenants are being evicted.

“It’s back to normal now,” Carlisle homeowner John Vera said Thursday. “It’s very, very quiet. The police really got involved on this one.”

Lt. Young said the Carlisle Court response demonstrates the type of effort the police and the community originally made to clean up Aleric Street and what needs to be done if crime is to be permanently reduced.

“We have to maintain a police presence down there,” Young said. “It’s just very unfortunate that this is happening when we’re having our worst staffing problems.”