PLACENTIA : Gangs Gone, Yet Public Avoids Park

Two months after the city began closing La Placita Park at dusk to help police deal with increasing criminal and gang activity, Police Chief Manuel Ortega said the department has reached only “35% to 40% of our goal of returning the park to the community.”

Gang members “don’t hang out at the park any more,” Ortega said, “but now we have to get citizens to use the park again.”

Ortega asked the city to close the park, located in the city’s La Jolla neighborhood, after two detectives assigned to the department’s gang detail said the once-popular picnic spot had turned into a gathering place for some of the city’s estimated 400 gang members.

A gazebo in the park was covered with graffiti, and a nearby home was similarly vandalized.

The gazebo and the home have since been painted and a wrought-iron fence was erected around the back of the park to prevent people from scattering when police arrive to investigate complaints.

Still, Ortega said, residents won’t return to the park until they are convinced it is safe.

“Me telling them it is safe means nothing,” he said. “They have to test it first, get a sense that it is safe.”

To encourage that, Ortega is informally surveying members of the community to find out what improvements they would like to see at La Placita.

A grant Placentia is seeking from the county would provide money for improvements, the police chief said.

According to Detective John Armstrong, who with partner Tom Valentine make up Placentia’s gang detail, residents of the neighborhood have slowly begun to use the park during the day.

“We stop and talk to kids playing baseball and soccer at the park,” he said.

But Armstrong agreed that it would be some time before residents see the park as a family gathering spot.

Drug activity persists during the daytime despite the detectives’ frequent presence in the area.

Armstrong is optimistic, though, that the park will once again be a place for picnics.

“I feel good about what we’ve done,” he said. “The Police Department isn’t going to make La Jolla into Anaheim Hills, but we have done our best, and we have made it safer.”

Compliance with the closure has been good, Armstrong said. The two detectives have issued no citations to anyone for being in the park after dusk, and requests to leave the park have been complied with peacefully.

One resident, who has lived on La Jolla Street for 30 years, said the dusk closing time has helped make the neighborhood safer.

The woman, who asked that her name not be used, said children in the neighborhood can now safely walk by the park on their way to a nearby market.

“I was afraid for the little ones, but now it is safer for them,” she said.

While many residents in the neighborhood welcomed the move to close the park at dusk, some were concerned that it might make the gangs angry, and that at any rate it would merely send them elsewhere in the community.

But Armstrong said that while some of the youths have started to gather at another park, the number is smaller and does not create the same potential for violence.