Oxnard Drug Haven a Legend of Sorrow : Communities: Narcotics dealing has become a tradition in La Colonia, where luxury cars share streets with desperate addicts. But police and a church group are trying to reverse the neglect.

On a shabby edge of La Colonia, an inner-city island detached from the rest of Oxnard by the Southern Pacific rail line, the marketplace is alive and filling with buyers.

Mothers guide strollers along broken sidewalks. Dark barrio barrooms and pool halls quickly become crowded, even though it is not yet noon.

But in this most dangerous piece of La Colonia, the biggest business goes down on the street.

Young dope dealers are everywhere, leaning on cars and storefronts hunting for junkies who need a fix. These peddlers of tar heroin and crack cocaine set up drive-thru service in alleyways and on street corners, supplying out-of-town drivers of luxury cars as often as locals.

This intersection of Cooper Road and Hayes Avenue is the drug dealing capital of Ventura County, police say, a nasty place that in recent years has turned more violent and deadly.

“All the junkies in the county know if you want to buy dope, you come to Cooper and Hayes,” said Oxnard patrolman Jim O’Brien. “Not a night goes by where we don’t have problems down there.”

“Cooper and Hayes is legendary,” said retired Police Chief Robert Owens, who tried but failed to clean up the area. “It is the most complex kind of sociological riddle that you could possibly have to deal with.”

Third- and fourth-generation Latinos born and raised in the area resort to selling drugs because they cannot find other ways to survive, Owens said. They have been joined in recent years by immigrant farm workers who have discovered they can make more money dealing dope than by pulling food from the ground, police and community activists say.

“It affects the balance of the neighborhood,” Owens said of the brazen dope sales and related crimes. “It makes people more fearful.”

Count the swollen-eyed men who station themselves at Cooper and Hayes among those who fear what this scene has become.

These are the street dealers, young toughs with deep purple needle tracks scarring their arms, legs and necks, some fresh and oozing pus.

They fear that they will contract AIDS from sharing dirty needles. They fear that their next run-in with the law will mean hard time instead of Juvenile Hall.

And they fear that one day they will feed their veins with a deadly dose of the warm brown liquid that has comforted them for years.

“You can do enough business around here to get you from day to day,” said a 19-year-old who estimates that he injects a mixture of heroin and cocaine about 30 times a day. “It’s a rough life but I don’t know any other way.”

It is tough to tell the good guys from the bad. Not everyone on the street deals dope.

“I look onto these streets and I see myself there,” said Julian Martinez, who pushed and used narcotics for many years near Cooper and Hayes until he found religion.

Martinez said he robbed and stole to support his habit. He traded food stamps, bottled water and a Medi-Cal card for cocaine and heroin. He once used a credit card as a deposit for drugs.

The needle tracks on his arms are dark and fading, but memories of the crazy life at Cooper and Hayes never will.

“It’s going to take a lot of work to clean this place up,” said the 30-year-old, who now hits the streets to persuade others to give up dope. “Cooper and Hayes has been rotting for years.”

Those who best know this area are not surprised at how bad things have become.

Cooper and Hayes is a study in neglect, community activists say. It is what happens when you cram too many poor people and too few jobs into a run-down area with too little housing.

“This community has a history as a place that has been forgotten,” said one activist who asked not to be identified because he fears retribution from drug dealers.

“The fact of the matter is we have council members who live in gated communities and really don’t want to spend money and resources in areas that don’t produce votes.”

New Police Chief Harold Hurtt, who arrived on the job this month, came to town with a battle plan.

He favors switching to community-based policing, a costly approach that would use storefront police posts and foot patrols in a bid to bring order to lawless streets such as Cooper and Hayes.

But he warns that police alone cannot solve the problem.

“Citizens need to become involved with police in taking back their neighborhoods,” Hurtt said. “You can lay in bed and wait for the problem to come and get you, or you can meet it half way and give it a good fight.”

On a recent night, things did change at Cooper and Hayes, if only for a few hours. About 200 church members from Victory Outreach of Ventura County, many of them ex-junkies and gang members, invaded the area to preach a message to the dealers and drug users.

“It’s a heavy place for drug activity, and we’re trying to put a stop to it,” said the Rev. Bob Herrera. At a littered lot near Cooper and Hayes, a three-piece band set up and gospel hymns blared from large speakers.

Herrera took the microphone and grabbed the attention of all within earshot.

“We did our drugs, we did our life of madness,” Herrera screamed as an old man stumbled by carrying a large bottle of malt liquor. “We ran the streets like you. We know what it’s like to hurt like you. You’re tired and you want out.”

The tattooed ministers of Victory Outreach broke into song. Some cornered young dope pushers with offers to pray together.

Even as Herrera closed this street revival, inviting those who want out of the life to come forward, a sleek black Cadillac pulled to a corner and another drug deal went down.

“Like I said, heavy sin in here,” Herrera shrugged. “There’s a lot of work to be done.”