Living in Oceanside’s Combat Zone : Violence: Residents of Center Street area live nightly with gunfire, slayings, even mutilation, as their youth get caught up in warring gangs.

Joseph Sepulveda remembers growing up in his Oceanside barrio in the days when being a kid on the street wasn’t a deadly gamble and the only gang members were 8-year-old boys who loved to climb trees.

Back in the mid-1960s, Wild West shoot-’em-ups were something you only saw on evening television. Death and violence, drug deals and drive-by shootings never came to the old neighborhood.

Welcome to the new neighborhood.

These days, residents call it the Combat Zone, where war is being waged over drug turf, bragging rights and who knows what else. At night, when the shooting starts, innocent people run for cover. Still, the bullets sometimes find them.

The street players call themselves homeboys. Or cholos. Or bandieros. And they’re trying to claim the neighborhood for themselves. Residents whisper the names of their affiliations like taboo passwords. But, whether it’s the Posole gang, the Westside Crips or the Center Street gang, they’ve made Sepulveda’s old barrio a decidedly dangerous place to grow up.

Most nights, Sepulveda walks the narrow alleys and back streets not far from the house where he was born 34 years ago. An Oceanside police officer, he is part of a new foot patrol team in a barrio many say has forgotten all about law and order.

“I wouldn’t want to be out here by myself,” he says, crossing a busy street with partner Mike Porretta, a beefy former nationally ranked weightlifter. “Even though we’re wearing uniforms, we could still get killed here. Any passing car could be full of rival gang members. When the shooting starts, we could get caught in the cross-fire.”

The story of Sepulveda’s old barrio near downtown Oceanside, police and local politicians say, is symptomatic of a growing trend happening beyond such cities as Los Angeles and San Diego.

Gang violence has hit the suburbs with a vengeance.

Medium-sized cities such as Oceanside, (pop. 130,000) which once had a handle on the petty gang hatreds that plague the bigger urban areas, now find themselves in a street battle of life and death.

“We used to think things were bad, but they were never like this,” said Ruben Sandoval, one of Oceanside’s four gang detectives.

“There was a time when these kids used clubs and baseball bats and screwdrivers. Now they’ve got guns--handguns and semi-automatic rifles. The number of gang members has doubled in the last two years alone. And the number of shootings have tripled, at least.”

Although Oceanside so far has not kept statistics on its gang violence, Sandoval said the increased mayhem may soon call for record-keeping.

“As cops, we’re afraid that this just isn’t a passing situation,” he said. “It’s Oceanside’s new reality. I never thought I’d say this, but the violence and chaos of the big city is now right here in our own back yards.”

A 1989 Police Department study found that gang-related crime in Oceanside--although then still confined to traditional turf wars--had “taken on a more dangerous and criminal nature” because of the arrival of “predatory gangs” from the Los Angeles area in search of new drug-dealing landscapes.

Oceanside’s gang areas are confined to scattered lower-income pockets, Latino and Samoan neighborhoods such as the Mesa-Margarita and Los Arbolitos areas east of Interstate 5. None, however, has reached the level of violence seen in the tiny patchwork of streets known as the Center Street area.

In recent years, there have been repeated skirmishes between the Latino Center Street gang and members of the Westside Crips, a black gang that recently began moving into the area, residents say. Center Streeters have also battled with the Posole gang, another Latino group that claims turf nearby.

In the spring of 1991, however, the violence suddenly escalated.

Since then, two gang-related killings and more than three dozen shootings and stabbings have occurred in the barrio, situated just west of I-5, south of Mission Avenue.

But statistics alone don’t capture the ferocity of the violence.

“The kids on these streets have ducked more bullets in their short lives than I’ll ever have to dodge,” said Sandoval, a 47-year-old a former factory supervisor who has spent 12 years on the force.

“We only investigate when the bullets hit their targets, or innocent bystanders. We don’t come out every time the bullets fly. And there are times when they fly every night.”

On April 20, 1991, Theron Jackson, a suspected member of the Westside Crips gang, died in a hail of gunfire as he stood outside a home on Division Street, in the shadow of nearby Oceanside High School.

Police say 17 shots were fired at the 20-year-old as he dived underneath a parked car, some bullets ripping into the concrete driveway around him. Jackson was hit in the head, neck and chest; he died at the scene.

Last month, a 15-year-old Oceanside youth was shot in the head as he sat in a pickup truck on Garfield Street. Darryl Kirby, who police say did not belong to a gang, was struck as he waited outside a friend’s house.

The bloodshed has taken warped and cruel twists. Recently, a local gang member lost part of a hand, reportedly when rival gang members held him down and blew off the appendage at close range with a shotgun, officers say.

Another member lost part of his foot. He insists that he shot himself accidentally, but detectives suspect otherwise. Still another gang member, a 17-year-old Center Street youth, had both his legs broken when he was rammed by a speeding car, apparently driven by rival gang members.

And this summer, a 17-year-old Oceanside High School student, president of her class, was shot in the head at a party on Garfield Street that rival Posole gang members attended. A second teen-ager was struck in the arm as she sat on her uncle’s lap inside the house.

Despite the revolving-door violence, nobody’s winning the Center Street area turf war, detectives say.

“All sides are losers,” Sandoval said. “I see guys who once had full hands and feet, guys who are going to be handicapped the rest of their lives.”

Lynda Kirby puts her head in her hands and talks about the gang violence that took her 15-year-old son, Darryl.

“I just feel so hopeless,” she said. “I’ve lost a son. And there doesn’t seem to be anything I can do about it.”

On July 3, a bullet found Darryl Kirby as he sat in the bed of a parked pickup in the Center Street area. Police believe that Kirby, who lived outside the neighborhood, was mistaken for a member of the Westside Crips.

“My son wasn’t in any gang,” Lynda Kirby said. “Everyone knows he was neutral. He was an athlete, a basketball player. He was working hard at school to keep his grades up. He shouldn’t have died like that.”

Mark Kirby, 17, a member of the Deep Valley Crips gang, says it’s ironic that it was his brother who was killed.

“He always said ‘To hell with gangs,’ that all they were about was making money, that it wasn’t red or blue--it was all green.”

And, although he says he knows who took his brother’s life, Kirby insists that he’s not seeking revenge. “I won’t go near that neighborhood,” he said. “They’ve got it sewed up. They’re shooting at you from trees and roofs and telephone poles. It’s crazy.”

Kirby says he has put his little brother’s death in perspective.

“You gonna die, you gonna die,” he said. “Maybe it’s not the right time for the person who killed my brother to die as well. Maybe he’s lucky. Fact is, a lot of innocent people get killed. The way I see it, you got a better chance of living if you are with a gang.”

Duke, a 25-year-old Center Streeter, agreed that such groups offer protection.

“Look at the houses around here, and all you see are bullet holes,” he said. “There’s been too many people here who don’t belong here. We’re just trying to take care of our neighborhood.”

Duke, who wears tattoos of gangsters on his arm, said gang membership is as strong as ever. Counting those in jail or prison, there are more than 60 members of the Center Street gang, he said.

“The people here, we’re all united,” he said. “There’s dads and moms and uncles involved. We’re all one big family.”

But the mother of one gang member isn’t so sure. Her 17-year-old son recently suffered two broken legs when struck by a speeding car reportedly driven by rival gang members.

“If his father was still alive, this would not have happened,” said the woman, who refused to give her name. “He would have provided more direction.”

The woman’s 18-year-old son recently quit the Center Street gang. “The whole gang thing scares me,” he said. “I’m afraid that I’m going to be shot someday, or run over by a car--for no good reason.

“It’s bad for guys on the street. But it’s worse for the mothers. They’re the ones who are suffering. They’re losing their sons.”

As the sun sets on Center Street, the neighborhood does its daily, sinister quick-change.

The tiny boys who play barefoot in the street, next to overflowing trash bins and junk cars without wheels, suddenly disappear--replaced by a leaner, meaner, older set of young men.

The mothers and daughters also take cover, hurrying indoors behind the perceived safety of barred windows. In this self-sufficient neighborhood without a corner market, the independent operators who sell cold sodas, ice cream, fruits and vegetables, or hot ears of corn on a stick, warily take guard in their makeshift sales trucks.

“I don’t go outside for anything. If I could, I’d keep myself and my boys inside the house all the time, but I know that I can’t,” said one mother who refused to give her name for fear of gang retribution.

In five years, gunfire has already forced her family to move from two homes in the area. Now they live in a gated apartment that faces away from the street. Still, she is afraid.

“This is the worst place to live, sometimes I think it’s the worst place on earth,” she said. “But where can we go? Where else can we afford to live? We know people here. And that counts for something.”

It is for people like her that Joe Sepulveda comes to work each day.

Last month, in an effort to tone down the violence, a two-man team of Oceanside police officers began patrolling the neighborhood during the busiest afternoon and evening hours.

But the Center Street patrols are only a temporary solution. Come fall, Sepulveda and his partner will return to assignments with area schools.

Although residents, police and politicians agree that the patrols are working, they know that budget cutbacks in the city mean too few officers to go around.

“This neighborhood needs this kind of attention,” Sepulveda said. “It needs officers walking the streets, finding out what’s on people’s minds.”

Since the patrols started, an uneasy truce has settled in. The shootings have ceased for now. Even gang members agree that the new uniformed presence is having an effect.

Police hope the foot patrol will stay long enough to open communications with timid residents who might give tips on several unsolved attacks.

Detective Brian Whitbread, who is investigating the death of Darryl Kirby, said fear of gang retaliation intimidates many witnesses.

“It’s like pulling teeth,” he said. “People will talk to you, sure, but as soon as a crime goes down, nobody’s talking. Nobody’s seen anything. These are the same people standing right outside when it happened.”

Even members of a local citizen’s group, which organizes monthly “Take back the streets” marches, admits that some residents are afraid to join them. “A lot of people don’t want to participate because of what might happen to them afterwards,” said Joan Bockman, who lives several blocks from the scene of the worst violence.

“After the march is over, some gang member might come to their house and say, ‘We saw you on the street today. What’s your problem?’ ”

In January, at the height of the most recent violence, several dozen locals began the Sunday afternoon rallies, carrying signs saying “End Barrio Warfare” and “No More Gang Wars.”

Bockman called for the city to continue the foot patrol project, which she says is obviously working. “Somebody has to make a decision to fight fires, or else be totally consumed by them,” she said.

The locals have their own plans as well. Recently, several residents asked the Oceanside City Council to help renovate a vacant language school in the heart of the neighborhood to use as a community center. They have won the support of Councilwoman Melba Bishop, and plans call for renovation to start in late August.

They also want to change the name of the neighborhood.

“We’re starting to call this neighborhood the Brook Street area,” Bockman said. “Why should we call it Center Street? That’s the name the gangs gave it. Who gave them the right or the power?

“We want the city to change the name of Center Street to Pansey Street or Flower Street. We want to take that power away from the gangs.”