Police to Seek Broad Powers Against Panorama City Gang

Responding to the shooting death of a popular landlord, Los Angeles police and city officials vowed Monday to reclaim a San Fernando Valley street from an armed gang of cocaine dealers, saying the city will ask for a court order allowing police to arrest gang members for otherwise legal activities.

A detective told residents and landlords from Blythe Street in Panorama City that “we have let you down” in failing to protect them from a gang of about 100 drug dealers, as reflected by the death of building owner Donald Aragon.

Deputy Police Chief Mark Kroeker told the group that Aragon’s death Oct. 31 in a shootout with gang members inspired the effort to make the strip of crowded apartment buildings just west of Van Nuys Boulevard “a place that is safe, a place that is sound in terms of its economic future and a place that is home.”

The city attorney’s office plans to seek a restraining order that would give police broad authority to arrest gang members virtually on sight on the troubled block. The unusual order, to be modeled after one issued last month by a Burbank judge against a gang on Elmwood Avenue, would allow police to arrest gang members for a variety of otherwise legal activities, including hanging out together.

“The injunction is not going to solve the problem, but it’s an extremely powerful beginning,” said Deputy City Atty. Robert A. Ferber.

Ferber said the only other time such an order has been sought in Los Angeles was in 1987 in a 26-square-block Westside neighborhood near Cadillac Avenue and Corning Street.

A Superior Court judge who was asked to issue that order said that the request violated basic constitutional liberties, but the city’s attempt to get the order caused the gang members to leave, Ferber said.

Ferber, however, said that he did not think the Blythe Street gang would leave so easily. “This is a tough, well-entrenched gang here,” he said.

In announcing the new steps to be taken against the youths who claim the street as their home turf, police acknowledged that their past efforts have been inadequate.

“You have a right to be angry,” said Detective Wayne Dufort. “We have let you down.”