Two Deaths, Too Few Answers : Bullets Shattered a Park’s Peace, Claiming a Young Father and Former Gangbanger as Well As a 73-Year-Old Reading a Bible. The Killings Have Raised Questions About a Declining Neighborhood Where Young and Old Rarely Interact.

On a shady corner of Denker Avenue Recreation Center, the wilting petals of carnations, roses, irises, petunias and tulips on a makeshift shrine are a reminder that Dwayne Capers once lived.

Capers, who was a Rolling 30s Harlem Crip, was gunned down April 7 when rival Bloods walked across the park and opened fire on a group of Crips sitting on a picnic bench. A stray bullet killed 73-year-old King Clark as he sat in his living room across the street reading a lesson for his Bible study class.

Capers, 31, was an OG--Original Gangster--who had given up hard-core gangbanging after the birth of his daughter, DaJuana, eight years ago and helped organize a jobs program for gang members. He worked as a plumber and spent much of his spare time in the park where he coached football, basketball and baseball.

Clark, a native of Arkansas who had lived in the neighborhood 20 years, was a devout Seventh-day Adventist who had been mostly housebound since a stroke three years ago.

Residents of the mostly African-American neighborhood just northwest of Exposition Park are interpreting the tragedy in various ways.

Older residents, who largely came from the South to the promised land of post-World War II Los Angeles, blame today’s pervasive violence on the deterioration of small-town values and the breakdown of extended families that historically served as a safety net for errant youths.

While some younger residents agree, they stress that few opportunities exist to fill the void for teen-agers and young adults for whom gangs have come to serve as surrogatefamilies.

Denker park, also the site of a child-care center and the Betty Hill Senior Center, is a peculiar meeting ground where various elements of the neighborhood come together but rarely interact. The two deaths have led to reflection in the community about how to address its crime and gang problems, but no easy solutions have emerged.

In the days after Capers died, a memorial was erected in his honor at the park. Olde English 800 malt liquor bottles serve as vases for the flowers. Other tributes included cards, champagne bottles, blue bandannas and a paper plate laden with fried chicken and white bread symbolizing a final meal.

Though Capers had given up gangbanging, the gang symbols on the shrine reflected his close friendship with fellow Crips. They would often hang out in the park to socialize, drink and play cards and dominoes on the picnic benches.

Capers and other Crips were sitting on one of those benches about 8:30 on a Wednesday evening when two Bloods walked across the park’s baseball field and fired on the group, witnesses said. Capers was shot in the head and died soon after arrival at California Hospital. Reginald Carr, who was also sitting on the bench, was struck in the right leg.

Police have no suspects in the shooting, which Crips believe was a pay-back provoked by a shooting earlier that evening between local Crips and Bloods. It was the first shooting inside Denker park in about 10 years, residents say.

It was an ironic end for Capers because friends say he often encouraged younger Crips to leave gangbanging, to go to school, get a job and build a future for themselves.

“He was like a big brother,” said a former Crip who asked not to be named. “If you had any kind of trouble he would be there. He was always telling us what was good and what was bad. He was always telling us to give up gangbanging.”

From 1982 to 1986, Capers was a community coordinator for Youth Outreach, a summer jobs program for youth around Denker park, which is in the center of a neighborhood of tree-lined streets and mostly single-family homes.

Cedric Farmer, one of Capers’ best friends and also a coordinator of Youth Outreach, said Crips and Bloods alike flocked to the program that employed about 150 youths. They cleared alleys, helped senior citizens clean their yards, did landscaping and worked in day-care centers.

“After a day of work they would be tired and they wouldn’t have any time or energy for gangbanging,” said Anthony Moore, a welder who participated in the program. “A lot of times, that was their first work experience and that gave them the initiative to go out and find other jobs.”

When funding for Youth Outreach ran out in 1986, Capers did odd jobs. A year ago, he started to work as a plumber with a local company. A former Crip said Capers always talked about organizing and seeking funding for another jobs program. “He really wanted to do something for Crips and Bloods to work together,” said the man, who requested anonymity.

Farmer and others said that as opportunities in the community have dwindled, gang activity has become less fraternal and more criminal.

“These kids think that they should get what they can now because they don’t know if they’re going to be around tomorrow,” said Farmer, a former Crip who has lived in the neighborhood 28 years. “And with the availability of money through drugs, younger kids are being exposed to a whole lot of things at younger ages. They are growing up fast and hard out here in the streets. When I was 14 or 15, I wasn’t doing stuff like this.

“They see their mamas, daddies and their older brothers and their uncles and cousins selling drugs and shooting and having sex and all this. They grow up seeing this. And this becomes the way to live. This is how you are able to get your lowriders, how you’re able to get that Cadillac; it’s how you’re able to have that gold around you neck.”

Some of the gang members who were among the more than 500 people attending Capers’ funeral have pledged to clean up their lives in his memory.

Carr, who was shot with Capers, said most gangbangers he spoke to during and after the funeral said they wanted to give up that lifestyle.

“About 60% of them are with (getting out),” Carr said. “About 40% want to stay in.”

Carr, 32, said the deaths of Capers, his best friend, and Clark have forced him to examine his own life.

“This has opened up my eyes,” Carr said. “I’m trying to get my life together and take care of my two sons and DaJuana. I want to go back to school for computer programming. I want to better myself.”

To return a sense of normalcy to a neighborhood of people who have been looking over their shoulders since the shootings, the area Crips are sponsoring a block party in the park today with free food.

“This is how Wayne would have wanted it,” Carr--his leg still in a cast--said on a recent afternoon as he talked with a visitor in the west side of the park. “He would have wanted us to go on, to make things better.”

Although Carr is optimistic that he will be able to make a new start, he said it will take more than personal initiative to turn the neighborhood around. He accuses African-American professionals of turning their backs on the community, and public agencies of noticing the area’s problems only during crises.

“We’ve been left here to figure out how to get our own money and all the things that we need in the community to turn things around,” Carr said.

Farmer, meanwhile, insists that if the gang problem is to be solved, there must be programs to replace the brotherhood and support gangs offer.

“We’re like family around here,” he said of the bond between gang members and former gang members. “You can’t take that away without putting something back.”

King Clark didn’t know the senior citizens who gather at the Betty Hill Senior Center, but they knew of his death.

On an afternoon a week after the shooting, 15 senior citizens sat on folding chairs at long brown tables eating turkey, corn and mashed potatoes paid for by the black sorority Delta Sigma Theta.

John Crutchfield, a feisty 78-year-old who has lived in the area 18 years, said that when he hears gunfire he will now “drop to the floor wherever I am.”

While he is more careful now, he criticized paranoia and complacency among the local senior citizens and said gang members are generally respectful to residents.

“The problem is that we older people can’t get together with these younger people to sit down one hour a month so we can discuss anything,” Crutchfield said. “There has been no intergenerational mingling whatsoever. We can’t blame everybody when every time you look up there’s somebody shooting and killing. . . . We’re right here in this. What are we doing? These kids don’t have anyone to teach them.”

At Denker Avenue and 36th Street, a 66-year-old resident who prefers to be called Auntie Rae was not so sure what older residents should do about the gang problem.

“When we were growing up we did things” like drinking and smoking, said Auntie Rae after she dusted off a late model Cadillac in her driveway. “Killings didn’t happen then. Things are more serious now.”

Although Auntie Rae said she was shaken by the two deaths, she plans to remain in the neighborhood. She does not plan to change her ways, or become a crusader.

“I’m not one to hang over the fence, one to run in and out of neighbors’ homes,” she said. “Something needs to be done to help our young people. What it is, I can’t say. You could say that it’s jobs that they need. But I’m quite sure they’ve tried to get jobs. They don’t want to just hang out. They are looking forward to more in life. And they are deserving of more.”

Across the park, as the sun’s rays cut through two sliding glass windows, Esleen Nash, Clark’s sister, looked across 35th Place to the empty baseball field at Denker Avenue Recreation Center.

The park was closed for a week after the shootings and now shuts down at 6 p.m. instead of 9 p.m., said Manuel Mollinedo, assistant general manager of the metropolitan region of the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks. He said the temporary changes are part of a “cooling-off period” to protect the residents and park employees in the event of more gunfire.

There have been several shootings in other areas between Bloods and Crips since Capers and King were killed, but police would not say whether the incidents were retaliatory.

The park is deserted at the time of day when, in the past, boys would be at Little League practice and younger children would be playing in the sand lot. Nash stands between two bullet holes in the sliding glass window, one to her right at eye-level, the other to her left at hip-level.

“I was talking to him (from another room),” Nash said. “And then there was crying and yelling going on outside. It seems like he was trying to open the curtain or get up out of his chair when the lower bullet hit him.”

The Nashes and other residents along 35th Street said they want the park closed permanently and are calling for more police to patrol the area.

“The only thing is that I want more police around this park,” said Larry Nash, Clark’s brother-in-law. “It is a nice recreation area, but the gangs use it to hang out and that makes it bad. It makes it difficult for the neighbors to use the park. They sit out there and drink. And then the other gangs come by and that causes confusion.”

LAPD Sgt. Jay M. Collins said the area’s gang problem cannot be solved by police alone. It will take a network of governmental agencies and community groups to address the problem, said Collins, part of the Southwest division’s gang unit.

“Maybe if a judge drove around here and got carjacked then something will be done,” Collins said. “There is a laid-back attitude when hundreds of innocent people have died. The only thing officers can do is to interact with some of the gang members, but that isn’t going to stop the shooting.”

Almost three weeks after the killings, 29 youths were playing in the park and its gymnasium. Normally, more than 100 people come to the park daily, said Park Director Billy Shields, but there has been a noticeable drop-off since the shootings.

Shields sat at his desk next to the gym, the sound of bouncing balls echoing off the walls. As he turned to look out the windows, he said he has become more protective of the children who depend on the park as a meeting place after school.

“It makes me a little scared,” Shields said. “Not of the fellows here at the park, but of somebody driving by and starting shooting.”

Tony Clark, who played on one of Capers’ baseball teams, said he and his friends are more careful now and leave the park before dark.

“I don’t stay out late,” he said. “I walk more careful. I look at every car that goes by.”

“I was supposed to be on his baseball team,” recalled 12-year-old Tavon Humbles. “Every time a car pulls up, I watch out if anybody’s got a gun or a weapon. We look for unexpected people who don’t live around here.”

Shields said the park needs more money for youth programs, but it is also needs community volunteers to work with young people.

“It’s sad that they really can’t come together,” he said. “But that’s just the way it is around here. There’s not a whole lot of interaction.”

Annette Jones, recreation director of the senior center, said the killings have led her to examine what she calls the root of the gang problem and juvenile delinquency in the area.

“This is an issue between the haves and the have-nots,” said Jones, who has lived in South-Central for 23 years. “People are more concerned about their careers and their houses on the hill, their Mercedes, all their stuff, their material goods. This isn’t just a black problem, this is a national problem. People who are a bit more successful, educated or what have you, don’t want to spend no time educating the younger kids, educating their own kids. Everybody passes the buck when it comes to these children.”