Harbor City Seeks Help Curbing Gangs : Crime: The community endures some of the heaviest drug dealing in Los Angeles. Many residents want to seek a court injunction to allow police to arrest gang members for normally legal activities.

Nothing, it seems, can insulate Ann’s paint store from the violence that drug dealers visit on Harbor City--not her 10-foot chain-link fence, not the barbed wire coiled on top, not even her big German shepherd.

When a drug deal on the street soured recently, one of the people involved scaled her fence and sprinted through her shop, gunshots ringing out behind him.

“I couldn’t believe it, but I looked up and there’s this guy just running by me,” said Ann, who declined to give her last name.

Harbor City is one of those parts of town that, for most Angelenos, is little more than a name on a city signpost. About 20,000 people live in the three-square-mile, mostly middle-class strip just north of Wilmington. It has no entertainment landmarks, no theme or industrial parks, no universities. Rather, it is a place to live or simply pass through.

But one characteristic does set Harbor City apart: A small portion of the community is host to some of the heaviest drug dealing in Los Angeles. So serious is the problem that the Los Angeles City Council has asked the city attorney’s office to redouble its efforts to seek a court injunction that would allow police to arrest known gang members for normally legal activities, such as gathering in groups.

The council made the request April 20, less than two weeks after a Van Nuys Superior Court judge, acting on a motion by the city attorney, ordered similar anti-gang restrictions in Panorama City. In an injunction April 7, Judge John J. Major prohibited Blythe Street gang members from possessing portable radios, large flashlights, radio scanners and cellular phones, which police and residents say gang members use to alert drug dealers to the presence of police.

It is unclear, however, whether the city attorney’s office will seek such an injunction for Harbor City. Maureen Siegel, who heads the city attorney’s criminal division, said the office has been trying to muster community support for such a move for two years. But unlike the situation in Panorama City, she said, the effort has fallen short, in part because not enough residents in the Normont Terrace public housing project, the area hit hardest by drug dealing, have been willing to come forward.

“A public nuisance abatement action requires a massive, massive level of community support,” Siegel said. “To use Blythe Street as an example, we had tremendous community support. We had compelling affidavits from well over 100 people.”

That explanation does not sit well with some Harbor City residents. Ann, who gave a deposition two years ago about her experiences with drug dealers, said the community was led to believe that the case was so strong, a court injunction would be forthcoming.

And besides, she said, the crime wreaked upon the community should be evidence enough.

“If this had been San Pedro or a bigger area, they would’ve taken care of it,” she said. “But those people who live down there in the (Normont Terrace) projects are poor, that’s why they’ve been overlooked.”

Everyone agrees that Harbor City has been hit hard by drug dealing. For the most part, the problem is limited to Normont Terrace and the surrounding neighborhood. Indeed, a drive down 253rd Street will reveal beat-up, boat-sized ’75 Chevys and glistening black BMWs occasionally pulling over, their drivers handing money to men on the sidewalk.

Gunplay is so common that children at Normont Elementary School are drilled in how to duck beneath their desks during gunfire.

It didn’t used to be that way.

“I moved my business in here 15 years ago and it was a good place, a great place to do business,” said Tony, seated in the foyer of his Lomita Boulevard business. Like Ann, he has had experience with fleeing drug dealers.

The other day he found a spice bottle full of a white substance on his property. Someone had tossed it there while being chased by police. He flushed the powder down the toilet, he said, but turned the bottle in to police.

“They said it was about $3,000 dollars worth of drugs in there,” Tony said. Like other people interviewed for this story, he declined to give his full name. He added: “I didn’t want no trouble.”

For Tony and other Harbor City merchants, such incidents add up to thousands of dollars in lost business. The area’s reputation is so bad, they say, many longtime customers stay away.

That was the case recently when two potential customers, a man and a woman, were standing in front of Tony’s office door, talking business. Two teen-agers rode by, aiming shiny black machine guns at them. The couple shrieked and ran for cover. The teen-agers laughed and pretended to fire their fake weaponry.

The customers left and have yet to return.

Interestingly, gang-on-gang violence in Harbor City has been simmering down lately. A cease-fire among Harbor City, Wilmington and San Pedro gangs has brought a 40% drop in gang violence in the area, police said.

Although gangbanging has abated, police said, drug dealing and drug-related violence involving gang members are on the rise.

“Gang crime in the harbor area is down all over,” said Detective Kim Wierman of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Harbor Division. “But the narcotics trade over in Harbor City is the worst in our area. And because of the narcotics, the violence is coming back.”

Two weeks ago, “we had officers who had their windows shot out as they were driving by. They were undercover but were mistaken for (rival drug dealers) driving through the area,” Wierman said.

It is against this background that the council asked the city attorney’s office to renew its efforts to win an anti-gang court injunction. The action was proposed by Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores, who says she was motivated in part by Harbor City experiences of her own.

While driving through the community recently to meet with constituents, she said she was approached by a young man who, instead of talking issues, asked her whether she wanted to buy heroin or cocaine.

Police said special gang abatement authority would be a big help in their fight against drug trafficking. Because police would be able to arrest gang members for congregating, drive-by violence would diminish because there would be fewer targets, they said.

“We want to break up this loitering,” Wierman said.

Many residents said they would welcome more police scrutiny.

Stella Jurado, president of the Normont Terrace Coordinating Council, said tough gang abatement steps would help scare away the considerable number of drug dealers that she believes come from outside Harbor City.

“We seem to be running into a situation here where every Tom, Dick and Harry can stroll in here and set up shop where they so desire,” she said. “It’s ridiculous to live in a community where you’re hearing sporadic gunshots all the time.”

Howard, a retiree, agrees. Wednesday afternoon at 2:30, he was on the phone with the LAPD’s Harbor Division, reporting a cocaine deal--almost a daily ritual for him.

“Yep, I saw it just up on 254th Street in broad daylight,” he said into the phone. Then Howard called the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department to report the drug deal again.

“There are a lot of good people in this community who care about it,” said Howard, who added that his whistle-blowing efforts have brought him death threats from gang members. “But they’ve got to do something to help us before it’s too late.”

John Northmore, a youth services official, says that although he sees a need for tough measures to stop drug dealing, not enough is being done to remedy deep-seated problems affecting Harbor City’s low-income teen-agers.

“The biggest thing is there’s gotta be some positive alternatives,” he said. “I’m out there shaking my fingers at the kids, don’t sell drugs, don’t gangbang, and then it’s Saturday night and they ask me: ‘Where are we going to go to meet girls and have fun?’ There’s very few free things for kids to do out there.”

Some Harbor City youths dismiss the proposed gang abatement steps as just more police harassment.

“It really doesn’t matter what they do too much because I don’t think it’s going to work,” said Daniel, 24, leaning against his car on 255th Street. Helen, a young woman with the words “Harbor City” tattooed on her forehead, agrees.

“All they do is harass us. The other day I was standing on Belle Port (Street) and they came and told me to move. So I’m walking on the sidewalk and before I get home, they come along again and give me a ticket for obstructing the sidewalk,” she said.

As she spoke, police cruised by in an unmarked car, peering at the youths. More youths joined the conversation. The police circled the block again.

When the police cruised by a third time, everybody smirked.

The youths said drug dealing is the result of having nothing to do. They don’t have jobs; they don’t have money. And they don’t think they’re going to get either. Now it may become illegal for them to stand together with people they have known all their lives on the streets where they grew up.

Sitting on a bike, Sammy says it is just flat-out racism.

A crocheted purple crucifix dangles on his chest and sunglasses help to hide his expression.

“This is where we live,” he said pointing to Normont Terrace. “This is our front yard,” he added, pointing to the street. “We don’t have a big park or front yard to play ball in, like the white people do.”

The police cruise by again.