East Issue / Gang Violence in...

Judy Lazar, Mayor, Thousand Oaks

I think crime is on the rise throughout Southern California. It is not something we want to tolerate here. We have a zero-tolerance policy toward gangs. But in walking the neighborhood, (after the shooting) I think the response that I heard from most of the residents was that it was an isolated incident. They had felt very secure and comfortable in their neighborhood. However, they were greatly concerned about an incident like this. In Thousand Oaks we have tried to implement policies that would clamp down on crime. We have a very active Neighborhood Watch policy. When I walked that neighborhood, I was distributing information about Neighborhood Watch and urging residents to re-establish a program that had been started probably 10 years ago. We also have a very active policy against graffiti. We get rid of it immediately. I think we were all shocked by this kind of occurrence in what has been a relatively low-crime neighborhood. It points out the danger of people having parties where there are juveniles, alcohol and invitees who are possible gang members--a very dangerous combination.

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Tim Mendoza, His sister, Celina, was seriously injured in the latest shooting

A lot of people in Thousand Oaks are joining a lot of gangs. It’s getting pretty rough now. A lot of people want to join the gangs to be popular and have protection and all that. I think it is actually on the rise even though the mayor doesn’t see it. You’ve got to come out to the streets, you’ve got to come out to where it’s at. If the cops start nipping it in the bud now and arresting gang members, I don’t think it will spread. If they don’t arrest the shooter who shot my sister, violence is going to rise because they’re going to think they can get away with it. Most of the people I know are gang members. They’re hard-headed, but when they get to be 24 or 25 it gets to be pretty old. They’re trying to copy the gangs in L.A. and Compton and all that. I really don’t think there’s a reason to have a gang out here because this community is really beautiful. That’s why we moved out here from Long Beach about four years ago, to get away from the gangs. There, they don’t drive by with .22s. They drive by with MAC-10s and AK-47s. They don’t mess around. They’ll blow your house up.

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Sgt. Dennis Carpenter, Supervisor, Sheriff’s East Valley gang detail

It’s definitely on the rise in Thousand Oaks. We’ve seen an increase in assaults and we’re finding more and more weapons on gang members, carrying baseball bats and guns. We recently arrested a 15-year-old kid for discharging a handgun. We’ve had a lot of graffiti activity. We also have a fairly new tagging crew that seems to be leaning toward full-blown gang activity. Right now it’s graffiti, but a few batteries have occurred and I believe that before too long we’ll probably identify them as another gang. With someone that’s just starting to hang around with gang members, we fill out field interview cards from conversations with informants. Say 13-year-old Johnny Smith never had a gang affiliation before, but is hanging out with hard-core gang members and now goes by the name of Pokey. We fill out a card. Then we sit down with a stack of cards and we start calling moms and dads. On occasion we’ve scheduled a meeting here at the community room and had 30 parents show up. We tell them, your son or daughter was associating with a known gang member.

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Chuck Jordan, Anti-gang activist, father of woman killed in a drive-by shooting in Thousand Oaks

It’s a mistake to pinpoint Thousand Oaks as the center of gang activity. We have a countywide problem. The two gangs in question were from two different cities. My daughter was killed by a Thousand Oaks gang. Three days after Thousand Oaks was named the safest city in the United States for the first time, my daughter was murdered. Therefore, from my family’s point of view, Thousand Oaks was the most dangerous city I’ve ever lived in. I think it’s wrong of me or city fathers or anyone else to continue to brag about how safe one area is. It’s like looking in a pot of soup and saying one spoonful of soup is safer than the rest of the soup in there. We’re all in the soup together. For the city fathers to keep bragging about how safe it is there is stupid. There are drive-bys occurring in Thousand Oaks and other cities in this county all the time. It’s just that the murder rate isn’t what it is in Los Angeles County. It’s silly to think you’re safe because someone didn’t hit you in the head with a bullet, because the bullets are flying. They’re trying to mislead the citizenry that there isn’t a problem, and there is a huge problem.

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Richard Simpson, Assistant superintendent, Conejo Valley Unified School District

From a perspective of the schools, I would say that gang activities have certainly increased over the past few years, such as individuals who engage in either graffiti or vandalism or hostile acts toward other groups, or individuals who identify themselves as a gang. There’s name-calling, there’s tagging and there are fights. Most of this activity is not taking place in school. Schools are generally considered neutral turf. The district has a zero-tolerance policy toward possession of weapons or violence on campus as it’s related to gang activity. We have expelled about 20 to 25 students this year and about the same number last year. These are kids who are bringing weapons either to intimidate somebody else or for “protection” from something that may happen after school hours. The Sheriff’s Department is implementing a D.A.R.E. program in eighth grade next year. D.A.R.E. usually focuses on drug abuse, but this will have a different thrust--gangs, peer pressure and weapons. We’re also working on all our secondary campuses with programs and strategies to promote better multicultural understanding and appreciation.