Gang Problem Worsens Despite City’s Program : Violence: Several measures OKd by Santa Ana have yet to be taken. Officials claim progress, urge patience.

When Damacio Castillo’s living room window was shattered by what he believed was a gangbanger’s gunshot last year, Castillo decided to play it safe for a while. He slept on the floor.

“It may have been silly, but I didn’t want to take a chance,” said Castillo, who has lived with his wife and two small children in Santa Ana’s Delhi neighborhood for about two years. “Nothing (deadly) has happened yet here, but one never knows.”

Such random violence, which gave rise to the paralyzing fear that gangs controlled certain city streets, was precisely what the City Council was hoping to stem when it enacted a sweeping gang-prevention plan a year ago. The plan was adopted in the wake of a shocking murder at a basketball court that riveted community attention on the city’s gang problem.

But gang violence in Orange County’s largest city is worse than it was a year ago, and only part of the gang plan--now called the Youth Alternative Program--has been implemented.

Despite approval by the City Council in the wake of the shooting a year ago:

* No hot line for reporting gang activity was ever established.

* No gymnasium to keep youths off the street was opened.

* And a $250,000 transfer from the city’s graffiti-removal budget to recreation programs was never made.

Meanwhile, the evidence of continued gang presence is pervasive.

In the first five months of 1993, 15 people were slain in gang violence--six more than were killed during the same period last year, Police Lt. Robert Helton said. Gang-related assaults also increased in 1993, with 100 reported incidents between January and May of this year. Last year, there were 62 during the same period.

Despite the plan and a county-wide gang truce organized by the United Gangs Council last year, gang violence continues in some areas of the city, Helton said. “Some gang members will bluntly tell you they don’t believe in the truce,” he said.

Three young men were killed in what authorities believe were gang-related shootings during the last five days alone. Two were shot and killed in unrelated incidents early Saturday. A third died Wednesday after he was shot in an alleyway in the Mid-City area.

“There was a lot of ballyhoo about doing this (anti-gang plan),” said John Raya, a former trustee of the Rancho Santiago Community College District who is active in gang prevention efforts. “But have we made significant improvements? People would all tell you there’s more of a problem.”

Ron Heike, a former member of the Human Relations Commission, agreed. “It’s a year later, and what’s happened?” he asked. “We’ve had a couple of peace marches, but there’s nothing really positive that’s happened.”

But Mayor Daniel H. Young said it will take a long time to solve the problems. “It’s naive at best to talk about turning the corner on gang violence in a year,” Young said. “I think it’s going to take a generation, if not more, to get a group of young people to distance themselves from . . . gang behavior.”

“I don’t think we’ve implemented each and every suggestion that came up, but on balance we’ve done a lot of good with (the anti-gang plan),” Young added. “The disappointment is that there aren’t enough resources to take on the problem, given the size of the problem today. We’re helping kids one by one, but the problem is hundreds and hundreds.”

Miguel A. Pulido Jr., mayor pro tem and architect of the plan, agreed that residents must give the effort more time. “Many aspects of the plan are long-term, such as more parks, facilities and general infrastructure. We still have a long way to go on those. I don’t think anybody ever expected those to be done in a year.”

Cindy Nelson, executive director of the Community Development Agency, also defended the plan. “I think the community at large would love to read that gang activity is reduced in half, but I don’t think it’s realistic,” she said.

“All the programs aren’t going to change anything,” agreed a former gang member who refused to give his name. “It’s la vida (the life) in Santa Ana.”

Pressure for a city response to gang violence reached a peak in the middle of last year, after Mauro V. Meza, a Santa Ana father of three, was shot in the face when he and his companions refused to give cigarettes to gang members who confronted them on a basketball court.

The senselessness of the slaying angered the community, prompting rallies and meetings at which city leaders acknowledged the problem, asked for citizen involvement and promised a push to find a solution.

A week before the killing, Santa Ana attorney Alfredo Amezcua had put forth a 10-point plan to address escalating violence and added four suggestions after Meza’s death. Amezcua has been heavily involved in efforts to bring peace through the gang truce and United Gangs Council rallies, including a recent march from Santa Ana City Hall to El Salvador Park.

Amezcua’s plan was rejected by the City Council, which said it was too wide-ranging and expensive and duplicated city and county efforts.

A plan prepared in response to Amezcua’s proposals was adopted in June, 1992. The city’s plan focused on preventing gang activity among so-called “at-risk” teens instead of intervening in the lives of hard-core gang members. The job of suppressing gang violence was left to the Police Department.

The plan encompassed several programs, activities and institutions--many already in existence before it came together.

One of the plan’s new portions called for a gang hot line that youths could use to report gang activity and receive counseling, and which parents could call for advice.

The hot line has remained cold, however. “We looked into the cost of the service and it turned out to be more complicated than we realized,” Nelson explained.

The city’s plan also called for distribution of bilingual gang prevention booklets and youth resource directories. Although the booklets were handed out, the directories were not. City officials said they will be available by August.

Amezcua’s plan proposed a gymnasium where gang members could learn boxing and other sports, and city leaders agreed. A temporary boxing program was set up at a city recreation center one day a week, but it was later closed, because few attended.

A deal setting up the permanent gym at a downtown Santa Ana building later fell through when organizers could not find a group to underwrite the insurance.

Another element of the plan called for the transfer of $250,000 from the graffiti-removal budget to recreation programs, if graffiti in the city declined. But a “tagging” explosion prompted the city to increase its graffiti-removal budget instead.

Job programs were also promised. Yet while many supported finding private companies to hire gang members or underprivileged youths, few private jobs materialized. City officials blamed budget cuts and employers’ fears of taking a chance on unskilled youths.

More than $800,000 in federal job training funds were earmarked for at-risk Santa Ana youth through the federal Weed and Seed program last autumn. But instead of the 600 youths hired last summer, just 400 will find jobs this summer because federal funds have been cut, officials said.

More than 110 current and former gang members, recruited by the United Gangs Council, held the summer jobs in 1992, said Patricia Nunn, executive director of the city’s Private Industry Council.

Young and Pulido said the city’s shortage of money prevented implementation of the programs. They said they were hoping money for local government would come from Washington under President Clinton’s economic plan.

“The city can’t carry the full load for the whole community,” Pulido said. “It’s a real shame that the redevelopment plan fell through . . . that’s how we were going to fund some of those big-ticket items.”

“It’s unfair to think that government alone can solve the problem,” Nelson added. “City Hall didn’t create it, and we can’t fix it all ourselves. Expectations are always going to be more than we can deliver.”

Among the main accomplishments of the Youth Alternative Plan is the city’s PRIDE program, whose budget was doubled to about $300,000 by the City Council. A popular program that provides anti-gang curriculum, trips and clubs for fourth- and fifth-graders, PRIDE now reaches about 8,000 children at 32 schools and parks.

Santa Ana also started several new outreach programs--including a job training program for teen-age parents that teaches basic job skills, and a business skills academy at Valley High School--which will reach almost 200 teens in gang-infested areas, officials said.

But despite the programs, ominous signs of a gang presence--drug dealing and graffiti--remain.

“The other day, on Halladay and Warner, I was watching city people paint out graffiti on the walls,” remembered Castillo. “The thing was that when they went around the corner, the kids sprayed the walls all over again.”

At a community meeting in the Delhi neighborhood two weeks ago, “there were city leaders there speaking to us,” said Catalina Castellon, who is active in a grass-roots network of churches called the Orange County Congregation Community Organization. “But before the meeting, right outside the doors of the building, there were people selling drugs.”

Both said the number of shootings seems to have declined in their neighborhoods since the beginning of the year. They credit more police patrols. But in other areas, gang shootings have left their mark.

Father Christopher Smith, a pastor at St. Joseph Catholic Church in the Lacy neighborhood, sadly recalled the New Year’s Eve shooting death of Alex Cordova, 16, and the March slaying of Esteban Zavala Martinez, 2, as he rested in his father’s arms. Both were killed on the same block of North Garfield Street.

The random violence “makes people afraid, it makes people angry,” Smith said. “It shakes people’s confidence.”

Since the fall of last year, St. Joseph’s has set up a weekly evening of games and crafts for children, Smith said. Alex was one of the first neighborhood youths to hang out there.

“Over the past year, I’ve seen things get worse in terms of violence,” Smith said. “We started the outreach at the right time.”

Even in quieter neighborhoods, residents are concerned, but solutions seem difficult. “It’s impacted me; I’ve seen gang activity near me,” said Guy Ball, who lives in Wilshire Square. “But it’s a feeling of ‘what can you do?’ ”

But Young said he believes that many Santa Ana residents feel safer. “What do the people in those neighborhoods feel about their relative safety?” he asked. “There’s so much dialogue in the neighborhoods about stopping the violence that people will end it. While the statistics don’t show it, there’s been a change in the attitude out there.” Castellon said she has tried to urge her neighbors to join together to lobby leaders for change, including greater neighborhood safety or improving parks. “You see the young people who are so affected by drugs and gangs they don’t care what happens to anyone else,” Castellon said. “Something has to be done to help them.”

While city leaders counsel patience and promise progress, some believe that the plan suffered from a lack of attention after the initial response that followed Meza’s shooting. In the end, they say, a solution may require the community to take charge of anti-gang programs itself.

Raya, for example, is organizing a boxing club for the city’s youths in the hope of keeping them off the streets. Castellon is working with her church group to push for a bigger park in her neighborhood.

“Once the political spotlight is off . . . people go back to the mundane issues until there’s another killing,” Raya said.

Combatting Gangs

The Santa Ana City Council last year adopted a plan to battle the influence of youth gangs in the city. It included proposals to:

* Establish a hot line for reporting gang activities and counseling parents and children.

* Create a youth resources directory for parents and children.

* Distribute a bilingual booklet for parents on preventing gang activities.

* Continue community forums on how to reduce gang activities.

* Establish a youth recreation center.

Serious Gang Crimes Increase

The number of gang-related homicides and assaults with deadly weapons, however, increased in Santa Ana during the first five months of 1993, compared to the same period last year. The percentage of such crimes committed by gang members also climbed.

Homicides Assaults With Deadly Weapon Gang- Percent Gang- Percent Total related of total Total related of total 1993 28 15 54 474 100 21 1992 21 9 43 453 62 14

Source: Santa Ana Police Department

Researched by ALICIA DI RADO / Los Angeles Times