Black on Brown Crime : Racial Tension, Poverty Blamed for Rise in Violence Toward Latinos

Only weeks after she graduated from high school, the 19-year-old woman lay dying on the grass, an innocent victim caught in the gunfire of a gang shooting at a Watts housing project. A decade ago, odds would have been good that both the shooter and the victim would have been black. But today, as in the July 27 killing of Maribel Ayala, black gang members at the Nickerson Gardens and Jordan Downs projects are increasingly preying on and harassing Latinos, who constitute about a third of the 6,224 residents there, according to police and community activists.

Latinos are frequent crime victims for various reasons, ranging from the perception that they are easy targets because they often carry a lot of cash to tensions resulting from a large influx of Latinos into once-black enclaves, say authorities and community leaders.

“You don’t want to label it just racial, but there’s a problem,” said Alberta Harris, an African-American and vice president of the Resident Management Corp. at Jordan Downs.

The Los Angeles Police Department has refused several requests for data on the race of crime victims and perpetrators in South-Central, saying the department lacks the resources to compile the data. Police also say a major reason crime reports are likely to underestimate the extent of violence is that many Latino victims do not come forward out of fear of retaliation.

But there is a consensus among area residents, housing officials and police that anecdotal evidence points to an increase in robberies and assaults since a pact between Latino residents and black gang members unraveled at the start of summer after job programs failed to materialize. The pact was arranged by African-American and Latino activists last October after a wave of gang violence in the summer of 1992.

“What I see as most disgusting is what seems to be totally innocent Hispanics being preyed upon,” said Sgt. Nick Sinibaldi, a patrol supervisor at the Police Department’s Southeast Division station. “It’s epidemic at times.”

The tension at Jordan Downs and Nickerson Gardens has prompted black and Latino community activists to plan several events for this month, including a unity dinner and a meeting between black gang members and Latino residents at Jordan Downs.

“People are terrorized and want to leave, but they can’t afford to go anywhere else,” said Arturo Ybarra, president of the Watts/Century Latino Organization, the only Latino community group in South Los Angeles.

Said Howard Wasserman, manager of Jordan Downs: “Things calmed down after the first of the year. But as soon as summer began, it popped up again.”

To be sure, crimes against African-Americans in the projects have not let up. In the past, police and residents say, black women were often seen as the easiest targets. But changing demographics have created new victims, resulting in crimes such as the killing of Maribel Ayala.

Heladio Lopez, stepfather of Ayala, and his cousin were confronted about 9 p.m. in a Nickerson Gardens parking lot by a young black man with a gun. Lopez, a janitor who had cashed his check at a meat market earlier, handed the robber $70.

The cousin, meanwhile, grabbed a gun from his nearby car and fired several shots, striking the robber twice as he rode away on a bicycle.

About 10 minutes later, as Lopez and Ayala stood outside, several young black men arrived in a car, got out and fired about 25 rounds from high-powered handguns, police said. Ayala, a Jordan High School graduate who was to attend Cal State Dominguez Hills in the fall, was hit once in the forehead. Lopez was not harmed.

“She didn’t do anything. Why? Why? Why?” cried Lopez, fighting back tears as he rubbed his fingers over a small photograph of his daughter.

Cornelious Stewart, 19, an alleged gang member, was charged with murder and robbery in connection with the killing and is awaiting arraignment in Superior Court, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Scott Carbough. Stewart was arrested after he arrived at a hospital in what police said was the getaway car. Stewart had been wounded in the leg and chest, apparently during the alleged earlier robbery attempt. Police said Lopez’s cousin was not arrested in that shooting because he acted in self-defense.

Just a week before the killing, Lopez had moved his family to Nickerson Gardens temporarily, seeking refuge in a friend’s apartment because their own home at the nearby Imperial Courts was too dangerous. The family’s apartment had been shot at and burglarized and their car stereo had been stolen. Lopez said the attacks may have been linked to arguments his family had with drug dealers near his apartment.

“We have been having a lot of problems with black people. We already have five police report(s),” Lopez’s wife, Adela Cuevas, wrote in a June 19, 1993, letter to the housing manager requesting a transfer. “They do not stop bothering us and we will like to move to a better area where there is not a lot of violence.”

Lawrence Green, then the manager of Imperial Courts, declined to discuss why the family was not moved. Marshall Kandell, spokesman for the Los Angeles Housing Authority, said that every effort is made to move residents, but noted that there are about 20,000 people on a waiting list for only about 40 vacancies a month among 8,000 units citywide.

Ayala was slain in the same two-block area of Nickerson Gardens where three Latinos were killed in two separate robbery attempts in January, police said. Carbough said Neal Sean Baptiste, 20, also an alleged black gang member, is awaiting trial in Superior Court on three counts of murder in connection with the killings.

Although black and Latino community activists blame the violence on a general lack of economic opportunity, they do not deny that racial tension in the projects is a factor.

Like the rest of South Los Angeles, Watts has changed from a predominantly black community to one of the fastest-growing Latino areas in the nation. In 1980, the census tracts that include Nickerson Gardens and Jordan Downs were 98% African-American, according to the city Planning Department. Today the black population has decreased to about 75%, and the Latino population has grown to about 25%.

Some black residents feel as if they are under siege.

“Latino people are moving in and taking over,” said Nora King, a 20-year resident of Nickerson Gardens and former president of the project’s Resident Management Corp. “It’s just like an invasion. . . . They come into our community and they don’t even want to associate with us.”

At Jordan Downs, some black residents resent the attention focused on a September, 1991, arson that killed five members of a Latino family who had complained about drug dealing in the neighborhood, said Constance L. Rice, western regional counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. She said those residents believe that the violence they suffered for years had been ignored by politicians and the media, and “that also contributes to the backlash.” Rice has worked with African-Americans and Latinos in the project to help ease tensions.

After that fire, some Latino residents demanded segregated housing because they believed that the alleged arsonists were black. But when arrests were made, one suspect was black, one was Latino and the other was of mixed ethnicity. Jury selection in their trial is set for January.

Emotions also run strong among Latinos, some of whom say they have been harassed by blacks and called racial epithets.

“It makes you nervous if someone says something or breaks your window. You don’t know what can come next,” said Jose Navarro, a Mexican immigrant who claims his two children have been called racist names and that his apartment windows have been broken three times in his four years at Nickerson Gardens.

Jordan Downs resident Elvira Leon, who was shot at by a young black male Aug. 5, said, “My children see black people and they run inside.” Her neighbor was shot in the leg during the attack.

Police have no motive for the shooting, although family members said one of Leon’s daughters fought with some black children earlier in the day at the project playground.

Leon said the gunman lives at Jordan Downs, but she refused to identify him during a meeting the next morning with the project manager and Housing Authority police. “What if they come for me and my children?” the mother of two told the housing authorities. “You can’t protect me.”

As Leon told, through an interpreter, how the families stayed up all night fearing that the shooter would return, the neighbor’s daughter broke into tears.

“I don’t want to go back there (to the apartment)! . . . They’re going to come after us!” cried 17-year-old Guillermina Alvarez.

Leon, Alvarez and several other family members were escorted back to their apartments by community activist Fred Williams, who has worked hard with both sides to end the violence at Jordan Downs and Nickerson Gardens. Williams, who for years has worked with youths in the projects, wanted the local gang members to see him with the families.

Though Watts has Latino gangs, they do not operate in Jordan Downs or Nickerson Gardens and have not retaliated against blacks, police said. But more Latinos are arming themselves, as in the Ayala shooting and a homicide at Jordan Downs two weeks earlier when a Latino tried to pull a gun from under his truck’s seat when confronted by black robbers. One gunman fatally shot the Latino man, police said. No arrests have been made.

Harris of Jordan Downs says there is a “communication breakdown” between blacks and Latinos in the projects. “People don’t understand each other’s cultures,” said Harris, who formed a block club with Latino neighbors.

Community activists say the root of the violence is a lack of jobs, which has forced many young men to rely on crime for a living.

“A lot of it has to do with the quality of life here,” said Williams, executive director of the nonprofit Cross Colours Common Ground Foundation. “There is a serious lack of jobs and recreational activities, not just for young black men, but for families in general.”

And Latinos are often easy targets because many are not street-wise, police say. Many are immigrants from rural areas where there is little crime and few people use banks. As a result, they take few precautions, cashing their checks at stores and carrying relatively large amounts of money.

“Most of them, unfortunately, are recent immigrants from the countryside in Mexico who are not sophisticated in the ways of gangs and violence,” said Lt. Sergio Robleto, commander of the Police Department’s South Bureau homicide detail.

Others, who may be here illegally, do not report crimes because they fear police may turn them in to immigration officials.

Jordan Downs resident Jaime Zeledon--who has been robbed, called a “snitch” and had his bedroom windows shot out because he reports crimes to police--says many black and Latino victims do not speak out because they fear retaliation.

“They know police can’t protect them,” said Zeledon, a member of the Watts Latino group who fills out his own reports when he hears of a crime.

With only 60 Housing Authority police to patrol about 80 projects and apartment buildings from San Fernando to San Pedro, officials acknowledge that they have difficulties protecting residents. “The problems are much bigger than we are,” Kandell said.

Police Department officials say they are also hampered by limited resources. “We do the best we can to provide security. And on a case-by-case basis, we do some extraordinary things to protect people,” said department spokesman Cmdr. David Gascon. He said patrol cars cruise both projects periodically.

Authorities and residents said they began to notice an increase in gang violence against Latinos at both housing projects at the start of summer in 1992. By fall, they said, the situation was out of control.

“It got almost to the point of panic,” recalled Rice of the NAACP, whom Ybarra asked for help.

To help ease tensions, activist Williams introduced Ybarra and Zeledon to gang members in the fall of 1992. The result was a meeting the following spring between about 100 gang members and about 50 Latinos at the Jordan Downs gymnasium.

“We said we wanted to get along with our African-American neighbors,” Ybarra recalled.

Added Williams, “There was just a lot of misunderstanding.” He said local drug dealers had spread rumors that Latino families were hiding police in their homes so that they could arrest the dealers and gang members.

The mediation efforts apparently had some effect.

From about last November to the start of this summer, Ybarra and others said, gang violence against Latinos at Jordan Downs virtually stopped. There were still incidents at neighboring Nickerson Gardens, however, including the January slaying of the three Latinos.

By late June, Williams and others say, gang members became frustrated and returned to crime when summer jobs advertised by city officials did not materialize. Federal funding for the city’s Summer Youth Job Program, which was heavily promoted in the area, was slashed, leaving only about half as many jobs as the year before.

“It’s really tragic,” Rice said. “We could have avoided this with a good summer program for the kids.”

Williams, Ybarra and others are working to bring the two sides together again.

“What blacks and Hispanics have to understand is that we are all in the same boat,” said Tommy Elam, 20, a former gang member who was raised at Jordan Downs.