LAPD Urged to Reduce ‘Black-on-Brown’ Crime : Housing projects: Latino residents meet with police, who say there is no evidence that race is a factor in attacks by gang members.

Latino residents of the city’s housing projects in Watts, saying they are being attacked by African American gang members, last weekend pressed police and their councilman at a community meeting to do something to stop the violence.

The Dec. 4 meeting came a day before a Latino resident was shot dead by an alleged gang member during a botched robbery at the Nickerson Gardens housing project. The meeting also occurred in the wake of a police crime analysis showing that Latinos and African Americans in South Los Angeles are equally as likely to be robbery victims, but that African Americans are most often the suspects.

“Gang members are robbing, killing and victimizing Latino residents in the housing projects,” said Jaime Zeledon, a resident of the Jordan Downs project and member of the Watts / Century Latino Organization, which organized the meeting. He was one of about 100 people from throughout Watts who attended the session at San Miguel Church.

Addressing the police and public officials at the meeting, Zeledon asked: “What are you going to do to fight crime?”

Police acknowledged that there are tensions in the area caused by major demographic changes, which over the last decade have transformed Watts from a predominantly black enclave to one of the fastest-growing Latino communities in the nation. But police downplayed Latinos’ claims that ethnicity is a factor in the violence.

“We looked at this very seriously, and we see no evidence of anyone being singled out (by race or ethnicity),” said Capt. Willie L. Pannell, commander of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Southeast Division, which covers Watts.

Although Latinos and African Americans in Watts are equally as likely to be robbery victims, African Americans are eight to 10 times more likely to be suspects in those crimes, according to a copy of a department report obtained by City Times. The report’s findings were based on a six-month analysis of robberies this year in the LAPD’s South Bureau, which covers a 57-square-mile area stretching from the Santa Monica Freeway to San Pedro and from Watts to Windsor Hills.

“There has long been a perception among Hispanic community leaders that there has been a disproportionate number of crimes committed against Hispanics by African Americans,” said the report, which was prepared in September in the wake of a City Times article on crimes against Latinos by black gang members in Watts housing projects.

The report did not address whether police believed those perceptions were true. It said a major problem in the area was an underreporting of crime by Latinos and called for “proactive programs to alleviate the fear of Black-on-Brown crime and to enhance the reporting of Hispanic victims.”

At the meeting, Pannell said Latinos are often victims because they carry large amounts of cash and do not report crimes. He also told residents that he has started a new foot patrol and reassigned officers to the area to help stop robberies in and near the housing projects.

“It’s become a big problem,” Pannell said of the robberies, “and we’re paying a lot of attention to it.”

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In the botched robbery Dec. 5, Refulio Guzman, 32, was shot about 1:30 a.m. in a scuffle outside his Nickerson Gardens apartment. Guzman’s family and friends were having a barbecue when the gunman approached and tried to rob eight people, police said. The gunman opened fire when Guzman and two guests resisted.

Wounded, Guzman ran into his apartment but the gunman followed, kicked open the door and fired several shots at Guzman, his wife, two children and brother, police said. The wife, children and brother were uninjured, but Guzman died of his wounds at Martin Luther King Jr.-Drew Medical Center.

Police said witnesses identified the suspect as Demetrius Rayshawn Webster, 19, an alleged gang member. Webster was turned over to police Thursday by his attorney and charged the next day with murder, eight counts of attempted robbery, nine counts of assault with a deadly weapon and one count of firing at a dwelling, police said.

To increase crime reporting, Pannell gave residents at the meeting a telephone number where they could report crimes anonymously and assured them that police do not cooperate with immigration officials. Many Latinos who are in the country illegally fear that if they report crimes, police will turn them in to the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Councilman Rudy Svorinich Jr., who represents Watts, was also at the meeting. In an interview, Svorinich said that his office has provided $1,500 for a police bike patrol in the area and that he will work with the Police Department to start crime-prevention programs in Spanish.

“We have to make more people comfortable with the Police Department,” Svorinich said.