The Fight Against Crime: Notes From the Front : Trading Tickets for Firearms Is a Long Shot

It boiled down to a contest pitting the glimmering allure of superstars against the steely seduction of guns.

No contest.

“Janet Jackson . . . .357 . . . Janet Jackson . . . .357,” pondered Ronnie Garcia, 19, positioning his hands in front of him as if comparing the respective weights of the singer and the magnum.

“Hey, what can I say?” he said. “Janet’s hard to hold. My .357 is just right.”

His partner, who called himself Knuckles, phrased it differently: “Nobody’s going to give up their gat for a concert ticket. I don’t care who it is.”

And so it went last week in Pacoima during the “Tickets for Guns” program, sponsored by the Ticketmaster agency, that allowed firearms owners to trade their guns for vouchers good for admission to concerts, professional sports events and other entertainment.

Jackson concert tickets were among the more than 500 options, a Ticketmaster spokesman said.

The Los Angeles Police Department promised that people turning in weapons would not be asked any questions. Firearms that were not used during crimes will be melted down and made into manhole covers.

Police set up shop in the Guardian Angel Catholic Church, in the middle of the San Fernando Gardens housing project in a rough Pacoima neighborhood, in an effort to put a dent in the number of guns on the streets of the northeast Valley.

What they got in the first four days was 23 mostly antique, rusted or otherwise inoperable pistols, rifles and shotguns--not what the optimists had hoped.

“Gun exchange? What gun exchange?” said an officer on the program’s fifth and final day in Pacoima. “We got one stinking gun today.”

Citywide, the figure was 412.

Most of the firearms were broken or unusable, to the frustration of officers who spent hours of tedium waiting for citizens to turn in their arsenals.

“The wrong people are turning in their guns,” complained Officer Howard Mathews, who was stationed with Officer Pete Vanderburgh at Our Lady of the Valley church in Canoga Park.

The numbers do compare poorly with recent gun exchange programs in other cities.

In Oakland, for example, 68 guns were collected in a single day. Last year in San Francisco, officials offering $50 per gun collected 1,730 firearms during a three-month period. And in a New York City neighborhood, a program that gave citizens a $100 Toys “R” Us gift certificate for each weapon proved so popular that police ran out of certificates after about four days and 250 firearms.

Some Pacoima residents said the trade-in was doomed to failure by insufficient notice. Others said most of the publicity about the program was in English, a second language in many parts of Pacoima, particularly at San Fernando Gardens, a sprawling low-income housing tract.

“Most of the people here, they don’t speak much English,” said Irma Rosario as she stood outside her apartment. “They should have put up flyers in Spanish or gone into schools.”

But for many, trading in weapons was the last thing on their minds.

“I need my piece,” said 16-year-old “Mikey” as he stood near the gated entrance to the complex. “I don’t trust cops either. How are they going to come and say, ‘Turn in your guns and we won’t ask any questions’ when they’re harassing you every other day? No one believes that.”

A 14-year-old girl who called herself Honey agreed.

“I’m packin’ right now,” she said, lifting her gray sweat shirt to reveal the butt of a pistol tucked in her waistband. “Even if I wanted to get rid of it, I wouldn’t give it to no pig.”

And so, not Janet, not Luther Vandross, not even a ticket to Nirvana--the band, not the place of eternal bliss--could pry them loose from their guns.

And a ticket to a Clippers game?

“The Clips?” one young man asked with a smirk. “The way they’re playin’, they should come down here and pay to watch me play. They might learn a thing or two.”

About shooting more than baskets, unfortunately.