Residents Fear Avenue Going One Way: Down : Some Doubt That Meeting Will Help Ventura Neighborhood

Against a backdrop of growing violence and community pessimism, Ventura city leaders and residents of the Ventura Avenue neighborhood will meet this week to discuss problems ranging from increased crime to chronic poverty.

The two groups will meet Thursday night at Sheridan Way School, in the heart of the neighborhood’s most troubled section, to attempt to find new approaches to the problems facing one of Ventura’s oldest communities.

Residents say they are trying to remain optimistic.

But after years of drug dealings on the corner, shootings in the street and gang members settling into the house next door, many say they are skeptical that anyone can jump-start change in their tree-lined neighborhood.

“My personal experience is that these rap sessions don’t go anywhere,” said Yvette Sutton, who has lived on Vince Street for three years. “If they need me to support them in their efforts, then fine, I’ll do that. But I’m not interested in having a bunch of meetings where we shout at each other and point the finger.”

Mayor Tom Buford does not disagree.

“I wouldn’t blame somebody for being skeptical,” Buford said. “All you can do is say it didn’t work before, so you try again.”

The impetus for Thursday’s meeting, which will be attended by a city delegation expected to include most council members and city police officials, began last month in the wee hours of the morning.

After weeks of listening to bullets whistling through the nighttime air and months of watching sidewalk drug deals so casual that they actually backed up traffic for blocks, residents of West Harrison Street woke up on April 16 to the deafening sounds of ammunition spraying against their houses and even through their windows.

“It was around 2 or 2:30 in the morning,” recalled West Harrison resident Karen Walker. “It was like the Fourth of July fireworks grand finale. I’d heard enough gunfire in the previous weeks to know what it was, but I’d never heard anything like THIS. I was just scared.”

Police said unknown gunmen fired about 30 rounds into houses, shops and cars parked near Olive Street and Harrison Avenue. No one was hurt, police said.

But though police officers showed up that morning and again later that day, residents quickly grew frustrated when they saw nothing about the incident in the local press and heard no reaction from the city.

Police officials say they have already begun a surveillance operation that resulted in two raids April 23, 10 raids May 3, and eight arrests altogether, in connection with the shootings.

“If you can say that’s routine, then I guess that’s routine,” said Sgt. Carl Handy of the Ventura Police Department’s special enforcement unit.

Unaware of the police efforts, which Handy says were intentionally kept quiet, a cluster of angry residents took the responsibility upon themselves to alert the public and badgered the Police Department for more patrols along their streets.

They flooded city employees and council members with calls, demanding to know what they could do to help stem the violence.

“It takes a lot of yelling for us to get their attention,” said Len Evans, one of the West Harrison residents who organized the effort.

Members of the neighborhood group, most of them newcomers to the saga of strife and supposed municipal neglect, say they soon discovered it was hard to tell who was more jaded--their fellow residents or the city officials representing them. “Buford tried to argue us out of this at first,” Evans said. “He was worried that everybody would start yelling at the police in the meeting and then nothing would come beyond that. He said you can’t do anything in the neighborhood here because there is no one to contact.”

Buford did not deny that he was initially concerned about planning yet another forum in the area.

“Len (Evans) and I had a fairly lively discussion,” he said. “But I welcomed somebody calling me and saying he wanted to do something. In the long run, that’s what will make all the difference.”

The organizers have since convinced Buford that it is time, once again, to call a meeting of the Ventura Avenue neighborhood. They say they are happy with the Police Department’s quick, intensive response, though they hope now that police attention to their neighborhood will continue beyond the raids.

But the crucial part of the battle, they say, may be still ahead. “I’m skeptical that the neighbors are not going to show up,” Walker said. “I’m worried that many neighbors around here will not stay around for the long haul, say that they’re willing to help, roll up their sleeves and really get their hands dirty about doing something.”

Other residents say the reasons for the neighborhood’s seemingly blase attitude toward its problems are varied and complex.

For one thing, they say, the area is dangerous.

“You don’t know if you are talking to gangbangers--you don’t know who you are talking to,” said West Harrison resident Larry Bacca, who met neighbors Evans and Walker only on the night of the shootings, when they were all standing out in the street scared to go back in their houses.

Added Evans: “There are people in this neighborhood who look like nice old gentlemen, but I know they have gang affiliations. You are leery of your neighborhood.”

Arlene Martinez, who has lived on or near the neighborhood most of her 27 years, said the reason improvement efforts rarely work is because most are superficial fixes for deep-seated problems.

“The people down here are dead because they have no dreams,” said Martinez, who is a professional flower arranger. “Nine times out of 10, their mother was on welfare, they were left to fend for themselves, and, well, they do what they have to do.”

Children join gangs as teen-agers because, for many, it is the only family type of situation they have known in years, she said.

“They need to get something done to educate people, from learning about politics to changing a diaper,” she said. “It’s not any exaggeration when they say that it takes a whole community to raise one child.”

The neighborhood, however, is not solely an area of streets chockablock with gang members and the poor neighbors who fear them. Middle-class families--with the finances and leisure time to fight for municipal improvements--also live in the community. But many are isolated to a few, select streets and remain sheltered from the troubles just a short block away.

“I read that there’s all these horrific things going on in our part of town, but I don’t hear them and I don’t see them,” said Leslie Broude, a batik artist, who lives on quiet East Lewis Street. “I think this part of town has a lot of character.”

Whatever the reasons behind the apathy that some residents see as preventing progress, residents and city leaders alike say the community must change its attitude if life in the area is to improve.

“I think it works both ways,” said Councilman Gary Tuttle, who plans to attend Thursday’s meeting. Tuttle is the only council member whom Ventura Avenue residents consistently mention as committed to and interested in their neighborhood.

“Citizens have to be prepared to say, ‘I’m ready to do something,’ ” he said. “We’ve got to get people together, get them feeling that they are not alone in their individual houses and under siege. We’ve got to get rid of that perception.”

Avenue-area residents say many city leaders also have to banish the perception that it is a throwaway neighborhood, one not worth investing in or fighting for.

“I would like for the mayor to come down here as a person, a human being, not as a politician,” Martinez said. “I would like him to come down here with an open ear, and a little bit of compassion.”