Rebuilding After Drug Sweep Begins

In the wake of one of the city’s toughest police crackdowns, officials and community activists are making plans for the formerly gang-torn stretch of West 3rd Street, hoping to keep the area free of gunfire and spur resident involvement.

On the table are an expansion of the city’s gang-prevention program into the area, efforts to help residents start a neighborhood association, and a push to renovate houses that were taken over by gang members and are now abandoned.

“What I can tell you is the city has made the commitment,” Councilman Miguel A. Pulido Jr. said. “It is our plan to come in and do something about it. I’ve requested staff to develop a series of concepts through the neighborhood improvement program. We’re going to continue to push.”

Wednesday’s multi-agency “Operation Roundup” netted more than 130 arrests, dealing what officials and residents alike hope is a decapitating blow to the city’s 6th Street gang.

Since then, property owners in the area have been calling council members to express their gratitude, and Police Lt. William Tegeler, in charge of enforcement for the targeted area, has heard from several residents who want their neighborhoods “swept” next, a police spokesman said.

But the question pressing on most minds now is, what next?

“The magnitude of these arrests to me is so significant,” said Helen Brown, president of the nonprofit Civic Center Barrio Housing Corp., which owns an apartment building in the heart of what was only recently a battle zone. “If the city will continue to follow up in this same fashion, it’s going to send a message that Santa Ana has put their foot down.”

Brown said gang members would fire semiautomatic weapons from their cars as they screeched down West 3rd Street playing “chicken,” and she used to call Tegeler several times a day begging for police action.

“It was so bad that kids in our apartment complex were picking up shell casings off the ground in bags because they take them down and sell them as scrap metal,” Brown said. “There were that many.”

To Brown, it is crucial that police keep up the pressure. But that alone won’t do.

“It’s incumbent on our organization and every other organization doing business in the city to try to bring about change with the younger people,” she said.

Brown said her organization is poised to receive an Americorps Grant on Monday--a National Service Award that will pay for 24 college-bound students who will help her devise gang-prevention programs around the county, including the West 3rd Street area.

Three weeks ago, the neighborhood improvement program run by the city’s Housing Department began working with residents who have been organizing a “parent patrol” near Carver Elementary School with the help of a group called Project SABADO.

The school is attended by many children who live in the area directly controlled by the 6th Street gang until the recent spate of arrests.

Patricia C. Whitaker, the city’s housing manager, said her office has obtained some bright vests for the parents to wear on their patrols. She pledged her department’s support of any organizing efforts in the neighborhood. Her staff will help residents form a neighborhood association that could put them in closer contact with city services, she said.

Councilman Pulido said he has also asked Whitaker’s staff to help find owners and low-interest rehabilitation loans for the houses on West 3rd Street that were overrun by gang members in recent months and have been abandoned even by financial institutions.

Councilman Ted R. Moreno said he is pushing for more recreational facilities for youth in the area, and a new facility is planned for Rosita Park. He particularly wants to see soccer fields where youngsters can vent their energies in a positive manner.

“That’s the best preventive measure right there,” he said. “It’s the best way of policing, to make sure kids are occupied and doing what they enjoy.”

Several months ago, police suggested expanding the city’s gang prevention Project PRIDE into the West 3rd Street area, said Jenny Rios, senior recreation supervisor of the city’s Recreation and Community Services Agency and head of the PRIDE program.

Flower Park, in the heart of the neighborhood, is just a field, with no buildings on it, but Rios said it doesn’t take much to get a PRIDE club going.

“Any little patch of grass or dirt will do,” she said.