Gang Fighter : Crime: On a violence-ridden street, Clyde James, 83, shoots back. But neighbors and officials criticize his tactics.

Clyde James was stooping over to pet his dogs.

That’s when four rounds and a few dozen pellets blasted through his front door, exactly where his head would have been. Luckily, only one pellet found its mark, tearing through his right shoulder blade.

The gangs were at it again. They had been stoning his northeast Los Angeles house for hours. Then they had gotten too close to the front door.

James, an 83-year-old retired electrician, drew his .38-caliber pistol and fired, John Wayne-style. The gang quickly fled this Ft. Apache, only to return with their guns. That’s when his shoulder took the pellet.

For James, it was just another day on Drew Street, a notorious drug-ridden gang hangout tucked inconspicuously beneath Glendale’s southern border, just east of Atwater Village.

Police say that Drew Street is anything but inconspicuous, a hotbed of drug dealing. There were more than 200 narcotics-related arrests in 1992 on the two-block street, more than in the rest of the Police Department’s entire Northeast Division. Drug dealing there has not abated, officers say.

“In the 22 years I’ve been here, there have been 15 to 20 homicides on that street,” Officer Joe Galindo said.

James, who has lived in his small, pale blue house for 30 years, says he cannot afford to move. So he’s defending his home with his life.

“Normally, this neighborhood is so ridiculous people would run away. But I’m not scared,” James said in a slow but determined voice. “If they retaliate it’s going to be hell.”

Some would say it already is. In the past year, gangs have bombed, stoned and burglarized his house and vandalized his car. He thinks the gangs ran over his favorite Labrador retriever and left it to die.

“They were stoning the house for five hours and not a neighbor came out to assist me,” James said about the June shootout. “They are afraid of the gangs!”

Police and James say he is a gang target because he fights back. Although he calls police when there’s trouble, others in the neighborhood are afraid to get involved, officers say.

Although police do not advise people to shoot at gang members who terrorize them, some officers at the Northeast Division station a few blocks from James’ house voice admiration for him.

“He’s fed up with it,” Detective Joe Berumen said. “These people are selling dope at the front of his house. As far as I’m concerned he has every right to go out there and challenge these guys. In my opinion he is a hero.”

Neither city officials nor neighbors agree with James’ method of fighting back.

“Taking up a weapon will not solve the problem,” said Connie Farfan, a community advocate from Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg’s office who works with Drew Street residents. “That’s not the way to go because he’s only going to get hurt. In order to be safe he has to get along with the neighbors. Not all the neighbors are drug dealers.”

For three youths lounging under a tree near James’ house one recent afternoon, James is just an old man they often see sitting on his front porch. There have been no problems with neighbors, said one youth, insisting that he and his friends are neither drug dealers nor gang members. Another said James’ problems are with people from outside the neighborhood.

But at Drew and Estara streets, where James lives alone, where a gang name is written in fresh white paint in the middle of the intersection and around all the tree trunks and stop signs, the problem seems hard to stomach no matter where it’s coming from.

“I had the gun around because there were other instances where my house was shot at,” he said. “One time they were throwing beer bottles at me at 4 a.m. The police didn’t come. I asked them to move. They didn’t move. I took my gun out and they moved.

“Another time I had my house bombed. It was a glass bomb that hit on the windowsill and busted on the porch. I went out and looked. There were 14 people. They said they just wanted to stir me up.”

These days, James carries a revolver that seems too small for his big hands. He hopes it works--he hasn’t fired it in 30 years. Otherwise, James relies on the .38 and his four dogs, plus the protection offered by two thick redwoods, a pine, an avocado tree and a new metal fence.

The front porch is sealed off from the street with white pegboard scarred with big holes and sprayed with gang graffiti. One of the windows is shattered. Sitting on a ragged couch on his porch, cuddling his newly adopted Labrador retriever, James points out what he says are drug dealers waiting for customers and youngsters hanging about in matching gang attire.

“The house across the street used to be an old people’s home and (President Ronald) Reagan did away with it. He wanted to spend that 3 trillion someplace else,” he said. “The old folks there used to come over for avocados in my back yard.” The dwelling now houses several families. James and several other senior citizens call the area’s apartment dwellers “overnight people” because they move in and move out so quickly.

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James, who retired 20 years ago, said his neighborhood has never been crime-free. But when he bought his house 30 years ago, the area was full of retired people. Over the years older people moved out and in the 1980s developers built low-rent, multiple-apartment complexes.

Farfan says James should try to work with city agencies and the police, who have begun to organize the Drew Street community and have reduced crime somewhat. But James says he is frustrated and impatient with teamwork because he doesn’t speak Spanish in the predominantly Latino neighborhood, can’t make friends and can’t hear at all during meetings.

Some residents in the area say fighting is counterproductive.

“I think you can live peacefully with the gangs if you just leave them alone,” said John Martinez, 67, of Atwater, who eats lunch with James and other senior citizens at the Glassell Park recreation center. “With a mixed neighborhood you should try to learn something about the culture of the other people and try to get along with them. If you carry a gun you’re looking for trouble.”

Troubled Street

Drew Street, tucked incomspicuously south of Glendale and east of Atwater Village, is in one of Northeast Los Angeles’ most drug-ridden neighborhoods, according to police.