Fresno’s War on Crime Heats Up : Police: In response to surge in violence, including sniping at patrol cars, SWAT teams are responding to gang-controlled neighborhoods.

This may be the heart of the richest farm belt in the world, but it is a big city in every measure when it comes to crime. This weekend, hoping to blunt a winter of violence that has shocked even hardened observers, Fresno took an extraordinary step.

Robberies and shootings in certain poor neighborhoods will no longer be handled by regular officers. Instead, SWAT team members in full battle gear and armed with machine guns will confront gang members on turf that has become increasingly insular and deadly.

The military-like operation--a direct response to several incidents of sniper fire directed at police this year--will continue for the next five months and perhaps permanently.

“We’re going to do everything the U.S. Constitution allows to get these guys off the streets,” Sgt. Jose Moralez said. “Whatever action is needed we’re going to take.”

Using SWAT officers and police dogs to combat gang violence has been tried by a few cities, including Los Angeles, but not with the concentrated force outlined here, officials say.

How it will play out, given the mixed results elsewhere, is not clear. Instead of a few officers responding to a high-priority call in violent neighborhoods, 30 SWAT team members in gray camouflage fatigues and special vests will swoop down.

Police Chief Ed Winchester said the unit will enforce curfews, target homes where gang members are suspected of stockpiling weapons and detain anyone acting suspiciously. He emphasized that detentions and vehicle stops would be based on probable cause, not age or color. The National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People and other groups support the operation.

“The violence is the worst I’ve seen in my career,” said Winchester, a 27-year veteran. “We’ve got to do something more. The community is demanding that we do something more.”

As the tule fog descends every December in the San Joaquin Valley, turning a simple trip to the grocery store into a hazard, police expect fewer people on the streets and less violence. That has not been the case this winter.

The fog that is so much of the lore in the valley is now insulation for 14-year-olds taking potshots.

On Thursday, an 11-year-old girl on her front lawn was shot five times at close range for no apparent reason by an unknown assailant. She was listed in critical condition.

In a drive-by shooting a week earlier, an 8-year-old boy on a school break was shot in the head as he stood in the kitchen with his father. He too remains in critical condition. The boy’s brother, a gang member, was the intended target.

On Dec. 3, a 6-year-old girl was doing homework with her two brothers when a carload of men began shooting up her southwest neighborhood. When it was over, up to 50 bullets from five weapons had been fired, including several return rounds from gang members on the street. The girl was grazed in the back and one man was killed.

And twice this month in heavy fog, police responding to calls in gang-controlled neighborhoods have come under fire. In one incident, a bullet shattered the rear window of a patrol car. In the other, an officer was chasing a carload of gang members when a 14-year-old opened fire with a military-style assault rifle.

“Luckily, no officers were injured,” Moralez said. “You can’t believe the number of high-powered rifles and guns we’ve taken off the streets the past six months. Our patrol officers are outgunned.”

A housing and strip mall boom has doubled Fresno’s size and population to 400,000 in recent years but failed to bring in enough tax revenues to hire enough patrolmen. As a result, this city has an officer-to-resident ratio of about 1 to 1,000, one of the worst in the nation.

Mayor Jim Patterson blames the inability to hire more officers on bloated wages and benefits paid to police and firefighters. Unions respond that uncontrolled growth--requiring the city to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on sewers, water and roads--is bankrupting Fresno.

Last week, in a sort of truce, Patterson proposed to eliminate 50 city positions and freeze salaries in order to hire 40 new police officers and 10 new firefighters.

“This city has 2,850 employees,” he said. “To lay off 50 in the interest of public safety is not asking too much.”

From 1982 to 1992, according to a recent state report, Fresno County had the largest increase in crime among the state’s 15 counties with populations over 500,000. The crime rate of 5,279 crimes for every 100,000 residents is higher than Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, Sacramento and San Francisco. (Los Angeles had a crime rate of under 5,000 per 100,000 residents.)

“They murdered the ice cream man in my neighborhood today,” Connie Wright wrote to the Fresno Bee last summer. “They murdered him while small children stood on curbsides in front of their homes and clutched their nickels and quarters in sweaty little summertime hands, waiting for ‘Mr. Ice Cream Man.’ They murdered him for $8.”

Much of the rise is blamed on Southeast Asian, Latino and black gangs that have taken over entire neighborhoods in southwest and southeast Fresno. The 30-member paramilitary task force hopes to change the equation.

On Friday, the first night of the operation, a dozen patrol cars carrying team members raced from one gang haven to another. To safeguard against sniper fire, they split into two squads--half the men assigned to an outer perimeter and half assigned to an inner one.

The cops were edgy. The air felt tense. Converging on a car in an alley with machine guns ready, they found a group of men drinking beer and enjoying a back-yard barbecue. “It’s great to have you here,” one frightened beer drinker said. “Keep up the good work.”

They performed traffic stops and sealed off an entire neighborhood to take down a crack house. The most tense moment came about 1:30 a.m. when the team saw a Hmong refugee holding a shotgun. Later, after a Hmong interpreter was called, the team learned that the man had returned from a hunting trip.