The Fall of Lafayette Park :...

At Lafayette Park in Westlake, children climb up and down a jungle gym, just a leap and a short hop from a transient’s shopping cart. Families picnic at lunchtime while gang members lounge at a nearby table. Residents carefully plan out their visits because, in the words of one who strolls through the park with her baby, by late afternoon, drug addicts “come out like roaches and ants.”

Never mind that Lafayette sprawls next to a Superior Court building frequented by judges and cops; on the slope closest to it, drug dealers and addicts hold court in an area dubbed “dope dungeon.”

It has been a hard fall for the 10-acre park, situated in what was once a fashionable hub amid such landmark buildings as a Bullocks department store--now closed--and the defunct Sheraton Town-House hotel.

Although the contrast between Lafayette’s pastoral past and present peril is especially marked, it is typical of the city’s deteriorating urban parks, many of which are seen as dangerous eyesores rather than refuges from the noisy grind of city life.

“People in the Los Angeles area have stopped seeing parks in urban areas as a community asset, but as a blight on their safety,” said Steve Kelly, program director at People for Parks, a nonprofit organization working to improve county parks. “The problems in Lafayette are mirrored in other parks.”

The next closest park, MacArthur, is four blocks away and has had plenty of troubles, too. In fact, police sweeps and its temporary closure for subway construction are reasons for the increase in homeless and gang problems at Lafayette.

In some areas, residents have gone so far as to ask that the neighborhood park be closed because of crime and blight.

Not here.

Lafayette sits in a densely packed low-income, working-class area where most people do not have the money or time to travel far for a walk in the park. So they keep coming, hoping the future will bring the return of a safer park.

The city has promised improvements--more lighting and installation of athletic fields. These steps can help, experts say, but often they are not taken by cash-strapped municipalities--Los Angeles reduced spending for park maintenance by 13% over the last three years, to $28.1 million.

In the meantime, residents, with an eye over their shoulders, venture forth despite an atmosphere that is so threatening that the local Neighborhood Watch group disbanded over safety concerns.

A group of about 20 Koreans have played badminton in the park for two years, but only during the early morning. Even then, players don’t feel entirely secure, although they say they have never had problems with gang members or vagrants.

“It doesn’t feel that safe,” said Yoon, who goes by one name. “I like it when the police car drives by in the mornings.”

Jasmine Wadsworth brings her 2-year-old niece to the park for walks, but within limits.

“In the late afternoon, I won’t come here because the drug addicts come out like roaches and ants,” said Wadsworth, 25, who has been offered drugs as she walked toward the playground with her niece in tow. “Maybe they’ll steal (the) stroller; they’re on drugs, they’ll steal anything.”

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Until 1991 Lafayette was a very quiet park, police say. But in the last three years, six murders occurred there, half of them gang-related.

The biggest problem, police say, has been the sale and use of crack cocaine, concentrated in the “dope dungeon”--so named because the lack of street lamps keeps the area dark at night.

Crack is popular because of its relatively low price. The entrenched Mara Salvatrucha gang sometimes uses transients to make sales to a variety of customers that police say include homeless people and Wilshire district office workers who whisk in and out of the park.

Crack cocaine has been apparent in Lafayette since about 1989, and Mara Salvatrucha--Salvadoran Spanish slang for the motherland or the people-- has considered the park its turf for 16 years, increasing its presence recently as the crack trade boomed.

Gang unit Detective Terry Wessel said the gang has committed street robberies, several murders and in the past has rented territory to drug dealers--until taking over the trade themselves about three years ago.

“They leave the civilians alone, but the truth is these bullets don’t have any name on them, so they (could) end up killing innocent people,” Wessel said.

Gang members said they see themselves as protectors for the children and mothers.

“We’re all like family here in the park,” said one member in his late 20s. “My homeboys, I know what they are up to. We don’t hit or rob anyone for no reason. Anyone who messes with us, we will deal with them, but we won’t kill them.”

The gang members said they get along with the homeless, their faithful narcotics buyers, and have even bought them clothes and food.

Wessel said, however, that members occasionally do rob the homeless, but the victims often don’t report it.

A team of undercover narcotics officers include the park among their targets. But, said Officer Tom Mossman, getting rid of dope dealers is “like trying to stamp out cockroaches: You kill one and 10 more come to take its place.”

Nevertheless, officials said, complaints about the park recently have dropped slightly.

“We always have complaints of gang members, the homeless and drug sales--at least two to three complaints every two weeks. Now, that is changing because the police have put a special emphasis on the park,” said Francisco Lopez, an aide to Los Angeles City Councilman Nate Holden, whose district includes the park.

The city has promised improvements.

In the months to come, the Department of Recreation and Parks plans to use $440,000 to spruce up the park, said Julie Riley, a landscape architect for the department.

The department also plans to build a baseball diamond, which may double as a soccer field, in the southwest corner of the park, where many transients now congregate.

“The baseball diamond will help in reducing the homeless and bringing the community to the park, especially families,” Lopez said. “It will also reduce crime in the area because criminals don’t like to be around large groups of people.”

Other improvements will include lighting for the basketball courts (one was renovated by 20th Century Fox for the filming of the 1992 release, “White Men Can’t Jump”), as well as lighting for the area around the adjacent Phillipe de Neve branch of the city public library and its parking lot and the area around the “dope dungeon.”

The library, which was closed in the spring of 1990 because the 65-year-old building did not meet seismic standards, is scheduled to reopen in 1996 after completion of a renovation that will include new public restrooms and a multipurpose room.

Other improvements on tap for the park are a new irrigation system and fencing around the senior citizen center.

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Such plans are heartening for those who knew the park in better times. Ten years ago, attorney James Davis moved into his Wilshire Boulevard offices overlooking Lafayette and made a home video of what it looked like.

“Lafayette was lovely and the street was clean. This spot is essentially one of the most beautiful places in Los Angeles, but it is part of a very real problem. The homeless problem has gotten worse everywhere, but especially in this area,” said Davis, a homeless advocate.

Lafayette, named after the French marquis who fought with the colonists in the American Revolution, sits in what used to be the hub of old Los Angeles, the fashionable Wilshire district. Originally known as Sunset Park, the land was donated to the city in 1899 by Clara R. Shatto, wife of George Shatto, who owned Santa Catalina Island in the late 1800s, on the condition that it be used as a park. Its named was changed to Lafayette in 1918 at the urging of local French-heritage groups.

It was surrounded by major churches, retail stores and office buildings in the 1920s.

Directly across the street looms an 18-floor glass office tower whose main tenant is a Los Angeles Superior Court branch. Judges and lawyers have watched drug deals going down just six floors below, Davis said.

Rampart Division Officer Webster Wong, who specializes in crime prevention, is optimistic that some of the park’s luster can be restored. “Common sense says that what (police officers) are doing right now is not having impact . . . we have to look at proactive approaches, like getting involved in the park, instead of reactive approaches,” Wong said.

Yet some Westlake residents are skeptical about whether the city can do enough to make them feel safe in the park.

Pauline Thompson is a member of the Neighborhood Watch group that met at Lafayette Park before disbanding two years ago.

“We decided not to have the Neighborhood Watch meetings there because it was not safe,” said Thompson, who has lived near the park for 21 years. “Even with escorts who would walk members to their cars, the group dwindled down to practically nothing.

“I used to take my kids and grandchildren to the park, but I wouldn’t go there during the day now,” said Thompson, a volunteer neighborhood coordinator working with the Rampart Division on ways to improve the park. “I used to take my dog for a walk there too, but I haven’t done that in four years. And I definitely don’t go there at night.”