Anti-Gang Unit Catches Flak : Oxnard: La Colonia residents complain that Latino youths are being harassed. Police defend tactics.

Oxnard’s new anti-gang task force has been lauded by many residents as avaliant police effort to rid the city of hoodlums and curb escalating violence.

But in La Colonia, where many of the task force’s efforts have centered, residents and community leaders say the crackdown is nothing but a campaign of police harassment against Latino youths whose clothing resembles gang attire.

Paul Santellano, a La Colonia Little League coach, told the City Council that he has been pulled over by police three times in the past three weeks for no reason.

In one incident, police flashed a spotlight in his face as he was driving, nearly causing him to crash into a parked car, he said later in an interview.

“I’m not a gang member,” proclaimed Santellano, who said he was a former police Explorer Scout. “I drive a Chevy Impala. If you drive a Chevy Impala in this town, that’s what happens.”

Police Chief Harold Hurtt said Wednesday that he expanded the gang squad to 19 officers five weeks ago to attack a recent rash of gang-related violence in the city.

“We’ve got people in the streets of Oxnard shooting each other,” Hurtt said. “Every time we go out and get aggressive, they complain it’s harassment. Well, they should stop shooting the place up. Then we would leave them alone.”

Carlos Aguilera, chairman of La Colonia’s neighborhood council, said many young people in his community complain of police harassment, saying their civil rights are being violated because they can no longer walk freely in their own neighborhood.

City leaders should investigate the complaints, Aguilera said.

“There’s just too many complaints being issued by the young people about the tactics being used by the police,” he said. “They say they are being targeted for no justifiable legal reason, just because police think they look like gang members.”

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Aguilera and several young Latinos from La Colonia took their complaints Tuesday to the City Council.

Gavino Romero told council members that police have repeatedly searched his friends without cause, and that one of his friends was placed in a headlock, pepper-sprayed and arrested by police after refusing to give his name.

“Everybody from this side of town is being harassed by the task force,” said Romero, a bald youth who said he is a former gang member. “The way I see it, the only place that’s getting the heat is us.”

Police on Wednesday said Romero’s friend was not a gang member. But Sgt. John Gomez said the youth was pepper-sprayed and then arrested for obstructing justice because he would not leave the Colonia Gym area after police had arrested another youth, who was a gang member.

At the La Colonia police substation Wednesday, officers said they are only doing their best to break up gang activity in a neighborhood saturated with drugs and violence.

“What has them (angry) is that we’re attacking them very harshly, very aggressively,” said Gomez, who heads the substation. “We’re not brutalizing anybody. We’re not violating their rights. But it’s hard to tell who is a gang member and who’s not.”

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Gang members who are on probation are barred from associating with other gang members, Gomez said, but police have only recently begun enforcing the court orders.

At La Colonia Park on Wednesday, dozens of young people, some of whom said they were gang members, played handball and discussed the recent gang crackdown--which they said has hit the park nine days in a row.

Michael Contreras, another east side Little League coach, said he had to stop a baseball game Tuesday after police began searching youths at an adjacent handball court and spray-painting over graffiti on the baseball diamond’s bleachers and concession stand.

Some of the paint landed in food that children were eating, he said.

“They showed a total disrespect for the people, the parents that were there,” said Contreras, who is planning to meet with Hurtt today to discuss the crackdown.

“They’re tagging too,” he said of the black blotches of police paint. “That’s their tag: The Oxnard Police Department. What kind of message does that send to kids?

“I think the reason they come out here during the Little League games is to intimidate the younger kids,” Contreras said. “They want to show them that the baddest gang in Oxnard is the Oxnard Police Department.”

Police said they do not visit the handball courts of La Colonia Park--which they contend are an infamous drug-dealing mecca--during Little League games any more than they do at other times.

One gang member, who would only describe himself as “Short Dog,” said police recently stripped him down by to his boxer shorts in the middle of the park during daytime. They had no motive, he said.

“They think we are violating their rights,” said Gomez, who heads the substation. “We have legal right to ask them their name to find out if they are on probation, to find out if they are wanted for something.”