Community Profile: Lincoln Heights : Making Peace in Small Ways : Anger over youth’s killing has deepened some longstanding strains. But residents are working to keep communication going.

One week after the killing of 14-year-old Jose Antonio Gutierrez, his friends gathered at a Lincoln Heights gas station to raise money for his funeral with a carwash. As they scrubbed vehicles for $4 apiece, police stood across the street with arms folded--only to make sure, they said, that things stayed peaceful.

Neither side spoke to the other, until Brother Modesto Leon led an envoy of gang leaders across the street to chat.

“It’s all about getting people to talk,” said Leon, who has worked with gang-involved youths on the Eastside since 1972 and lives several houses away from the corner where a Los Angeles Police Department officer shot and killed the youth July 29.

Leon sought to avoid a repetition of the violence that had broken out in the neighborhood shortly after the shooting and the next day after a carwash. Young residents reportedly hurled bottles and insults at police in riot gear.

Lincoln Heights residents are working to maintain peace in the same way they have in the past: through communication and cooperation. They did it successfully during the 1992 riots, when a group of community leaders met to discuss ways to keep unrest to a minimum; residents offered food and their homes to weary patrol officers. They also do it on the streets, where gang members prevented looting during the unrest after Gutierrez was killed. When the gang members discovered a newcomer from outside the neighborhood stealing a bag of potato chips from a local store, they turned him around and told him to give the chips back.

“Lincoln Heights is almost like a small town in the middle of Los Angeles because there’s a real sense of community,” said Steve Kasten, president of the Lincoln Heights Chamber of Commerce.

But the community on the sloped plain that stretches northeast from the Los Angeles River to the bald hilltops of Montecito Heights is struggling to bridge gaps widened by last month’s violent outbursts. Some witnesses in the neighborhood said the boy was unarmed and killed unjustly. Police maintain that the youth was shot when he pointed a semiautomatic pistol at an officer.

The debate isn’t solely between police and the community; there also are visible divisions in Lincoln Heights along racial and age lines.

Frustrated youths from Gutierrez’s neighborhood continue to express anger. One evening, they joined other peaceful protesters in a candlelight vigil at the corner where the boy was slain and chanted, “We want justice! We want justice!”

“We need to protest, man,” said Robert Dominguez, a 26-year-old member of the Eastlake Boys gang. “We know we can’t beat the police, but we want justice. We want the cop who did it to pay for it.”

At the other end of the opinion spectrum, a man who works in Lincoln Heights and asked not to be named for fear of retribution said the police might have been justified in shooting the boy, who often spent time with the Eastlake Boys.

“These guys think they own the community,” he said.

All around Lincoln Heights, gang members and taggers have left their marks on turn-of-the-century-homes, walls and street signs.

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Several times, the vandalism apparently has been targeted toward Asians, who make up nearly a quarter of the population. Large numbers of Chinese and Vietnamese immigrants began entering the neighborhood, which is across the Los Angeles River from Chinatown, during the 1980s, coming into contact with the established, largely Mexican American population. A Buddhist temple constructed several years ago on the main thoroughfare of North Broadway was spray-painted repeatedly before its owners decided to put up a spiked-bar fence, police say.

Residents say that generally, Latinos and Asians don’t mix, either in life or in death. Lincoln Heights’ two mortuaries sit next door to each other among North Broadway’s mishmash of fast-food restaurants and mural-walled stores. One mortuary is for Latinos, the other for Asians. They have an informal agreement to refer customers to each other.

The LAPD’s senior lead officer for Lincoln Heights, Robert Acosta, said the lack of interracial communication leads to misunderstanding and suspicion. He said Asian residents are afraid.

“They don’t trust police or anybody,” he said. But fear isn’t limited to the Asian population.

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Esther Rodarte, a 47-year resident of Lincoln Heights, says it’s no longer the aspired-to suburb where she and her husband walked past the stores at night and participated at a “community sing” at the local grammar school. One month ago, the 72-year-old retired payroll clerk found a boy collapsed and bleeding on the street next to her house. She said the boy had been hit in the back of the head with a crowbar, and she urged him to see a doctor. At first he refused, saying he didn’t want his mother to find out; then he gave in.

Gang violence in Lincoln Heights has increased dramatically during the past decade. Gang-related killings have risen from an average of two to three a year in the mid-1980s to nine in 1994, police say, and community leaders attribute the increase to the creation of the Eastlake Boys from a disgruntled group of the Clover gang about 10 years ago.

In the gas station, Leon, the gang/police go-between, helped direct traffic to keep cars out of the street between conversations with the boys. Police had said that the earlier carwash blocked traffic. But Leon said he thinks one major reason for the violence at the previous carwash was the lack of communication between police and frustrated residents. The community’s healing will continue.

“The neighborhood has to do it for themselves,” Leon said, “because when the press is gone, there are still going to be drive-bys.”

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Lincoln Heights Inside Out

PEOPLE

Population: 27,354

Households: 6,643

Average household size: 4.04

Median age: 26.7

ETHNIC MAKEUP

Latino: 72%

Asian: 24%

White: 3%

Black: 1%

MONEY AND WORK

Median household income: $21,438

Median home value: $140,800

Employed workers (16 and older): 10,155

Self-employed: 412

Car-poolers: 1,953

Source: Claritas Inc. household expenses are averages for 1994. All other figures are for 1990. Percentages have been rounded to the nearest whole number.

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ALLIGATOR YEARS: Early this century, Lincoln Heights was a weekend getaway destination for Angelenos weary of city life. They crossed wooden bridges over the Los Angeles River to visit newly-developed suburb’s three big tourist attractions: an ostrich farm, an alligator farm and Selig Zoo, owned by movie producer William Selig, who is said to have used animals from the zoo for jungle scenes.

SCHOOL DAYS: At first, the area was known simply as east Los Angeles. Then, in 1914, came one of the biggest institutions in the community: a high school, named after Abraham Lincoln. Within 15 years, residents were referring to their area with a name derived from the school.

POST-SCHOOL DAYS: Lincoln High School did more than give a name to a neighborhood. It also is alma mater to several who gained fame in show business, including actors Robert Preston and Robert Young. Movie producer Frank Capra and actor Carmen Zapata also have lived in Lincoln Heights.

ZOOT START: More than 50 years ago, the so-called Zoot Suit Riots were sparked on the edge of Lincoln Heights, according to historian John D. Weaver, during a period when anti-Latino sentiment ran high. On June 3, 1943, 11 sailors walking down North Main street said they were provoked by a group of young Mexican Americans whom they described as “zoot-suiters.” The young men who wore loose-fitting coats and pegged pants called themselves “pachucos.” The next night, enraged sailors invaded the east side in a fleet of taxicabs, and days later a mob of several thousand enlisted men and civilians gathered downtown, dragging “pachucos” from theaters and street cars into the streets, where some were stripped naked and beaten. The 1978 play titled “Zoot Suit” was based on these riots.