No More Barriers : Removal of Barricades Signals Shift in Anti-Drug Strategy

City workers tore out the last barricade along Columbus Street in North Hills on Saturday, bringing an unglamorous end to a crime-fighting experiment in which residents gave up clear passage through their streets to keep drug dealers out.

Like similar efforts throughout Los Angeles, the Columbus barricades worked at first. They forced the area’s crack dealers onto the broad expanse of Nordhoff Street--where they were easier for police to catch--and away from residential side streets such as Columbus.

But in the end, the dealers adapted. They moved their business to the perimeter of the blocked-off area. They became adept at jumping over or around the barricades, hiding out on streets that were inaccessible to police cars in pursuit.

“Times have changed, strategies have changed and it’s time for us to change with them,” said Los Angeles Police Department Capt. Vance Proctor, whose Devonshire Division patrols the Columbus area.

The barrier fad made headlines in the late 1980s and early ‘90s, when great fanfare attended their first installations in the Pico-Union district and the area around 41st Street and Central Avenue. Congress held a hearing on the issue and then-President George Bush even voiced his support.

But the roadblocks have been quietly coming down in some neighborhoods. Police captains in the three divisions--Devonshire, Newton and Rampart--where barriers were installed amid the most hoopla say the concrete and iron devices have outlived their usefulness.

“I think they are a disadvantage to ongoing law enforcement efforts,” said Capt. Nick Salicos of the Rampart division west of downtown. “The dope dealers have learned to use the barricades to their advantage.”

At a ceremony to mark the removal of the North Hills barricades Saturday, Councilman Richard Alarcon, who is opposed to such barriers, put a positive spin on their removal.

“The city of Los Angeles should not be a city of barricades,” he said. “It’s a city where people should be able to move about freely, without fear of crime.”

Miriam Rosales, who manages an apartment building next to the barricades, said she was eager for them to be removed--but not because she wants easy access to Columbus Street. In her opinion, the ugly iron gates did not work.

“Right now, the police can’t get in,” Rosales said. “All along this street, [drug dealers] take over.”

The notion of installing barricades gained popularity in response to the exploding sales of crack cocaine in the late 1980s, said Malcolm Klein, a USC criminologist.

“Crack dealing was all on the street,” Klein said. “It was a quick hit to sell, and if police came, all the dealer had to do was drop it on the ground and step on it.”

Drug customers took to cruising the streets, stopping just long enough for a brief transaction, particularly after police focused attention on eliminating crack houses in the mid-1980s, Klein said.

To combat the trend, law enforcement experts came up with barricades, said Cal State Fullerton criminologist James Lasley.

The idea was never favored by some community activists, who said it forced residents to give up access and segregated them from neighbors. But in communities desperate for crime relief, the barricades went up nonetheless. Some were simply pipes stuck in the asphalt, others were elaborate iron gates and concrete planters.

The results were mixed.

Within the gated areas, drug dealing did go down, police said. Some beat officers still support the roadblocks, saying police have learned to get around the barricades just as well as the drug dealers. And some residents in the Columbus neighborhood were jittery about the removal, prompting police to promise to put them back up if crime increases.

Around the area of 41st Street and Central Avenue, where the city installed planters joined by gates, drug dealing and violent crime went down on some blocks, but not on others. Capt. Jim Tatreau, commander of the Newton division, said the best results were found in areas targeted with heightened police and Neighborhood Watch activity.

Now, Tatreau said, he and others believe that the increased attention, not the gates, was the more powerful crime deterrent.

“I lean now toward taking them down because we’re not prepared to maintain them and they’re not the most beautiful creations that were ever designed,” Tatreau said.

Several barriers in the neighborhood have been torn down or vandalized, he said, although some remain in fairly good condition.

The barriers in North Hills did reduce drive-by shootings, Proctor said. “But as the years went on, the suspects started to adapt.”

With both ends of Memory Park Avenue in North Hills blocked off, gangs began to hold meetings inside the barricaded area, shielded from police and free to terrorize residents, said Ana Salcido, an apartment manager in the area. Similar problems prompted the removal of barricades in the tough Blythe Street neighborhood of Panorama City.

“It’s just like football and just like war,” said criminologist David Chapman, who teaches at Cal State L.A. “When somebody comes up with a good offense, somebody else is going to come up with a good defense. It’s just a matter of time.”