Block Aid : Deputies Try to Help Revive Neighborhood After Years of Violence

The 1400 block of West 105th Street used to be one of the most dangerous streets in the county. There were five murders in less than three years on the residential strip between Denker and Normandie avenues. During the same time, four apartment buildings west of Normandie were the source of more than 100 criminal incidents and 200 calls for help.

One call spurred change. Runaway Wendy Macias called her parents last October to say she wanted to come home. But as the 13-year-old waited for her mother at the corner of West 106th Street and Normandie, she was shot and killed by gang cross-fire coming from West 105th Street.

Her death led to a full-scale push by the Lennox sheriff’s station to clean up the neighborhood. The result: During the first six months of this year, police reports of crime have decreased 75% from the same period a year ago, and calls for help are down more than 65%.

“It’s not as bad as it used to be,” said Leona Liu, who used to keep her 5-year-old-son from playing in their front yard because of the regular crackle of gunfire. “It’s because of what the police have done that I let him go out there.”

But while deputies’ efforts have brought crime way down, the neighborhood is far from whole. Many of the worst offenders are gone, but they left behind a street of vacant, rundown apartments and residents battered by years of crime.

Now deputies want to rebuild the community’s bruised spirit by playing host to a block party today. Maybe a celebration with games and food will help residents fight off much of the hopelessness that pervades the street, deputies believe.

“We’re trying to create a safe and sane environment,” said Sgt. Lane Greenberg. “We needed to do something for the community so that we could bring them together.”

The block had been deteriorating for more than a decade. During the 1980s, a local gang named for the street increased its drug-selling and other criminal activity, deputies said.

Inglewood Juvenile Court Judge Roosevelt Dorn, who owns an eight-unit apartment building on the troubled block, said that as crack cocaine grew more popular, tenants became more transient and troublesome.

“There was a time when gang members were selling dope right in front of my building,” said Dorn, who has owned the apartments for nearly 15 years. “I’m thrilled at what the sheriff’s [deputies] are doing to get rid of the problem.”

In January, a property owner gave deputies permission to enter an apartment where they suspected drugs were being sold. The deputies arrested the suspects and posed as dealers in their place. By the end of the evening, they had arrested 20 buyers.

Since then, many tenants with gang and drug affiliations have been evicted. The sheriff’s office has kept up the increased patrols and plans to turn the strip into a one-way street and prohibit parking on the north side to reduce traffic.

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“Our goal is to eventually do this to all the streets in the Vermont area, but we wanted to start with the worst,” said Deputy Richard Bowman, who has patrolled West 105th Street for a year.

With crime down, the next step is making the neighborhood livable. Although many troublemakers have left, there are still apartment buildings unfit for rental, weed-filled frontyards and graffiti-scarred walls.

Only four tenants remain in the 18-unit building where deputies conducted the sting operation. The property is in state receivership. The rest of the apartments have been boarded up; sometimes at night transients break in.

“They broke into the apartment above me last night,” said Makeba Stewart, one of the remaining tenants. “I just want to get out of here. I can’t take this.”

Stewart, who lives with her 2-year-old daughter, said that although crime is down, she does not want to stay in an apartment filled with cockroaches and mice and the worry that someone might break in.

But at $360 a month for a large studio, the place is cheap. So Stewart, 24, has stayed, though she says she is looking for a new apartment.

Some other buildings are being renovated. And authorities have organized a neighborhood block watch and are looking at the possibility of opening a substation in one of the vacant apartments.

But the neighborhood does not attract new residents yet. Pearline Johnson, who lived on the street from 1989 to 1995, said she was a prisoner in her own home because of the gunfire. She moved to West 46th Street in Los Angeles last year.

“I couldn’t stand or sit outside because of all the drive-bys,” said Johnson, who wishes her son Eddie would leave the street too. “I had to get out and I’ll never come back.”