Taking Back the Streets

Octavio Lopez describes it as being trapped inside a circle. But you could just as easily say that living in the tough, crime-plagued community of Lennox is like being imprisoned in a cave where the walls of poverty and fear are too steep to overcome.

So like many of the 20,000 residents crammed into the 1.5-square-mile community just southeast of Los Angeles International Airport, Lopez, 28, says there is nowhere to go when the gangs come calling, with their deathly stares and gangster mentality.

“We’d like to move out of here but, . . . “ Lopez says, standing with his wife and three sons near a playground a short walk from where a gang member was murdered last year.

“It’s like being trapped in circle. You break away, you get a better life. You don’t, you live here, you die here. It’s sad, but that’s the way it is,” Lopez said. “I know it is hard for [others] to understand. Maybe they say, ‘Oh, they don’t want to get away. They just like it.’ No, we don’t like it. But what [choice] is there?”

On Wednesday, Los Angeles County authorities pledged to do more to make Lennox a place where Lopez and others can live, with less crime and less fear.

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In the coming days, officials said, they will seek a court order allowing 37 members of the community’s most menacing gang--Lennox 13--to be arrested for activities that once might have resulted in only a citation or a verbal warning by sheriff’s deputies. Those activities would range from loitering to littering and from playing car stereos loudly at night to violating a new 10 p.m. curfew for minors and midnight curfew for adults.

The action follows similar public nuisance prosecutions against gang members in Pasadena, Long Beach, Norwalk and Redondo Beach. But it marks the first time the Strategy Against Gang Environments program has been used in an unincorporated area of the county and the first time the effort has been funded by the state’s Office of Criminal Justice Planning.

“Our goal is simple: to get an immediate drop in gang intimidation,” Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti said at a news conference at Lennox Park.

“Residents should be able to walk the streets, to let their children walk outside and have their children attend school without the fear that their kids are going to be beaten up or intimidated to join gangs,” Garcetti said.

Under the program, two specific pockets of Lennox would be declared areas where activities by gang members could result in immediate arrest. Those areas included one bounded by Century Boulevard, Dalerose Avenue, 104th Street and Redfern Avenue, and another bounded by Lennox Boulevard, Dalerose, 112th Street and Redfern. Authorities said those areas were beset by gang activity ranging from homicides and assaults to drug dealing and intimidation of schoolchildren.

“We have lowered crime” in Lennox, Capt. Jack Skully told reporters. “But unless we remove the fear level, we are not successful at doing anything.”

Toward that end, authorities contend that the public-nuisance prosecutions will go a long way in immediately incarcerating the most notorious members of the gang--which has as many as 1,500 members and links to the Mexican Mafia.

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At the same time, officials said, their effort should bring a level of intimidation to the gang that will keep it from harassing or threatening community residents and school children.

“What it is saying is, ‘We don’t want to see you there when school lets out. We don’t want to see 20 or 30 of you at a time throwing gang signs, showing your tattoos, taking property and money from young kids,’ ” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Kevin Ross, who filed the lawsuit and has spent the past year developing strategies to counter the gang’s activities in Lennox.

Ross said the effort to wrest control of some neighborhoods away from the gang is critical to restoring a sense of safety for residents who have become virtual prisoners in their homes and apartments.

“Many of them cannot move . . . because they cannot afford to leave,” Ross said.

The increased presence by sheriff’s deputies--especially around Lennox Park and nearby schools--has helped reduce the brazen intimidation by gang members, several residents, including some middle school students, said Wednesday.

“It used to be a lot worse,” Karla Villarreal, 13, said as she and friends gathered by a playground fence that used to be a hangout for gang members.

“We feel more protected around here,” said Wendy Velez, 11.

Still, Velez and the others said they welcomed anything that would make them feel even safer at their school and on their streets.

The more attention they get, Lupe Ruelas, 13, “the better it gets.”