Confronting the Darkness

It wasn’t always like this, but now, the Sepulveda Recreation Center is filled most nights with members of a burgeoning youth soccer league, formed to offer relief from the crowded apartments nearby.

Before play began five months ago, the most common nighttime figures on the grounds were gang members, who still peddle drugs in the shadows of the lighted fields and tennis courts, police say.

But now park directors and league organizers fear that what happens in the dark could end the new activities under the lights, because officers have circulated petitions seeking a dusk curfew at the park.

“You’re asking for trouble if you close it at night,” said Juanita Arvizu of Mission Hills Community Network, a nonprofit group that has promoted increased use of the center. “It will become a haven for the very things [police] are trying to prevent.”

Arvizu says the yet-to-be-named soccer league, which practices from 5 to 7 p.m. on weekdays, has grown to 200 players since starting in June.

The park director, Mike Hogan, says it has also helped transform the center from a symbol of neighborhood frustrations to a place where people can enjoy four tennis courts, two baseball diamonds, an all-purpose field and gymnasium--even after dusk.

“There has been an increase of the number of people playing soccer and a general increase in attendance here at the park since soccer started,” he said.

Nevertheless, police have garnered at least 100 signatures in five months, mostly from members of community-based policing programs. The City Council and the city’s Recreation and Parks Commission would have to approve a change in the current 10:30 p.m. curfew.

Councilman Richard Alarcon, whose district borders the center and who practiced there as a St. Genevieve’s High School baseball player, said a dusk curfew is not the answer.

“I don’t think shutting down services is going to solve the problems,” he said, citing the value of recreation programs in fighting crime. “My concern is what will the soccer players be doing if they’re not going to the park?”

Police declined to offer statistics on the amount of crime in the park, but the petition says that “several admitted gang members have established a near constant presence” there to conduct “blatant street sales of narcotics.”

Officers began the petition drive in July, two months before kicking off a series of community workshops aimed at purging gang members from the 10-acre grounds.

During the meetings, community members proposed several solutions, such as increased lighting, beefed-up programs and declaring the center a drug-free zone--a measure that would mean stiffer penalties for anyone convicted of dealing there.

Hogan said that at one of the sessions, police introduced the dusk curfew as a possible solution. But skeptics did not object because they feared disrupting a process designed to generate a free flow of ideas, not debate, he said.

Police and other curfew supporters said they needed to start the drive as a last plan of action should other methods fail. The measure would be used selectively, they promised.

“It takes a long time to get something like this rolling. And we needed to have this in our hip pocket just in case other things didn’t work,” said Senior Lead Officer Randy Hoffmaster, who organized the drive at the urging of anti-gang units. “This isn’t going to target the kid who is playing soccer at night,” he said. “This is going to target the gang members scaring the kids away.”

But Tom Davidson, the Valley’s regional park director, said he opposes closing the center at dusk, even if other anti-gang efforts failed. “The nearest park is about two miles away,” he said. “We need to be open at night. We need to increase the community activity, and hopefully that will deter the gang members.”

Hogan, the park’s director, said he was concerned that even a loosely enforced curfew would grant too much leeway to police.

“One officer says, ‘We want to throw everyone out at sundown.’ The other says, ‘Don’t worry about it, we only want to roust the gang members who are hanging here.’ . . . I’m not sure which will be the case,” he said.

On a recent night, Ramiro Bermudez, who lives a few blocks away, tossed a Frisbee with his younger brother at Sepulveda Recreation Center. Police drove a black-and-white slowly through the park grounds, around the tennis courts and by the darkened picnic tables, glaring at a young man dressed in baggy pants and a bulky, black jacket.

“Yes, there are problems here,” Bermudez said, “but it’s also one of the only places where people from the neighborhood can come to have fun.”