In Palm Springs, Fear for Children’s Future

Cora Crawford is weary of the misery brought on her neighborhood by yesterday’s children.

She’s tired of the drugs, the random shootings, the gang members who rule her neighborhood after the young children retreat from the day’s play.

She’s tired of the encroaching blight of abandoned homes and barred windows that frame her street.

She indulges the community leaders who champion all the good people--like herself--who live in the tight-knit neighborhood known as Desert Highland-Gateway Estates.

It’s on the north side of Palm Springs, just a few blocks away from the gracious old haunts of Cary Grant, Bing Crosby and Elvis Presley. In a city that smoothly projects a postcard image, this neighborhood presents the dogeared, flip side to the desert resort’s good life.

Crawford knows that after dark she can’t call for a cab or a pizza because smart people know when to steer clear. And it’s little wonder the neighborhood can’t shake its reputation.

Last month, a 29-year-old deliveryman for the (Riverside) Press-Enterprise, Matt York, was shot and killed by a carload of assailants as he made his predawn rounds. A 16-year-old passenger escaped the hail of bullets, only to watch York die in what police call a motiveless attack.

Community activists held another of their news conferences to defend their neighborhood and characterize the shooting as an aberration that could--and does--happen just about anywhere.

But Crawford is tired of hearing that too.

“Some people are in denial, but we got real problems here,” says Crawford, 69, a substitute teacher, as she stands in the doorway of a well-kept home. There are bars on her windows too.

The misery of crime is not new to the neighborhood. Three years ago--during a celebration of Black History Month at the local park--gunfire erupted in broad daylight between gangs as parents and children ducked for cover.

Later that year, Riverside County law enforcement agencies conducted the largest gang sweep in the Coachella Valley, swooping through the neighborhood in the wake of shootings and other violence.

Palm Springs Police Officer Bryan Anderson, assigned exclusively to patrol the neighborhood, shakes his head at the escalating violence.

“Now an innocent guy just doing his job is shot in the head. Ninety-seven percent of the people out here are wonderful, the best, but 3% are piranhas.”

Police Capt. Gary Boswell, a 31-year veteran of the force, said the neighborhood is now racked by paranoia and fear.

“The gang activity has made parents afraid of children, friends afraid of friends,” he said. “People don’t feel safe in their homes. The drug dealers prey on the neighborhood.”

Afternoon sunshine bathes the neighborhood of stucco homes. Some are bordered by green lawns and carefully tended flower beds; others are boarded up with plywood over windows, “For sale” signs out front. Neighbors wave and holler hello to one another; a group of 14-year-old boys ply the street on bicycles and roller-blades, basketballs stowed under their arms.

Officer Anderson is walking away from a domestic-dispute call and stops to help a 7-year-old boy tie his shoes when he spots, out of the corner of his eye, the flash of a cash exchange in the courtyard of a small apartment complex. He approaches the three men, who bolt. The cop gives chase.

“Stop, or I swear I’ll shoot!” he yells, without drawing his gun.

“Anderson, you ain’t gonna shoot me, ‘cause you like me too much,” the man yells back without breaking stride.

Anderson gains ground, tackles the man on the fly, and the two tumble across the ground. The little boy watches with mild interest, tugs on his baby sitter’s sleeve and asks for a glass of punch.

The suspect has no drugs on him, and gives his neighborhood cop a bad time. Anderson lets him go.

Down the street, five young children--in a whirl of giggles and pigtails--eagerly show off their grandmother’s sprouting backyard garden to a visitor.

What do they like about their neighborhood? “The park, grandma, our garden,” they say, shouting different answers. But when asked if there’s anything they don’t like, they answer immediately and in unison: “The shooting.”

“Those boys on the corner are always fussing or fighting over something. I put my pillow over my ears. And when they start shooting we all lay down on the floor,” says 6-year-old Evonna Craig.

“I get really scared,” adds 5-year-old Bethany Craig. “I’m afraid something will happen to my mom and dad.”

Nightfall brings caution to this part of town.

Delivery of the Press-Enterprise was stopped after Matt York was killed. The Desert Sun already refused to distribute its newspapers until after daybreak. And Domino’s Pizza won’t deliver after dark.

“And who can blame them?” asks Lisa Phillips, 36, recalling how she once ordered pizza. “I walked outside and the pieces were scattered everywhere. They’d jumped the pizza man.”

Gang members stand on corners, attracting drug customers by flashing their pen lights as beacons to illicit commerce.

Anderson pulls over two women in a red Pontiac Firebird. Because they’re not locals, they’re either up to no good or in harm’s way.

“I came up here to buy rock [cocaine],” the driver, a 33-year-old from Long Beach, admits unabashedly.

Usually she buys her drugs at 6th and Alvarado streets in the Westlake area of Los Angeles.

“I feel more comfortable back there,” she says. “This neighborhood makes me nervous.”

Even some old-timers who live here--fellows who themselves have served prison time--are distressed.

“I don’t understand this new breed,” said Daniel Blasingame, who identifies himself as an ex-convict. “The older guys, we don’t mess around with these youngsters. They’d just as soon shoot us as anyone else. There’s no respect.”

What particularly pains people like James Jesse, director of the Desert Highland Unity Center, is the realization that the young hoodlums were yesterday’s innocent children.

“There’s a real hurt and pain at the possibility that I may have known these children [who gunned down Matt York] from the day they were born,” he said. “I’m in real pain, knowing that there were four individuals in that car and not one said, ‘No, let’s not do this.’ ”