Lasting Peace Is Elusive in Jeffrey-Lynne

Police are once again waging a battle to wipe out gangs and drugs in the Jeffrey-Lynne neighborhood, Anaheim’s most dangerous. Called “Tijuanita” by residents, it reminds police of somewhere else.

“It’s like our Vietnam,” said Joe Vargas, the department’s public information officer. “We win the battles but lose the war.”

Indeed, the city’s longest-running single-neighborhood campaign provides a sober lesson in the complexities and limitations of community policing.

Officers say the increased attention has paid off with lower crime rates, but lasting success eludes them. And their efforts are more often rewarded with death threats than invitations to dinner.

“I know some people hate me,” said Officer Juan Reveles, half of a two-man community policing team in Jeffrey-Lynne. “I don’t have a problem with that. If they didn’t, I wouldn’t be doing my job.”

Officers patrolling Jeffrey-Lynne frequently stop pedestrians, sometimes searching and photographing them. Some days they sweep the neighborhood to issue tickets for minor traffic violations. At night, officers shine flashlights into passing cars in search of suspicious behavior.

Yet to many residents, even those who appreciate the stepped-up police effort, the aggressive search for lawbreakers signals disrespect bordering on harassment.

“I’m tranquilo. I don’t like to fight. I only work,” said Salvador Alvarez, a 37-year-old Lynne Street resident who said he often is stopped by police as he bicycles to work at Pizza Hut. “They should respect us so we can help make a better world out of this place.”

Jeffrey-Lynne residents work in the heart of Anaheim’s tourist-based economy. They are the janitors, landscapers and housekeepers who provide low-wage labor at Disneyland and the multitude of hotels, restaurants and other businesses in the area.

Housed in about 700 apartments, thousands of people--city officials have no estimate of the population--live on the blocks bounded by Cerritos Avenue on the north, Walnut Street on the east, 9th Street on the west and Audre Drive on the south.

Inside some of the tidy, cramped apartments hang framed certificates celebrating school achievements. But outside, on garage and apartment walls, 6-foot-high graffiti marks lay claim to the neighborhood for the Jeffrey Street gang.

The housing is often substandard, according to residents, city officials and police. Some absentee landlords neglect the buildings, and many units have leaky roofs, broken plumbing and crumbling walls.

Along with the dilapidated conditions, residents must contend with the city’s most serious crime. Police say Jeffrey-Lynne is a “full-service” narcotics supermarket for buyers from around Orange County seeking cocaine, heroin or methamphetamine.

When night falls, young men--many with shaved heads and baggy clothes--huddle under palm trees and in dark alleys. Some sell drugs to people in passing cars while children nearby ride bikes or play tag.

The Jeffrey Street gang is one of Orange County’s most criminally active, according to police. In the last two months, three gang members have been shot, and the gang is suspected in the Oct. 19 death of a 15-year-old rival gang member.

The city has tried to clean up the area for years but has met with only limited success. More than $1 million--much of it federal grants--has been spent on code enforcement, a new park and a community center.

Still a Center for Drugs, Violence

It is here that Anaheim in 1989 began its longest-lived effort at community policing--a style of patrol work that emphasizes developing relationships between officers and residents.

A look at crime statistics is encouraging: Reported crime in the six-block area dropped from 276 cases in 1993 to 60 in 1996.

But even police don’t celebrate the decline, acknowledging that Jeffrey-Lynne remains a center for drug sales and gang violence.

And they are frustrated by the tendency of crime in the neighborhood to bounce back when they loosen their grip--a pattern not seen in other troubled neighborhoods. The number of reported crimes increased almost 50% in 1997 and has held steady this year.

Three times in the last decade, police said, crime spiked upward after beat cops--a pair of officers working the area as a team full time--left.

“It’s the longest-lived effort the city has ever had. And sometimes it feels like we’ve made very little stride,” Lt. Charles Chavez said.

Added Vargas, the public information officer: “You see the same cookie-cutter formula used in other areas succeeding and then you try it down there and it doesn’t work.”

Many observers attribute the problems in Jeffrey-Lynne to a deep-rooted, familial involvement in crime that spans generations. Chavez said the neighborhood is embedded with a culture of criminality.

“It almost seems like narcotics dealing has become part of the lifestyle down there. It’s only a small portion of the residents, but they contribute a lot to the problem,” he said.

Police say the gangs and drug dealers are so entrenched that children are easily sucked down the wrong path by peer pressure.

So boys riding bikes, for instance, are viewed by officers as potential lookouts for drug dealers. “There’s no sneaking up on anyone in this neighborhood. By the time we hit Lynne Street, everybody knows we’re here,” said David Hermann, Reveles’ partner.

The city’s latest effort to quell the thriving drug trade will take full effect in January: a neighborhood ban on street parking. The ban, which has been effective elsewhere, is intended to deny drug dealers a place to quietly do business.

City officials, police and others agree that another key problem is a lack of cooperation from one group of people who don’t even live in the neighborhood: apartment-building owners.

When owners get involved in other neighborhoods, police and others say, the results can be dramatic. On Balsam Avenue, for example, drug dealing was largely eliminated after owners evicted about 40% of the tenants, officials said. Strict code enforcement and stepped-up policing also contributed to the turnaround.

Phil Iati, until recently president of the Jeffrey-Lynne area’s owners association, said some owners are unwilling to evict problem tenants for fear of losing rent income.

And tenant screening is too lax, creating a rotating door phenomenon that results in tenants bouncing from one building to another, he said. The possibility of redevelopment in an area so close to the economic powerhouse of Disneyland also creates a disincentive for some owners to invest in their properties, he said.

“The police have done a wonderful job,” Iati said. “But it’s pointless for them to be in the neighborhood if the owners don’t participate.”

Residents acknowledge that police have achieved something in Jeffrey-Lynne: Crime is down. Gone are the days when they had to hit the pavement to duck bullets fired from passing cars.

“One time a bullet whizzed right by my head,” said Alicia Cruz, able to laugh about the incident--one of two drive-by shootings she survived in the last 10 years.

“It has its moments of ups and downs, but it’s a lot better than it has been,” said Art Lucero, a security guard who patrols the area. “It’s a lot safer.”

But while residents in other neighborhoods show their appreciation by inviting community-policing officers to barbecues and parties, in Jeffrey-Lynne things are different.

Here, they receive death threats, get their patrol bikes knocked over and their police cars smashed with bricks. Officer Reveles regularly sees his name spray-painted on walls with the number “187”--the state penal code section for murder.

The latest round of intense policing, begun in May after a spike in the crime rate, was welcomed by many in the Jeffrey-Lynne neighborhood. But some say the force’s aggressive tactics go too far.

Many residents complain about the seemingly random stops and searches, nighttime flashlight walks, sweeps and the issuance of tickets for minor traffic violations.

“We’re not free anymore. They’re on you, on you, on you,” said Delfino Gutierrez, who says he has been stopped several times--including once, he says, simply for walking on a street where he doesn’t live.

“You can’t go outside your home or take a walk down the street or down the alley without them stopping you, asking, ‘You don’t live here. What are you doing over here?’ ”

Marcos Mendez, who has lived in the neighborhood 14 years, said he avoids going out at night for fear of being pulled over for a minor traffic violation. “They make everyone pay for the sins of a few.”

Conrado Najera, a Lynne Street resident, said he often can’t work on his car because police, believing that garage activity is often a front for drug dealing, tell him to shut the garage door.

Last month, in response to an escalation in gang violence that sent three Jeffrey Street gang members to area hospitals with gunshot wounds, 25 officers descended on the area to search the homes of people on parole or probation. There were no arrests, but police said they gained valuable intelligence on the gang.

To some residents, however, the sweep was viewed as an exercise in intimidation, and they complain that police demanded entry into homes where no parolees or people on probation lived.

Heriberto Alvarez, 21, has been stopped and searched so many times he has lost count.

“I stay home now and mind my own business,” he said.

Mixed Responses to Police Presence

Police acknowledge that innocent bystanders may sometimes be stopped and searched. It is an inevitable, and largely benign, byproduct of a larger, more successful crime-fighting effort, officers say.

“A few people may be unjustly contacted, but we aren’t hearing them complaining about false arrests,” said Chavez, who is head of the department’s community policing team.

“It’s a unique neighborhood,” he said. “The tactics are going to be a little different.”

Police also point to a door-to-door survey in June that found more than 80% of residents contacted were satisfied with police performance. And none have formally complained to the city.

Indeed, some residents call the heavy police presence a small price to pay for crime-free streets.

Cristobal Mendez, a Jeffrey Street resident, is a strong proponent of the department’s efforts. He has been pulled over and questioned, but he said he didn’t mind.

“It’s OK. I didn’t do anything wrong,” he said.

Mendez believes the officers’ tactics are appropriate and that many residents, because they are new to the country, misunderstand the intention.

“Many of the new people here don’t realize the history of the problems here, so they don’t realize that the police are only doing what is necessary,” he said.

Another longtime resident who spoke only on condition of anonymity said she approves of the community-policing efforts. A 15-year resident of the neighborhood, she says she would not mind seeing her children stopped by police.

“The only ones who complain are the ones guilty of something,” she said.

Forging Relationships With the Community

Community policing, which targets low-level infractions that create fertile environments for more serious crime, has worked in neighborhoods nationwide. But experts caution that the tactics can sometimes prove counterproductive.

In theory, police officers on foot patrol are more likely to forge personal relationships that help build bridges with the community. But the closeness can also be perceived as intrusive and threatening, breeding an enmity that poisons the effort.

“When you start saturating an area with police, you’re going to upset a lot of the residents unless you are very careful,” said Gilbert Geis, a professor in UC Irvine’s department of criminology, law and society.

“The name of the game is discretion. Community policing at its best learns to differentiate the people who are being victimized and the people who are committing crimes.”

If community policing has a face in Jeffrey-Lynne, it is that of Reveles, a 31-year-old bilingual officer whose name in the neighborhood has become a household word often spit out in disgust.

Standing 5 feet, 5 inches tall, he is not an intimidating physical presence. But he is an aggressive officer, and his boyish grin evaporates when the talk turns to residents’ complaints. He labels the critics gang members or malcontents, community activists just trying to stir up controversy.

Reveles grew up in a similar neighborhood in Los Angeles, and some of his friends became gang members. What kept him in line was his mother, a tough taskmaster who raised him and his six brothers and sisters by herself. Reveles said he models some of his police work on the stern, disciplinary methods of his mother. Rules are rules; no excuses allowed.

Reveles will look for any excuse to get a gang member under his glare.

“Do you admit you keep screwing up? Do you?” Reveles asks a 19-year-old he has pulled over on Lynne Street. The man, a Jeffrey Street gang member, he said, was driving without a license, and the car smelled of marijuana.

“Yes,” the young man mumbles in reply. Reveles has forced him to sit on the curb while he lectures him like a disobedient schoolboy.

“How many chances do you want me to give you?” Reveles scolds him. “You were telling me you were going to change and here we are again.”

Reveles could impound the car, but he lets the young man go with a ticket. In exchange, the young man is forced to admit to his parents that he is a gang member. The boy’s mother, who watched the incident, holds back tears as she walks away with her son.

Seeing that pain in a mother’s eyes, Reveles says, is one of the hardest parts of his job. But it is harder, and much more frustrating, when parents of a budding gang member refuse to accept what is happening to their child, he says.

The latest hot spot for Reveles and partner Hermann is in front of a building on Jeffrey Street that houses an apartment used by St. Boniface Catholic Church for catechism classes. Children learn about the Ten Commandments while the drug trade flourishes outside.

Reveles seethes: “It’s pretty hard for me not to jump out of my car and”--he pauses--”scream at these gang members sometimes.”

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Crime Rebounds

Crime dropped dramatically in Anaheim’s six-block Jeffrey-Lynne neighborhood from 1995 to 1996, partly because of community policing, officials say. But reported crimes edged back up in 1997.

1993: 276

1994: 268

1995: 214

1996: 60

1997: 89

1998: 74*

* Through Oct. 29

Source: Anaheim Police Department