‘WE TRUST THEM’ : In Rampart, Support Strong : Neighborhoods: Many residents applaud success of scandal-plagued police division in combating crime and drugs.

John Mills remembers a time when he was afraid to leave his Westlake-area home, when gang gunfire reached as high as the windows of his 13th-floor apartment.

Those days are over, Mills said, thanks to Los Angeles’ Rampart Division police.

“Whatever means they used, they justified the ends,” said the community leader, one of more than 250 people who jammed a luncheon Wednesday to honor the division at the heart of the largest Los Angeles police scandal in more than 50 years.

While the means used by some Rampart officers to quell gang and drug-related violence are now part of a broad probe into police misconduct, residents strolling down busy neighborhood streets, past barbershops, music stores and food markets voice support for the division.

At the Rampart Boosters Assn. luncheon--planned long before the scandal broke--dozens of business owners and neighbors turned out to praise the Rampart Division for cleaning up a neighborhood they said had been terrorized by the notorious 18th Street gang.

Many residents said Wednesday they fear that the ongoing corruption probe and suspension of two anti-gang injunctions will allow violent crime to flourish again.

Under a Cloud

In this densely populated area west of downtown, home to many recent Mexican and Central American immigrants, residents said they once felt under siege by gang members.

But in recent years, neighbors say, fewer shootings have punctured the air. Fewer drug dealers camp out in front of the aging apartment buildings teeming with families. Residents say that for the first time they feel safe going out at night.

“I used to be scared of getting shot when I went outside,” Margarita Marron, 40, said as she shopped Wednesday on 3rd Street with her young son. “But the last few years, I’ve felt much safer because the police are always around. I can walk freely at night.”

Ever since two injunctions targeting members of the 18th Street gang went into effect during the last two years, Marron said, she sees less graffiti, drug dealing and public drinking around her Union Street home.

“But now I’m afraid, and the whole community is afraid, that it’s going to go back to the way it was,” she said.

The allegations that some Rampart Division officers beat and shot unarmed men is the talk of the neighborhood, she said.

“We trust them, as police,” Marron said. “We never thought they would do something like this. I’ve never been scared of them.”

She turned to her 5-year-old son.

“Leonardo, how do you feel about the police? Are you scared of them?”

The little boy shook his head and smiled.

“No, me cuidan,” he said. “They watch out for me.”

A few years ago, the gangs were so powerful in Pico-Union that Francisco and Virginia Natera said they were frightened to leave their Westmoreland Avenue apartment. Gang members sat outside, smoking and selling drugs and threatening them when they walked by.

If you call the police, they would say, we’ll get you. One neighbor who ignored the threat found his car on fire. Now, say the Nateras, they have mixed feelings about the police.

“On one hand, I know what the police did was wrong,” said Francisco, 42. “But if they don’t defend us, who will? Some of these gang members are killers.

“Things are going to change now because the police won’t be able to do anything,” he added. “The gangs are going to grow and they will be able to do whatever they want.”

Although most community members are appalled at the reports of alleged police corruption, “people see the police very much as [making] an effort to improve the area,” said Father Jay Cunnan, a priest at Pico-Union’s St. Thomas Apostle Church.

Much of the sentiment among Central American immigrants is colored by their experiences of war-torn countries and rampant police brutality.

“I come from a country where the police don’t ask, they just shoot,” said Victor Palacios, 32, a native of El Salvador, as he leaned against a building on 3rd Street. “Compared to that, the police in the United States are some of the best in the world. . . . I think the number who are corrupt is very, very small.”

A few years ago, drugs sales were so rampant on 3rd Street that he was afraid to linger outside, Palacios added. With an increased police presence in the last few years, he said, “the community is peaceful now.”

“If they weren’t here, it would be a jungle,” he added.

But not every resident has welcomed the division’s aggressive tactics.

One 19-year-old man, who refused to give his name, said he and his friends have been constantly harassed by officers who pull them over and frisk them.

A year ago, he said, Rampart officers beat him with a baton when they stopped him to check for drugs--even though he was complying with their orders.

“There’s a lot of bad cops out there,” he said. “They stop people for no reason. I don’t feel safe around them.”

Residents Recall Bad Old Days

But for many neighbors, an aggressive police force is a small price to pay for safety. The neighborhood’s battles against drug sales and gang shootings are exhausting and never-ending, they said.

A hair salon owner on 6th Street said the strip mall where she works used to be called “In ‘n’ Out” because of the frequent drug dealing in the parking lot.

In the early 1990s, the police spent a year constantly patrolling the street, sometimes with as many as eight patrol cars, said the owner, who did not want to be identified. Soon, the dealers fled.

“People don’t see the good that Rampart does,” she said. “Those of us with businesses suffered so much because of the crime and drugs.”

On Wednesday afternoon, in front of a small shop near 11th and Burlington, merchant Jose Jimenez chased away a man he saw selling drugs.

“I don’t want you selling around here,” Jimenez called after him, waving a calloused hand. The recent injunctions brought waves of police raids that helped bring peace to the neighborhood, Jimenez said. Some gang members dropped their gang attire to avoid trouble, he added.

LAPD Capt. Paul Hansohn, the commanding officer of the Rampart Division, said he was confident that an injunction against the 18th Street gang eventually would be reinstated. In the meantime, he sought to reassure residents that police will continue to protect them.

The injunction is a valuable tool against crime, he said, “but it’s not the only tool now to deal with gang members. It doesn’t mean that gang members can go out and violate the law.”

Longtime neighborhood activist Rudy Tenorio de Cordoba said he is organizing a rally Friday evening outside the Rampart station in support of the police.

“Every major community organization in Rampart is going to be there,” he said. “All of us have a common denominator in that we support Rampart.”

Paul Gamberg, who lives a block from the station, said he intends to take part in the rally. The first reaction to the allegations against Rampart police may have been outrage, he said, but people are moving past that now.

“The second wave is coming,” he said, “and the second wave, which is very strong, is, ‘Hurrah for the cops for making our lives better!’ ”

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Times special correspondent Joseph Trevino contributed to this story.