Making a Stand

The streets near Hubert H. Humphrey Park are densely packed with modest homes--some clean and orderly, some ramshackle, but nearly all ringed by spiked fences, lending an aura of the American Dream on the defensive.

For 38 years, though, leaders of this onetime African American--now predominantly Latino--neighborhood have envisioned the block-sized patch of ball fields and recreation buildings as an oasis--a place where residents can let their guard down and experience a sense of community.

“This is the nicest park I’ve seen around here,” said Joe Sideritz, a newcomer to the neighborhood who played at the park with his two sons one recent Thursday night.

But the park also has been a favorite hangout of young men after dark, and their presence is often blamed for the periodic violence that rocks the area.

Los Angeles police have linked gang activity in and around the park to a round of nearby shootings, including the Oct. 7 wounding of a 9-year-old girl by a stray bullet, and the Oct. 22 killing of 15-year-old Andres Reyes.

Public outrage, an increased police presence and political promises of change have come in the wake of the shootings. But just as important, park officials say, is the fact that neighbors like Joe Sideritz keep coming by.

After sundown, Sideritz was not alone: A few yards away, kids shot baskets and rode skateboards, the Humphrey Padres baseball team made up of 11- and 12-year-olds practiced on the lighted infield, and parents like Maria Espinoza looked after their kids playing on the jungle gym. Espinoza, like many others, said she felt completely safe here.

The best defense against further trouble, said Frank Zapata, 37, is residents’ continued presence at the park.

“I [have been] asking people not to back down and to keep coming out,” Zapata said as he prepared to take his son home from baseball practice. “That’s my theory . . . to come out and just be here. If not, you leave the door open for [gang members] to do what they do.”

Across the baseball diamond from Zapata, 10 teenage boys huddled in the shadows of a big utility box, cracking jokes and showing off a couple of tricked-out BMX bikes.

Identifying themselves as the Brown Pride Raza, the similarly dressed teenagers said they were all neighborhood kids, the same kids you see playing baseball, shooting hoops and enjoying the atmosphere--and that they’re not part of the problem.

“We don’t do nothing foolish, fool,” one youth said.

Abel Ramirez, 43, Humphrey Park’s ice cream man, has lived across the street from the park for years. Speaking in general about the park and the people who use it, he said, Humphrey “is a very, very good park--but sometimes, some of these little boys, these cholos, cause problems.”

City Program Makes Park a Test Case

In the wake of the recent violence, Councilman Alex Padilla has pushed to make Humphrey the “No. 1 test case” for Operation Clean Neighborhoods, a new $14-million city initiative to clean up troubled parks, introduce youth programs and revamp community policing efforts. Humphrey’s well-tended 10 acres already have a number of amenities, though--a gym, a children’s center, two immaculate year-round swimming pools--and Park Director Michael Hogan’s wish list consists of more recreational rooms, and possibly a teen center.

Additional programs for Humphrey will come, Hogan said, but the first priority will be to install bars and fencing to limit access to park areas like the utility box, where kids tend to gather outside the casual view of police.

City authorities say they might seek a gang injunction for the area as well, and 20 anti-gang officers from the Metro Division have begun a special patrol. Also recently established, after numerous community requests, was a police drop-in center in the park office, where a senior lead officer stops by for a few hours a day.

Ted Watson, the LAPD senior lead officer for the area, says the extra patrols are working for now. The park, he said, has been quiet. But though the strategy serves the important purpose of letting gang members cool down at a time when they might be most inclined to commit a retaliatory murder, the special patrols can’t stay forever, and will probably leave in the next two weeks.

“It’s a Band-Aid at best,” Watson said.

The Brown Pride Raza members interpret the stepped-up enforcement as stepped-up harassment. They and activist Blinky Rodriguez, executive director of the organization Communities in Schools, said a number of Andres Reyes’ friends were stopped immediately after a service for the slain teen and aggressively frisked by Los Angeles police officers.

Rodriguez said such tactics won’t contribute to a sense of peace. And if an injunction goes into effect, he wondered, where would these kids go?

“I understand there was a homicide,” Rodriguez said. “But . . . sometimes you can ignite a fuse instead of [extinguishing it].”

Ray Jackson is a longtime resident who said he came up with the idea for a park on the block in the early 1960s, when there were few recreational areas in Pacoima, then largely African American. A former policeman, Jackson said he was not sure anything other than increased patrols could help keep the peace--but he wasn’t even sure about that.

“From my observation, maybe there’s no total panacea for safety for a park like that,” he said.

Edward Kussman, 90, one of the African American leaders who helped build the park, and a resident of the neighborhood since 1953, said friction between police and those who hang out in the park goes way back. “They’ve always had trouble,” he said.

Racial Tensions in Mixed Neighborhood

Kussman and a few old-timers remember this neighborhood when it was mostly black--the result, he said, of segregationist real estate practices. In recent years, Latinos have come to outnumber blacks, creating new friction, residents say.

Los Angeles police have arrested an African American gang member, Gregory White, 24, in connection with Reyes’ Oct. 22 slaying. And many remember the last outbreak of trouble, in the summer of 1997, when a black teenager was fatally shot in the park. A Latino gang member was convicted of the killing a year later, police said.

Watson and Foothill Division Det. Frank Bishop said such incidents don’t tell the whole story. Pacoima also has problems with Latino-vs.-Latino gang violence, they said, and most people in the neighborhood get along fine.

“The problems are not black vs. brown,” Bishop said. “The problems are gang problems.”

The issue is complicated. Ice cream man Ramirez, 43, said the relationship between the races is “very bad,” yet moments later he exchanged warm greetings with a black teenage customer he appeared to know well.

Crystal Hardy, 17, who is black, said she and her boyfriend often run into trouble with Latino gang members. “If I’m walking through the park with my boyfriend, they’re all like, ‘Where are you from?’ ” she said. “It’s not safe for young black men around here.”

Still, the park is a place where residents of all backgrounds come together to play.

The Humphrey Padres, who are mostly Latino, have a black manager, Zapata said. The girls’ basketball team, the Mercury, has black and Latino players.

“I was raised with black kids here,” said Noe Medina, a Latino, who was shooting hoops at the gym with 15-year-old Brenna Cooper, who is black.

Hubert Humphrey’s progressive stand on racial matters led the neighborhood’s black leaders to ask that the North Pacoima Recreation Center be named for the former vice president following his death in 1978.

“After he passed away, we all decided to name it after him, because of his support for civil rights,” Kussman said. “It seems to me we all have to work together.”

Blinky Rodriguez thinks it’s possible. He has noted that recent community meetings have brought together both black and Latino neighbors looking for solutions.

“There is so much more good going on around that park than negative,” he said. “Unfortunately, we only hear about the negative.”