Anti-Crime Program to Focus on City Parks

Short-handed and strapped for cash, the manager of the Ramona Gardens Recreation Center recently turned to a most unlikely source to help rid his aging Boyle Heights facility of graffiti: gang members.

The result was even more surprising. The gang members agreed to help and used donated paint from the adjacent housing project to cover scrawlings in the bathrooms, weight room and main entryway.

The gang members even posted signs around the recreation center, warning that anyone who vandalizes the facility will suffer their wrath.

“If I had put up a sign, there would still be graffiti,” park manager Hector Salazar said with a grin. “But when these guys do it, people listen.”

Salazar’s tactic is an example of the extra effort and ingenuity that park directors around Los Angeles must demonstrate to protect their green islands of recreation from the invading big-city problems of the surrounding neighborhoods.

But now, Ramona Gardens and 35 other parks and recreation centers will be getting some extra help as part of a new anti-crime program proposed by Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan last week.

In the belief that parks and recreation centers help keep children out of trouble, Riordan’s initiative would include $8.8 million for park directors like Salazar to add equipment and staff without having to rely on donations and volunteers--including gang members.

The mayor has also proposed $5.2 million to eliminate signs of urban decay, such as illegal dumping, abandoned cars and buildings, broken sidewalks and other visual blight in high-crime neighborhoods.

The parks were selected for the program on the basis of population density and the crime problems in surrounding neighborhoods, among other criteria.

Most of the 36 parks chosen are in the poorest sections of the city, primarily in the south and east. Many are hangouts for gangs. Litter, graffiti and worn, aging park equipment are common problems. Basketball nets are torn or missing from the outdoor rims. Huge patches of soccer fields are worn to the bare dirt because of overuse.

Riordan, a former parks and recreation commissioner, launched the program in response to a 9% increase in violent crime in the first seven months of the year, compared with last year. The most disturbing crime trend was a 116% increase in gang homicides over the same period last year.

The anti-crime program focuses on youth activities because nearly 70% of the suspects in homicides committed over the last seven months are between the ages of 13 and 24, according to police.

The effort was partly inspired by a successful restoration program that was launched in a San Fernando Valley park after a gang shooting in July.

An 18-year-old man was killed and another young man was critically wounded when gang members sprayed a carload of people with gunfire in the Sepulveda Park parking lot in Panorama City.

After the attack, park crews improved lighting, trimmed overgrown trees and shrubbery, removed a pay phone used for drug sales and replaced exercise equipment used by gang members with a play area for toddlers. Police also increased patrols around the park.

Kevin Regan, superintendent of parks operations in the Valley, said the response was almost instantaneous.

“The next day families and children were back in the park,” he said, adding that turnout has been so good that park officials have started a flag football program for the first time in years.

Of the 36 parks in the program, recreation officials, say the facilities with the most dire need for improvements are Harvard Recreation Center in South Los Angeles, Ramona Gardens Recreation Center in Boyle Heights, Elysian Valley Recreation Center near Dodger Stadium, Normandale Recreation Center in the Harbor-Gateway area, and Hubert Humphrey and Delano parks in the Valley.

At the Harvard center, the swimming pool is empty and closed. It sprang a leak in August while city crews were paving an adjacent alleyway.

“If this had happened in the Valley or somewhere else, they would have fixed our pool by now,” complained recreation assistant Andre Green.

The 12.7-acre park, at 62nd Street and Harvard Boulevard, is home to the city’s only midnight basketball league--a weekly program that often pits teams of rival gang members against each other.

With the mayor’s new funding, the league will be expanded to the Valley and the Eastside.

But when gang members are not playing basketball, they are often hanging out in a dimly lit corner of the park near a row of horseshoe pits.

Park visitors said improved lighting and additional after-school programs may bring more families back.

“It’s a decent park,” said Reuben Navarro, who accompanies his three children to the park at least three times a week. “The only problem is that gangs take over it at night.”

Lois Thomas, a longtime South Los Angeles resident who was at the park recently watching her grandson practice flag football, said she would like to see park officials offer an after-school tutoring program.

“That would be especially helpful because many parents work late and can’t watch their kids after school,” she said.

Besides funding to repair the pool, park director Robert Jones said he could use some money to repair termite damage in the gymnasium and improve drainage on the soccer fields, where rains often create puddles the size of wading pools.

But most of all, Jones said he would like to add to his crew of two full-time assistants so he can offer field trips to museums and other cultural facilities.

“A lot of these kids don’t ever cross Crenshaw Boulevard,” he said.

The Elysian Valley Recreation Center is a 1.9-acre facility in a heavily Latino neighborhood between the Los Angeles River and the Golden State Freeway, just north of Dodger Stadium.

Facility director Billie Carey said she would like computers, a television set and some furniture so she can offer teenagers a place to hang out after school.

“If we can provide a place that they can call their own, that would help,” she said.

At the Ramona Gardens housing project, next to the San Bernardino Freeway in Boyle Heights, the recreation center is the hub of activity for the 1,500 residents. The center includes a 1.9-acre park with a baseball diamond.

On a recent afternoon, members of the Big Hazard gang played basketball at one end of the gym floor while elementary school children worked on homework on a fold-out table at the other end.

Athletic equipment is always in short supply, so Salazar often relies on donations or money from his own pocket. But even that is not always enough. He recently started badminton matches in the gym by stringing a volleyball net between a ladder and a basketball rim.

With additional money from Riordan’s program, Salazar said he could buy uniforms and jerseys for members of the football, soccer and basketball teams.

“If they get a uniform, they get a sense of pride,” Salazar said.

Parents say the added funding should be used to take youngsters to museums, zoos or beaches--anywhere away from the gang influences in the projects.

“I think the kids need to be entertained and taken on trips,” said Daisy Aguila, a 10-year project resident and the mother of two girls and a young boy. “Anything to keep them out of gangs.”

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Times staff writer Irene Garcia contributed to this story.