Reclaiming a Neighborhood

Stephanie Raygoza was riding a scooter back and forth in front of her Boyle Heights home when, down the street, tires screamed. A van full of young men, who police say were out for payback because a rival gang had tagged their turf with graffiti, started blasting. The gunfire killed a 19-year-old in a driveway. One bullet ricocheted into the 10-year-old girl.

The neighbors had seen shootings before. As Stephanie’s father lifted his daughter, the growing crowd shouted advice: Pick her up. Leave her still. Even now many recall the father, stooping and straightening, stooping and straightening, eyes blank with shock.

With Stephanie’s death, the neighbors said, “Enough.”

After dropping for seven years, gang killings began to climb in 2000. Remembering the bloody days of a decade back, when gang battles in Los Angeles County killed 803 in one particularly bad year, some neighborhoods are finding new courage and tenacity to stand up to these home-grown oppressors.

One, just east of downtown, is distinguished by aging public housing projects, the poorest church in the Los Angeles Archdiocese and at least three rival gangs that, until that evening in October 2000, shared turf with a fifth-grade girl who dreamed of becoming a teacher.

Even before cross-fire killed Stephanie, dozens of Boyle Heights residents had begun marching each Friday night, defiant proselytizers for peace. After her death, the number of protesters swelled to hundreds. Neighbors who had never met, in part because their fear of gangs kept them indoors, started talking. And started pushing.

We need speed bumps, they told the city. Give us three months, came the reply. The neighbors took pillows and blankets and bedded down in the streets. Raised asphalt humps went in a week later, slowing the cars that might harbor murderous boys and men.

The neighborhood asked to barricade an alley used as a drug market and getaway route. We need the permission of the people who live next to it, the bureaucrats said. In just three days neighbors gathered 190 signatures.

Two dozen residents, mainly women, signed up for leadership training from the neighborhood Catholic church, Dolores Mission, and the nonprofit Pacific Institute for Community Organization. Their neighbors began to call them los lideres, the leaders. “We learned how to build, how to work, how to create a new community,” Arturo Lopez said. “For Stephanie, and all the people who died.”

The gangs kept shooting.

The leaders set a new goal: Form a partnership with the Los Angeles Police Department’s Hollenbeck Division, which patrols the area. “I have never seen an officer get out of his patrol car and go talk to a resident,” said community organizer Mario Fuentes. More than 500 residents crowded into the church in November to meet with Chief Bernard C. Parks. The leaders asked for a yearlong pilot project that would help cops work more closely with the neighborhood, on foot and bicycles. Activist Rita Chairez recalls a conversation in which an officer said, “If you have it, other people are going to want it.” Her reply: “Well, yeah!”

Parks pledged his support. But now, with a nudge from Mayor James K. Hahn, he’s leaving, continuing the endless rotation of decision makers that has frustrated the community for years. Last week, the mayor announced an anti-gang initiative that would put 100 more police officers on the streets. Now he needs to name an initiative director who can bring the cops together with neighborhoods like this one.

The people stirred to action by Stephanie’s death deserve the city at their side. The homicide count in the Hollenbeck Division already stands at 23, and it’s only May. How many more children will young gangsters murder before adults with the power to change this city forcefully intervene?

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