Bad Year for Crime in High Desert

The Antelope Valley experienced a record number of homicides in 2003, a fact law enforcement officials attribute largely to gang activity that has spread from Los Angeles County’s urban core to its most remote suburban reaches.

The rise in the number of killings -- 43 for the year, up from 26 in 2002 -- mirrors unsettling developments in neighboring Ventura County, where officials also cited increased gang activity as a factor in the doubling of homicides in 2003.

The numbers demonstrate the increasing threat that such regions as Ventura County and the Antelope Valley -- with their mix of rural, urban and suburban characteristics -- are facing from violent street gangs, said Ed Cohn, executive director of the National Major Gang Task Force.

“You are starting to see gangs and threat groups moving out to [these] areas,” Cohn said. “For one, they probably think they can get away from the law enforcement and criminal justice scrutiny that they go through in the urban areas.”

The Antelope Valley’s previous record for homicides in one year was 34, in 1992, according to Capt. Frank Merriman of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department homicide bureau.

Officials, however, say the per capita homicide rate is actually about the same as it was 11 years ago because the area has experienced rapid population growth in that period, from 258,000 people in 1992 to 311,000 today.

In 2002, Lancaster and Palmdale were listed as the 41st- and 47th-safest communities, respectively, in the FBI’s ranking of 232 U.S. cities with populations over 100,000. And local officials say the valley remains a safe place to live.

“Let’s be real here,” Lancaster City Manager James Gilley said. “It’s terrible compared to what we’re used to, but it’s great in comparison with the rest of the world. In L.A., you’ll have 15 homicides in one weekend.”

Most disturbing to police, however, is the fact that as many as half of the High Desert’s homicides in 2003 were gang-related, underscoring the broader threat posed by violent gang members who once operated almost exclusively in Los Angeles.

Los Angeles County Deputy Dist. Atty. David Berger, who was assigned to Lancaster in February 2002 to address gang-related crime, said an increased gang presence also explains the increase in the rate of serious felonies in Lancaster over the last four years.

The rate of serious crimes -- including homicide, rape and robbery -- was 257 per 10,000 people in 1999. The projected figure for 2003 is 420 serious crimes per 10,000 people.

In neighboring Palmdale, gangs were a major factor in the city’s 25% increase in serious crimes from 2001 to 2002, Sheriff’s Lt. Bobby Denham said. (Serious crimes appear to have reached a plateau in Palmdale for 2003, increasing by 0.6% in the first three quarters of the year.)

“A lot of the problem is moving up from L.A.,” Palmdale Sheriff’s Station Lt. Dave Meenk said.

The Antelope Valley’s vast desert landscape has long attracted its share of lawbreakers hoping to keep a low profile, and Berger believes some recently arrived gangsters may have moved there to escape new pressure from the Los Angeles Police Department under Chief William J. Bratton.

Gang activity also seems to be following families lured by the High Desert’s more affordable housing -- and the chance to raise their children far from the perils of the inner city. But those children sometimes import their gang trouble to their new neighborhoods, Berger said.

“You have parents who came up here to get away from all that stuff,” said Berger, who works in the Lancaster Sheriff’s Station. “But some of those people, unfortunately, bring some of those problems with them.”

In the first gang-related slaying in the Antelope Valley in 2003 -- which occurred Jan. 17 -- a 17-year-old boy shot and killed 19-year-old Francisco Lopez-Reynaga in Palmdale.

Lopez-Reynaga, a member of a Pacoima gang, was shouting the area code for the San Fernando Valley, while the shooter, a member of a Palmdale gang, allegedly shouted the area code for the Antelope Valley, Merriman said.

The last gang slaying occurred Dec. 5, when unidentified gang members shot and killed alleged gang member Jonte Stewart, 20, as he stood on a front porch in Palmdale, Merriman said. Three others were injured by the gunfire.

Much of the Antelope Valley’s serious crime is confined to its older neighborhoods, where housing tends to be cheapest. That can make the trouble seem distant to those who dwell in the area’s new, upscale subdivisions -- and those who are still surrounded by little more than desert.

Palmdale resident Joseph Yore said he recently spotted graffiti from a gang that operated in his old neighborhood in Los Angeles. But otherwise, he said, the gangs have had little effect on his quality of life.

“I live in the middle of Palmdale, but there’s not that many houses around me,” said Yore, 69. “I don’t know about any crime there.”

Indeed, despite the sobering crime figures, developers and home buyers remain enamored with the Antelope Valley. The median home price rose from $146,000 to $177,000 in 2003, according to DataQuick Information Systems. More than 1,800 building permits were issued in the first 10 months of the year, according to the Antelope Valley Board of Trade. And the country’s war footing has revitalized the local defense industry, promising more high-paying jobs.

Developer R. Gregg Anderson said crime is a minor consideration in Rancho Vista, a 5,000-home subdivision he has been building in stages for two decades in west Palmdale. His latest project, the 49-unit Masters at Rancho Vista development, which features 2,100- to 3,100-square-foot homes along a golf course, has a “long waiting list,” Anderson said, and won’t go on the market until April.

“I think [the figures] are painting a picture that doesn’t exist,” the developer said. “I’m perfectly comfortable here and I think our law enforcement people have done a good job.”

Many residents were awakened to the gang problem in November, when members of a fledgling street gang brutally beat a man picking up his child from a private Christian school in Lancaster, punching his 13-year-old daughter in the face when she asked them to stop. Authorities said the attack was part of the gang’s effort to establish control over the neighborhood. Three men and a juvenile were arrested and charged with criminal threats, assault and vandalism. All had moved to the Antelope Valley from South Los Angeles within the last two or three years, Berger said.

Other incidents demonstrate the extent of L.A. gangs’ infiltration of the High Desert. In March, authorities arrested 18 gang members living in Lancaster as part of a crackdown on the Pacoima Piru Bloods and the Grape Street Crips after Crip gang member Germaine “Mankay” Citizen was fatally shot in August 2002.

The Pacoima Pirus traditionally operate out of the San Fernando Valley, while Grape Street is a South Los Angeles gang, authorities said. The suspects were charged with weapons, narcotics and parole violations, but no one has been charged in Citizen’s slaying.

One suspect now facing trial, Shakir “Shack” Uqdah, moved to Lancaster from the Los Angeles area about two years ago. A shooting in Los Angeles had already put Uqdah to a wheelchair, and his mother persuaded him to move to the High Desert in hopes of making a fresh start, Berger said.

Lancaster and Palmdale are using similar strategies to combat the gang problem: stepping up enforcement of parole violations, running sweeps of problem neighborhoods and working with landlords to improve safety around cheap rental housing.

A special sheriff’s department team began traveling to the Antelope Valley a few days each month to deal specifically with the gang problem, said Capt. Carl Deeley of the Lancaster Sheriff’s Station.

On Jan. 13, the Lancaster City Council will consider a plan to add four deputies to its 48-member force, financed by general fund money and new fees on landlords. On April 13, Lancaster voters will consider a ballot measure to add 10 patrol officers.

The cost would be paid by a $25-per-parcel tax on all private property. “Asking residents to pay for more law enforcement is no easy task,” Berger said, “But we need more deputies to fight back at crime, and Sacramento is not going to give us the money.”