A CITY STRAINS TO ARREST A DEADLY TREND

As daylight faded in San Bernardino, Reggie Brown, 12, traced a familiar path on his red bike: from Home Avenue to the white house on Magnolia Street where his friend Anthony Ramirez, 11, lived before he was shot to death.

One evening in June, nearly a dozen neighborhood kids were choosing teams for a pickup basketball game at nearby Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School when a 15-year-old aspiring gang member fired into the crowd, striking Anthony in the back.

The ballplayers scattered, but Anthony’s oldest brother turned back when he heard his name being called out. Help me, Anthony had begged as he lay bleeding on the asphalt. Anthony died with family members at his side.

“When Anthony died, they just didn’t come out and play no more,” said Reggie, resting on his handlebars near the Ramirez house. “Every time I ride up this street, I’ll be like, ‘This is Anthony’s street.’ Every car that drives by, I’ll be like scared and wanting to like hide behind a car or something.”

Reggie’s neighborhood, where families trade gossip over fences, is far from San Bernardino’s roughest. But in recent years, there are few havens in the city.

Last year, just three California cities -- Compton, Oakland and Richmond -- ranked higher in an authoritative research group’s study of the nation’s most dangerous cities, based on an analysis of FBI crime statistics.

This city of 200,000 recorded 58 homicides in 2005. Nine of the 45 people slain in San Bernardino so far this year -- the latest being early Saturday morning at a party -- were under 18, sparking both outrage and fear in city neighborhoods.

Although the jump in homicides is less dramatic than during the crack epidemic of the early 1990s, when Money magazine ranked San Bernardino the most dangerous place in the state, the city is again edging toward unwelcome notoriety.

A city left behind

As some San Bernardino County cities have prospered, replacing dirt lots and blighted neighborhoods with coffee shops and even some million-dollar homes, San Bernardino has remained entrenched in poverty. One-third of its residents depend on welfare.

Depressed housing prices have attracted buyers priced out of inner-city neighborhoods in Los Angeles and elsewhere, police and demographers said. And as the newcomers have moved in, officials said, they’ve brought with them street gangs and increased crime.

“San Bernardino has inherited L.A. County’s poor and at-risk families,” said economist John Husing. “Is it expected to be the dumping ground for everyone else’s poor people?”

The city’s meager tax base has left it ill-equipped to handle its problems. The police force, with about 300 officers, is stretched thin. San Bernardino has about 30% fewer officers per capita than Los Angeles, whose force is generally considered understaffed.

“We didn’t get into this state overnight,” said Police Chief Michael Billdt. “We’re not going to get out of this state overnight. It’s going to take time -- it’s going to take years.”

City officials are asking voters Tuesday to approve a sales tax hike that would allow them to hire 40 more police officers over three years. But even then, stemming crime -- and reassuring residents -- are difficult propositions.

Juliana Gonzales grew up on 15th Street, a three-block stroll to King Middle School on Medical Center Drive, where Anthony Ramirez was killed. Since the recent spate of shootings, that seems too foreboding a distance for her 16-year-old son to walk after sunset.

“It’s sad that we need to be like that.... You’re supposed to feel safe in your neighborhood, but in this time and age, it’s impossible.”

The night Anthony Ramirez was shot was the first and last time his mother, Michelle, let her two eldest sons play basketball beyond Magnolia and 15th streets. She now refuses to let them walk around the corner to a friend’s house -- insisting on driving them the short distance.

“It’s hard because they’re teenagers and they want to be out, but I don’t want them out,” she said. To protect their other sons, Michelle and her husband have decided to leave the neighborhood.

Far less run-down than other parts of San Bernardino’s West Side, the neighborhood’s population is a racial mix -- about half Latino, a third black and a quarter white -- with more homeowners than the city average, according to census figures. Some families have lived in the same stucco homes for three or four decades and are deeply tied to local groups and churches.

The gang gantlet

Several streets, however, are plagued by violence, prostitution, drug sales and multigenerational gang families, police and residents say. Two-thirds of the neighborhood’s households make less than $25,000 a year.

King Middle School Principal James Espinoza said 11 gangs surround the campus. He’s had students come into the office to report that they “accidentally got shot at on the way to school.” After one shooting, Espinoza began giving rides to one student who said he was too afraid to walk home.

“There’s almost no kid in the neighborhood who doesn’t know somebody who’s been shot or killed,” Espinoza said. “But there’s also a culture of faith and a culture of learning -- so you have competing forces, and we just refuse to give up.”

San Bernardino has had its share of ups and downs since it was incorporated in 1854. When its Mormon founders were called back to Salt Lake City three years later, they dumped their land for cheap, depressing the town until the railroads stepped in at century’s end, said Nick Cataldo, past president of the city’s historical society.

During the 1970s, the working-class city gained a reputation as a place that, though lacking in polish, got things done and earned All-America City honors in 1976. That honor became a punch line in the early 1990s as the San Bernardino Police Officers Assn. hawked “Murder City” T-shirts to raise funds for a police memorial and the city took one economic hit after another.

Interstate 15, which connects western San Bernardino County and the Cajon Pass, had cemented Ontario -- not San Bernardino -- as the region’s transportation hub, said Husing, the regional economist.

Over two decades, Kaiser Steel in Fontana, Santa Fe Railroad’s West Coast repair yard and Norton Air Force Base -- with at least 10,000 jobs at the air base alone -- all decamped.

Engineers and plant workers fled to other cities, selling their aging bungalows. Investors snatched up the properties, banking on a real estate boom that paled compared with other Southland cities’. In September, San Bernardino’s median home price of $322,250 was about $40,000 lower than the county’s, and its average rental prices are among the area’s lowest.

Apartment complexes have crumbled into de facto housing projects to create “a neighborhood that no one wants to invest in,” said Jim Morris, the mayor’s son and top aide. “Nobody really wants to be there.”

Still, the city has not given up.

Remedies in action

In the summer, Mayor Patrick J. Morris, a former Superior Court judge, rolled out Operation Phoenix, which targets a 20-block crime-ridden area in the city’s center. Code enforcement officials have stepped up complaints against landlords for graffiti, overgrown shrubs and poor lighting. Police have received two teams of additional officers from the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department and the California Highway Patrol to help guard the streets.

Since January, violent crimes including homicide, rape and robbery have dropped 29% in the Operation Phoenix area, police said. Burglaries have declined 71% and thefts 48%, though assaults have risen.

Citywide, violent crime has dipped about 13% while the homicide rate has remained on par with last year’s: about one slaying a week.

The mayor said he intended to target slumlords and entice renters to become homeowners with mortgage or down-payment assistance. The city plans to buy apartments blighting residential areas, and a developer wants to raze a dilapidated downtown mall to build town houses and condos.

A few blocks north of the Operation Phoenix area, where street gangs patrol their turf, Tralunia Jones, Reggie’s mother, said she had narrowed her son’s neighborhood boundaries to a few blocks. Mount Vernon Avenue and Medical Center Drive mark how far east and west Reggie can ride his bike -- even though the most desirable city pools and ball fields are far beyond those limits.

“There haven’t been problems on this street, but it’s all around us,” said Jones, who has lived on 15th Street for seven years. “You can’t stop it.”

Community leaders contend the city has ignored gang intervention programs, and in June, program directors rallied at City Hall for more funding and jobs for kids from the most crime-ridden blocks. Activists fear that the city’s politicians often favor suppression efforts, such as adding officers -- an approach that temporarily stems crime and wins votes but doesn’t rebuild the community.

“We can’t arrest our way out of the problem,” said Terrance Stone, who founded the Young Visionaries gang intervention program. “In gang life, it’s not a bad thing to go to jail. It’s like a normal person going to college.”

Though a teenager named James Lamont Bagsby was charged with Anthony Ramirez’s murder, officials said the arrest came, in part, because he had escaped from a juvenile group home in the high desert and had few ties to the area.

Police have yet to make an arrest in another high-profile slaying down the street. In May, Jarred Mitchell, 14, was dancing in a friend’s yard on Home Avenue when a silver car drove past and a gunman unloaded several rounds. The bullets grazed Reggie’s older sister’s head and killed Jarred.

“With these young kids, it’s kind of hard for them not to be around gang members,” said Jarred’s grandmother, Meredith Mitchell. “So there’s nothing you can do, really. There’s not too much you can say.”

Missing a friend

On Magnolia Street, Reggie shrugged and stared at the ground when asked what he misses about his friend. The boys met when their kindergarten and first-grade classes mixed at Rio Vista Elementary School. A budding Little League pitcher devoted to the Dodgers and Raiders, Anthony “was just cooler than everyone else,” Reggie said.

On that June evening, Anthony and his two older brothers had met their buddies to shoot hoops, promising their mother they would soon return for tacos. Two teenagers, investigators said, sauntered up to the boys and asked if they belonged to the gang called West Side Verdugo -- Spanish for “executioner.”

They said no. It didn’t matter. The shooter pulled a gun from his waistband and ran backward, spraying bullets.

Summer has since cooled to fall. Classes have started again at King Middle School, which Anthony would have attended, just like his older brothers and their friends.

His death still weighs on the boys in the neighborhood.

Sometimes, Reggie said, he starts biking toward the Ramirez home, forgetting Anthony is gone.

maeve.reston@latimes.com

ashley.powers@latimes.com

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Increasing violence

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San Bernardino was one of the most violent large cities in the state.

The number of violent crimes and rates for various large cities are

shown.Dodging the bulletsSan Bernardino has struggled with a high

violent crime rate, including 58 homicides in 2005 and 45 so far this

year. City officials hope to hire more police officers and clean up

blighted neighborhoods to make the city of 200,000 safer.

Rate perCityPopulation Rate per 100,000 pop.

City

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City: Compton | Population: 96,874 | Number of violent crimes: 1,731 | Rate per 100,000 pop.: 1,786.9

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City: Stockton | Population: 281,747 | Number of violent crimes: 4,202 | Rate per 100,000 pop.: 1,491.4

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City: Oakland | Population: 400,619 | Number of violent crimes: 5,692 | Rate per 100,000 pop.:1,420.8

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City: San Bernardino | Population:199,723 | Number of violent crimes:2,510 | Rate per 100,000 pop.:1,256.7

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City: Sacramento | Population:457,347 | Number of violent crimes: 5,265| Rate per 100,000 pop.:1,151.2

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City: Fresno | Population:460,758 | Number of violent crimes: 3,897 | Rate per 100,000 pop.:845.8

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City: Los Angeles | Population: 3,871,077 | Number of violent crimes: 31,767 | Rate per 100,000 pop.: 820.6

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City: Pomona | Population:156,480 | Number of violent crimes:1,235 | Rate per 100,000 pop.:789.2

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City: Bakersfield | Population:285,821 | Number of violent crimes:1,706 | Rate per 100,000 pop.: 596.9

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City: Santa Ana | Population:344,991 | Number of violent crimes: 1,845| Rate per 100,000 pop.: 534.8

City: Anaheim | Population: 335,992 | Number of violent crimes:1,616 | Rate per 100,000 pop.:481.0

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Sources: San Bernardino Police Department, FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports (dataanalyzed by The Times) ESRI. Graphics reporting by Doug Smith and

Maeve Reston