Saturday, February 10, 2001
Gang Violence Returns to Rattle Venice's Oakwood Area
Communities: Three slayings and three other shootings over the last two weeks have the neighborhood on edge.
A recent wave of gang violence in Venice and on its borders has
left three men dead and the eclectic beach-side community once more
grappling with the future of its troubled Oakwood neighborhood.
Melvyn Hayward, director of Venice's Vera Davis McClendon Community
Center, said the killings and three other shootings in the last two weeks
have residents on edge after months of relative calm. "At nighttime, when
you come down here, you see nobody out on the streets," he said.
But like other residents in Oakwood's 40-block area east of Main
Street, Hayward is ambivalent about discussing the violence, which flared
again on Friday. He'd rather talk about his center's new computer classes
for developmentally challenged adults.
He and other Oakwood residents say they want safe streets and are
tired of their community making headlines mainly through the gangbangers.
At the same time, however, many longtime, low-income residents already
feel under a different kind of siege from ongoing gentrification, which
is raising their rents and, some contend, making them feel unwelcome.
Venice suffered through gang wars in 1994 and 1997, but violence was
down over the last few years, police said. There were six homicides in
Oakwood in 1998 and two in each of the two following years, according to
the LAPD.
The recent violence led authorities to step up patrols in the
ethnically diverse neighborhood--which includes small houses with neat
yards owned by the same families for generations, artist studios,
subsidized housing complexes and newly remodeled bungalows with skylights
and high fences.
"My thinking is most of the shootings appear to be gang-related and
appear to be a feud between our two local gangs," said LAPD Pacific
Division Capt. Gary Williams, referring to a two-decade rivalry between
Culver City and Venice gangs.
But he added, "To stop [the shootings] altogether, we'd have to put
police officers on every street corner coming into Oakwood and every
street coming out. We can't do that."
Williams would not discuss possible motives for the three killings and
three other shootings. No arrests have been made in any of the incidents,
four of which took place in Oakwood. Another was just outside the
neighborhood but near Venice High School and the other was nearby in
Culver City.
The most recent took place about 1 a.m. Friday, at Broadway Avenue and
6th Street in Oakwood, leaving an unidentified 28-year-old Venice man in
critical condition at a local hospital, police said. Witnesses said three
suspects fled on foot. Detectives said they were unsure of the motive,
but would not rule out a connection to last week's shootings. Sgt. Ruben
Lopez of the Pacific Division's anti-gang detail said that his unit is
working closely with the Culver City Police Department to solve the
homicides and that both departments have deployed extra officers.
Oakwood resident Sal Salas, 18, said he stayed away from gangs but has
firsthand experience of the tension between the Culver City and Venice
gangs. He grew up in Culver City and moved to Oakwood when he was in high
school.
"The guys used to give me a hard time because they knew where I was
from, but then I got to know them and it chilled out," he said.
Since the recent shootings, Salas is careful to be out on the street
as little as possible. He shuttles quickly between classes at El Camino
College and work at a local cafe among the flourishing antique stores on
Abbot Kinney Boulevard, only blocks from the shootings.
The outbreak took many residents by surprise.
"We don't understand, it was so quiet here for so long," said
third-generation Oakwood resident Laddie Williams.
On Jan. 28, a 15-year-old boy was shot seven times near his home in
Oakwood. The next day, a 25-year-old Venice man was shot in the back
several blocks away. Both victims survived and have been released from
hospitals. Police have declined to identify them, citing security fears.
The violence escalated Jan. 31, when men in a black Datsun 280Z shot
to death 19-year-old Francisco Herrera of Huntington Park as he drove
past Venice High School just as classes were ending.
The next day, Oakwood resident Charles Tizeno, 48, was killed in still
another drive-by shooting half a block south of Lincoln Boulevard, across
the street from Broadway Elementary School. On the same night, in what
police believe to be a related incident, Culver City resident Eric Baiz,
25, was shot and killed as he was walking down Keystone Avenue near
Overland Avenue.
This week, family and friends left fresh flowers and candles at the
site where Tizeno, a janitor at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical
Center, was killed. A card, left at the base of a telephone pole read,
"We love you Daddy."
LAPD homicide Det. Mike Depasquale expressed frustration that Tizeno's
killing occurred during rush hour on a major thoroughfare but that
investigators have been unable to locate witnesses. Residents say they
are often afraid to help the police in fear of retaliation from gangs.
Oakwood anti-crime activist James Richards, 55, was shot to death in
October just outside his home in what many thought was a retribution for
his high-profile anti-gang activities. No arrests have been made in that
case.
The shootings are but one of the hardships Oakwood residents face,
said Ola Mitchell, in front of the bungalow where she has lived for 40
years, just a few blocks from one of the recent shootings.
She criticized a new city inspection program to clean up the
neighborhood, which fines those who don't paint their homes or cut their
grass. She said the effort ignores violations by the neighborhood's
newer, more affluent residents, such as having high fences and overgrown,
naturally landscaped, gardens.
Gang Injunctions, More Police Presence
"We're being attacked on every level," Mitchell said. "People are
being murdered, property owners told to fix up properties. But the city
is not doing its part," she said, pointing to a nearby unpaved alley.
Mike Bonin, deputy chief of staff for Los Angeles City Councilwoman
Ruth Galanter, whose district includes Venice, said the city is trying to
improve the quality of life in Oakwood. He said the code violations
crackdown is part of an effort to change any perception that Oakwood
tolerates drugs and violence.
Bonin noted efforts to increase the police presence in the
neighborhood. And he spoke of court-ordered injunctions issued in the
last two years that make it illegal for known members of three area gangs
to congregate in public spaces.
In response to the recent shootings, Bonin said, Galanter is working
with the city attorney's office to update and expand those injunctions,
which affect people who were identified as gang members as of 1997.
Even amid the trouble, Oakwood residents are unwilling to surrender
their neighborhood. After hearing the police sirens racing to a shooting
scene last week, Phyllis Des Verney said she went outside to her front
stoop and began playing her flute in the evening air.
"I believe music can change things," she said. "So I was out there
just trying to put some positive mood on the situation."