It's safer to walk streets of Watts

By Beth Barrett, Staff Writer Article Last Updated: 01/13/2008 02:23:47 AM PST

WATTS - An early-evening chill Thursday didn't stop dozens of children from playing and adults from strolling about the long-troubled and gang-infested Jordan Downs housing project.

The neighborly scene was a sharp contrast to just two years ago when - even on balmy summer nights - the area was a virtual ghost town except for armed Grape Street Crips gang members, lined up sometimes 30 deep on street corners, hawking drugs.

"They were out of control in here, selling dope and drinking," South Bureau gang officer Dario Machado said. "About two years ago, we started hitting them hard on injunction violations. It went from gangsters all over the place to kids running around and playing ... normal kids playing soccer or riding their bikes."

After decades barricaded behind barred windows in the beige units within the fortress-like Jordan Downs, many of its 3,500 residents say they are starting to open their doors to a life increasingly free of the gang violence that has long put Watts at ground zero for gang killings and the heart of Los Angeles' murder epidemic.

"They (the children) can go out at night, they play outside at night - not late at night. But they get to do a lot of stuff ... like sports, and they go on trips," Tracy Coleman said as three of her young children played around her one afternoon in late December.

"The community leaders are what really did it, and the Watts Gang Task Force. It was the community getting together."

The newly emerging life comes two years after the Los Angeles Police Department slapped a gang injunction on the project's Grape Street Crips, and four years after one was placed on the Bounty Hunters from the nearby Nickerson Gardens housing project.

In Watts, homicides dropped from 24 in 2006 to just 11 last year - including a three-month stretch without a single slaying. Gang homicides for the approximately 1-square-mile home to an estimated 2,000 gangsters dropped from 13 in 2006 to eight last year.

In Jordan Downs alone, there was only one homicide last year compared with the usual three to five in previous years.

In the larger South Bureau - a 60-square-mile swath with 717,000 residents, including approximately 35,000 in Watts - homicides dropped from 198 in 2006 to 150 last year.

Gang-related killings within the bureau's boundaries - where about 22,000 of the city's 39,000 gang members live - accounted for 125 of the 2006 homicides and 93 of last year's.

It is those numbers that lie at the heart of last week's announcement by LAPD Chief William Bratton that homicides citywide dropped to a 40-year low of 392 last year.

And it is stirring the biggest debate in years about whether unprecedented cooperation among community leaders, police, prosecutors, gang intervention workers, academics and politicians has begun to reap dividends.

"It's still a high-crime area, and there's a lot of work left to do, but my take is, we're headed in the right direction," said LAPD Deputy Chief Charlie Beck, commanding officer for Operations-South Bureau.

Beck contrasted how Jordan Downs residents reacted to a December officer-involved shooting compared with previous mob scenes in which crowds often would hurl rocks, bottles and invectives at cops.

"There were no trays of cookies coming out, but they were fine," Beck said. "I've been in those same developments where we literally had to back

Map of Watts

out of there."

Instead, on the afternoon of Dec.14, as police exchanged gunfire with a suspect, officers were backed up by new allies: members of the Watts Gang Task Force led by its president, Betty Day, and gang intervention workers who mobilized to prevent retaliations.

No one was killed or injured.

"Now, we're all working together - the whole community is working together," said Day, who has lived for decades on Grape Street a few blocks from Jordan Downs.

"The difference is, you can walk through Jordan Downs; you can walk through Watts at night ... We won't always be safe, but we're safer."

Connie Rice, a civil rights attorney whose report a year ago on gang violence has been a blueprint for solutions, said Bratton is right to declare a measure of victory although gang violence remains at epidemic levels.

"Here's the point: We've had similar dips before," Rice said. "I agree we're doing a whole lot better, ...(but) the norm is still so off the scale that when they say things are getting better, it's like in Baghdad saying things are a lot better because we only had 50 car bombings instead of 300."

Rice still faults Los Angeles' historical piecemeal approach to gang violence that costs taxpayers more than $2billion a year even as the number of gang members has surged to about 39,000 in the city.

"The question becomes, what have you done to change the norm?" Rice said. "Once (the killing) stabilizes, you have to remove all of the vectors of the culture (that lead) to the norm of violence ... and that goes way beyond anything cops can do."

Jeff Carr, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's new gang deputy, said the city's plan to target hot zones with prevention and intervention programs - one now is running in Boyle Heights - will be easier to measure results.

"We'll see if saturating, not just with suppression but with (intervention and prevention) resources, the program works," he said.

Rice said broad changes in communities are needed to abate a broader culture of violence, particularly in Watts, where nearly half of all residents live in poverty.

Unrest in the area in 1965 left 34 people dead, and tensions flared again in 1992 after white police officers who arrested and struck black motorist Rodney King were acquitted.

And just two years ago, Watts had one of its bloodiest Christmases in years when in the space of three weeks, five men were gunned down in a feud between the Grape Street Crips and Bounty Hunters.

"The kids couldn't come out and play on Christmas because of the shooting going on," said Cassandra Savage, 53, president of the Jordan Downs Resident Management Corp.

"A lot of people lost their families."

The violence prompted a groundswell of response from the LAPD, Councilwoman Janice Hahn and leaders of the community.

"Everyone was inside; it was bad," said Hahn, who spearheaded the Watts Gang Task Force in response. "A group of core activists called me on the carpet and said, `What are you doing, Ms. Hahn?"'

About that time, Cmdr. Patrick Gannon came to 77th Street Station as a captain to work gangs and, a month later, witnessed nearly two dozen shootings ignited by a single gang-related incident and then fueled by rumors.

"It was just off the charts, even by a violent area's standards," he said.

Gannon went to his then-boss, Assistant Chief Earl Paysinger, and asked to put 200 cops in the area to suppress the violence.

But then he also reached out to gang interventionists who could talk to gang leaders amid the tensions. Information they gathered - such as whether a shooting was among rival gangs or in a single gang over a drug deal - could make the difference in how detectives dealt with the situation.

Intervention workers, including Gregory Thomas, who grew up in Nickerson Gardens before getting a master's degree in business administration, got involved.

"You talk it down, you give viable alternatives that are practical from a couple of deep breaths or counting to 10, to taking them in the car to sit and eat, or to the beach," Thomas said of his work.

Donnie Joubert, a city Housing Authority employee who mentored Thomas and other youths over the past 17 years, said the workers are indispensable.

"If not for those guys, it would be crazy," Joubert said. "They're out here every single day, like a person goes to work every day, making changes in these young guys' (lives)."

Early last year, the Operations South Bureau Criminal Gang Homicide Group was created to bring about 75 homicide investigators together at 77th and allow more investigators to flood murder scenes, Gannon said.

The pilot program - which includes two full-time county prosecutors - has been able to solve about 70percent of murders, compared with just 55percent in the area in the past.

Albert Flores, a gang officer on recent patrol with Machado, said the injunctions - combined with bullet-resistant cameras installed in Jordan Downs - have leveled the playing field.

While shootings still occur - there were three in Jordan Downs during one week in December - many nights the bureau is far quieter than two years ago.

On Thursday, Flores and Machado made a couple of traffic stops and responded to a report that 10 guys were drinking in public.

At the end of the shift, an officer radioed for help from the 6200 block of Vermont. The officers raced to the scene - along with 60 other units, a helicopter, and K-9 and Metro units - where undercover officers had surprised 62 ("six deuce") Brims gang members in the process of a robbery.

A perimeter was set up in minutes, and the suspects were apprehended in less than an hour.

With the streets quieter, police have more time to work cases like the robbery - and even less serious crimes - that reduce the level of violence and intimidation in the community, said Sgt. Herb Cirilo, with the 77th Area Gang Unit.

Cases like the 10 men stopped earlier in the evening for drinking in public matter because it discourages a public nuisance that could escalate.

"If we don't pay attention to these groups, they could become (a more serious) problem," Cirilo said.

Still, some gangsters on the streets remain defiant.

As a boom box blasted rap music, one group of sullen young men on a recent day admitted they were violating the Grape Street Crips injunction by lounging in public and drinking Smirnoff vodka out of plastic cups.

"This is how we've been living around here for years, everything normal," said one of the men, who declined to give his name. "Only thing is cops come around and create havoc."

Others gave similar accounts, and Donald, a 44-year-old who wouldn't give his last name, said many are resigned to a grim existence.

"It's gonna be like it's gonna be," he said drinking a beer. "It ain't really changed that much, maybe a little bit. It's still people living the same way, no jobs going.

"You never get hired, and if you're on parole or anything like that, it knocks you out."

Rice said jobs have been correlated to a reduction in L.A. gang violence, and gang members typically will choose jobs over drug running and violence if they can be convinced it puts them on the road to legitimacy.

Community leaders say economic opportunity is the best chance they have to create a bond that transcends the tragedy.

And many are pinning their hopes on the Watts Gang Task Force because it is the one place where community leaders, police, gang intervention workers, politicians and others come together to talk about solutions.

"It changed everything," said Coleman, part of the task force. "It's been a lot of calming down."

Coleman says three of her seven sons have been arrested or stopped in connection with the Grape Street injunction. Her 17-year-old, Jaymell, was among three teens shot near the project in August.

And just 11 days before Christmas, a running gunbattle outside her five-bedroom apartment terrified her 11-year-old daughter, Jaymisha.

But even Jaymisha said she feels safe enough some days to walk to Markham Middle School.

"It's changed ... I can go to the park."

And Jaymell, who attends Jordan High School, says that while he still wakes up worrying about getting shot again, the streets are calmer.

"It's a little better," said the young man, who now talks about playing football and becoming a firefighter or lawyer.

Beck said the task force has been key in Watts but also agreed with Rice that an even deeper transformation is needed within communities so violence is no longer tolerated.

"Communities have to develop different standards of what they'll accept," Beck said. "There has to be so much pressure in the community not to do it that you won't.

"It's now unacceptable to drink and drive when it was viewed as something of a sport in the 1970s.

"That has to happen (with gang homicides)."

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