Hot Spot : Westwood: It’s becoming a long, hot summer for the village where crowd violence erupted last weekend.

Phalanxes of police in partial riot gear. Groups of teen-agers punching and robbing people as the youths disperse through the crowds. Merchants closing their doors to onlookers frantically seeking refuge.

And random crowd violence.

A Third World revolution? Watts in August, 1965?

How about Westwood in August, 1990--just last weekend?

Hundreds of youths, many dressed in gang-like attire, had to be controlled by police after dozens of them went on a rampage about 10:30 p.m. on Aug. 3.

It wasn’t a full-fledged riot, and no stores were damaged. But at least three bystanders were robbed and injured, and many others were struck in a melee started by youths who apparently flocked to the area for the opening of director Spike Lee’s new movie, “Mo’ Better Blues.”

Police sealed off Westwood Village and declared an unlawful assembly, ordering people to leave under threat of arrest. Even so, it took about two dozen officers more than an hour to quell the violence and disperse the crowd of more than 500 people.

Nine people were arrested on charges such as curfew violation, failure to disperse and fighting in public. An 18-year-old Los Angeles man was booked for investigation of possession of a concealed billy club, a felony.

“It was insane outside,” said Dana Eagle, the assistant manager of Santa Pietro pizza parlor at Gayley and Weyburn avenues. “It got too ugly to stay open. Better to close the doors and keep people from running in off the streets.”

But it wasn’t just a random thing. Such uncontrollable crowds have assembled in the village before.

Ask around in Westwood, in fact, and people will tell you that what used to be a wholesome little college enclave frequented by UCLA undergraduates has become a scary, chaotic place on some weekend nights. And they say all the elements are there for such a melee to happen again.

“Last week was just another example of what is happening in Westwood,” said Laura Lake, a leader of the Friends of Westwood community organization. “We are extremely concerned.”

Police Sgt. Nick Barbara, who has patrolled Westwood Village for the Los Angeles Police Department for nearly seven years, agreed.

“It is getting rougher,” he said. “Westwood has definitely changed.”

In the past year alone, massing crowds and the fear of impending violence have prompted Barbara on four occasions to declare an unlawful assembly and clear the entire area.

Every weekend, in summer, he says, it’s the same. Hundreds of youths, shoppers and diners crowd into the village. Fights often break out among drunken revelers or between gang members who are coming to the area in increasing numbers from other parts of the city.

The tensest time is the stretch of an hour or so starting about 10 p.m., when the local theaters release literally thousands of rowdy young moviegoers into the streets from the early evening screenings, and start taking in thousands more.

“The elements are all there, and there’s a potential for violence,” said Barbara. “But you can’t predict when lightning is going to strike, or where.”

Police are particularly concerned about the intrusion of the gang members. They started coming in gradually, several years ago, even before the fatal shooting of Karen Toshima drew national attention to the spread of gang violence from the inner city to more affluent neighborhoods.

Toshima was a young Long Beach woman with a promising career as a graphic artist. She died Jan. 31, 1988, the day after being struck by a stray bullet during a gang skirmish as she window-shopped in Westwood.

Since then, gangs have become much more visible in Westwood, and they are now much more confrontational with each other. In the past few years there have been at least four gang-related shootings in the village, Barbara said.

“We’ve been getting more gang presence there . . . from all over the city,” said Sgt. Lee Bradford, a Los Angeles police officer who has worked in Westwood for 11 years.

Bradford said he used to enjoy coming into Westwood Village for a movie and dinner.

“You won’t find me near it anymore,” he said last week. “I’m not going to put up with that.”

To alleviate congestion and cruising, city officials in recent years have closed down streets leading into the village to car traffic. But complaints from merchants have caused a scaling back in the extent and duration of the closures. Now just a few streets in the heart of the village are closed on Friday and Saturday nights, and only from 9 to midnight.

So as crowds build and tensions mount on hot summer nights, police beef up their foot patrols and watch, nervously.

“We walk a tightrope. A real tight tightrope,” Barbara said. “It’s damned if you do (take action) and damned if you don’t.”

The night of Aug. 3, for instance, seemed like a normal evening, with hundreds of youths milling about in the village. But a series of fights suddenly broke out, and groups of teen-agers began running down the street and hitting people for no apparent reason. When the police came en masse and ordered everyone out under threat of arrest, people ran for cover.

Some rushed into Aah’s, a Broxton Avenue novelty store. “It looked like there was a riot or something,” said the store’s assistant manager, Genie Gordon. “I’ve been here three times when this has happened.”

The incident has prompted Aah’s to hire a security guard and station him outside the shop to help with the crowds and discourage troublemakers, Gordon said.

“It seems like there’s a lot more tension here,” Gordon said. “The amount of people that are here is just incredible.”

From his perch at Santo Pietro pizza parlor, Eagle, 28, has been watching the Westwood Village scene for four years now. He too is dismayed.

“Violence used to be taboo in the Westwood/UCLA area,” he laments. “Now it is synonymous with it.

“It doesn’t take much to get them going,” Eagle said of the crowds. “A few can cause complete pandemonium.”