Santa Barbara Police Join Local Agencies in Gang Crackdown

SANTA BARBARA —  Responding to a series of serious incidents involving Ventura County gang members, local police have joined forces with Ventura County law enforcement agencies in a crackdown designed to end the violence.

Many of the Ventura County gang members say they come to Santa Barbara for a good time--to cruise State Street and look at pretty girls--but increasingly, their forays north have ended in violence and even death.

In response, police in both counties cooperate on investigations, share information and occasionally patrol together to keep a careful watch on gang members.

Residents and merchants in this relatively peaceful city are taking action too.

After Oxnard gang members allegedly shot and killed one man and seriously injured another at a downtown parking garage in January, State Street merchants gathered for heated discussions on how to curb what they perceive as an increase in violence--violence they blame mostly on Ventura County gang members.

Since then, the merchants have discussed eliminating advertising in some Ventura County locales to lessen the attraction of Santa Barbara to Ventura County youth; some bars, for instance, have placed fliers on cars parked at Oxnard College and others advertise on local radio stations.

On another front, law enforcement officials say they will try to get judges to impose probation terms that would prohibit Ventura County gang members who commit crimes in Santa Barbara from returning to the city while on probation.

Although officials say Ventura County gangs are not causing havoc in Santa Barbara, their jaunts into that city are increasingly causing headaches for their northern neighbors.

“That’s really the hot topic right now, how to deal with these Ventura County gang members,” Lt. Nick Katzenstein of the Santa Barbara Police Department said.

“Our own gangs are not as prone to that kind of violence.”

Some Santa Barbara gang members even avoid the downtown on weekends because of the number of Ventura County gang members in the area, Katzenstein said.

That doesn’t mean Santa Barbara gang members are above acts of violence. Since 1993 there have been three homicides involving Santa Barbara gang members, officials said.

But January’s slaying, coming in the wake of two other homicides and a series of shootings, stabbings and brawls that can be directly connected to Ventura County gang members during the past five years, have been particularly jarring for this city of about 89,000 people, Katzenstein said.

Overall, Ventura County has some of the lowest crime rates in the nation, lower than Santa Barbara in some areas, but there are pockets of serious gang activity.

Last year, Oxnard had 18 homicides, and at least seven of those were gang-related, officials said. Santa Paula, which went two years without a homicide, had three last year and one so far this year. At least two of those killings are believed gang-related.

Low Homicide Rate for Santa Barbara

Last year, Santa Barbara had two homicides, and averaging about four a year since 1991.

“We have our share of bad check writers and wife abusers, but we don’t have very high levels of violent crime,” Katzenstein said.

Although the city has an estimated 380 gang members, Santa Barbara escaped much of the gang violence that swept through Southern California in the 1980s.

Ventura County gang members are not heading to Los Angeles in great numbers, perhaps because they are not as willing to mix things up with the powerful L.A. gangs, according to Senior Officer Bob Coughlin, the Oxnard Police Department’s gang unit coordinator.

“They don’t feel as threatened by going up to Santa Barbara, it’s more familiar and less intimidating,” said Coughlin, adding there are an estimated 3,000 gang members and their associates in Oxnard. “Basically, these guys are getting into trouble because of the kind of people that they are. It follows them. It’s part of the gang mentality.”

The first gang-related homicide in Santa Barbara did not occur until 1992, officials said. The culprits were not from Santa Barbara. They were gangbangers from the city of Ventura who mobbed a young man from Lompoc during the city’s annual Fiesta Days celebration, beating and stabbing him to death.

Since then, city law enforcement officials have increasingly coordinated gang enforcement with their southern neighbors, to the point of using officers from Santa Paula, Ventura, Oxnard and the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department to patrol large city events such as the annual Fiesta Days and the Summer Solstice Parade.

In 1995, the city received a three-year, $1.5-million grant from the state Department of Justice earmarked for fighting gangs. Part of the money pays for a special five-officer gang detail.

On a recent weekend night, Officer Ralph Molina, a member of the enforcement team, cruised State Street in an unmarked car. It was a typical shift--stopping youths out after the city’s 10:30 p.m. curfew, pulling over cars for minor traffic violations and breaking up fights.

“We’ve had so many incidents recently that a lot of people are starting to talk about it,” Molina said as he drove past a club with a long line of people waiting to get inside. “I think it has a lot to do with State Street--there’s not a lot to do down there [Ventura County] and up here they’ve got these 24 bars and clubs on something like six blocks. It can be a lot of fun.”

Escalation of Small Incidents

Often, it takes very little for small incidents to escalate into violence.

Investigators believe the January shooting was prompted by a look between the two groups.

“It’s a mind-set that they can’t let a slight go by unchallenged,” Molina said. “If they feel they were disrespected or someone looked at their girl the wrong way, someone might end up shot.”

In February, Molina and another officer saw a drive-by shooting in front of a liquor store on Milpas Street, several blocks from State Street. Police said Saticoy gang members shot and seriously wounded one man, then turned their cars around and shot three more men, injuring them slightly just as police arrived at the scene.

“It was just amazing. I know he [the shooter] saw us, but he didn’t seem to care,” Molina said. “I’m sure if we hadn’t been on the scene we would have had a homicide, because they came back to finish the job.”

The suspects in the shooting--all alleged Ventura gang members-- fled, with Molina and another officer in pursuit.

The chase reached speeds of 95 mph, with one of the suspected gang members allegedly leaning out the car and pointing a weapon at officers. It ended when the suspects crashed their car into a retaining wall along the 101 Freeway.

The grant that pays for Molina’s team of officers is also used on community-based programs and anti-gang instruction in schools. It also pays the salary of Santa Barbara Deputy Dist. Atty. Hilary Dozer, who works full time prosecuting gang cases.

Dozer said his caseload is increasingly taken up prosecuting gang members from Ventura County.

“The other part of this is the influence Ventura County gang members are having on our local gangs,” he said. “The Ventura County gangs have escalated the kind of violence . . . the level of violence.”

Seeking to defend themselves from their well-armed southern neighbors, Santa Barbara gangs are carrying guns more often, Dozer said.

On Thursday, two Oxnard men, Efren Cruz, 22, and Leo Gonzales, 23, were arraigned on murder charges in the Jan. 26 shooting death of Michael Rafael Torres, 23, of Santa Barbara.

The pair were also charged with attempted murder in the shooting of 21-year-old James Lee Miranda, of Santa Ynez, that same night.

Dozer, who is prosecuting the case, said the shooting occurred after a group of Oxnard gang members confronted a group of Santa Barbara gang members at the Hurricane Lounge on State Street.

Confrontation at Bar Ends in Violence

Details are sketchy, but Dozer said the two groups started “mad-dogging”--staring each other down. There had been some pushing and shoving inside the bar.

After bouncers escorted the two groups out by two separate exits, they met again at a parking structure, where the shooting occurred.

Gerardo Reyes, a 24-year-old who was part of the Oxnard group, said they were all there for a good time.

Reyes, initially arrested in the case but later released, said he did not want to talk about the case.

“But it didn’t happen the way they’re saying it did,” he said.

The month of the shooting, the Santa Barbara Police Department took the unusual move of spending about $43,000 of its grant money to purchase computers for Ventura County law enforcement agencies to track gangs. The computers were donated to the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department and the Ventura, Santa Paula and Oxnard police departments.

The computers connect all the departments to the so-called Gang Reporting Evaluation and Tracking system, or GREAT, which is part of a statewide gang-tracking system.

Using the computer system, law enforcement officers can search for profiles of known gang members throughout Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, searching by such categories as name, distinguishing tattoos or a gang moniker. Soon the agencies will be able to download pictures and fingerprints.

The database includes many people who have not committed a crime, but law enforcement officials said those in the database had to meet a set of criteria before being listed as either gang members or known associates of gang members. The criteria include gang tattoos, criminal history, whether the person has admitted gang affiliation to law enforcement officers or whether they have associated with known gang members.

There are about 8,000 Ventura County gang members and their associates in the system, and about 2,000 listed from Santa Barbara County, officials said.

“It’s handy,” said Sgt. Mike DeDecker, a gang enforcement officer in Santa Paula. “Everything will now be at our fingertips.”

DeDecker said local gang members go to Santa Barbara mostly because of the night life and the women, but that they also have a feeling of anonymity.

They figure law enforcement officials don’t know them, so they won’t be hassled.

“Anonymity is what they want,” DeDecker said. “But we’re taking that away from them.”

After the 1992 stabbing, police officers and deputies from Ventura County started working in Santa Barbara during special events such as the Fiesta Days celebration.

“You should have seen the reaction we got when we ran into our guys up there,” said DeDecker, who estimates there are about 400 gang members and gang associates in Santa Paula.

The patrols, the computer system and cooperative efforts on such things as raids and probation searches have helped undermine gang members’ feelings that they can go to Santa Barbara unnoticed.

“We know all these guys,” said Ventura Police Sgt. Ken Korney, who estimates the city has about 800 gang members and associates. “We know their terms of probation. We know who they hang out with. We know what kind of crimes they’re known for. If they do something here, we’ll find them. Up there, they think they’re free from that kind of attention.”

Night Life Lacking in Ventura County

The clubs, bars and dance halls in Santa Barbara are open and overflowing with young people. Capt. Mark Ball of the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department said local gang members, like other youth, can’t find the same scene locally.

“The night life is reduced in Ventura County because we are really strict when we have a problem business, and because we watch our gang members closely,” Ball said.

Meanwhile, activists in Ventura County and Santa Barbara are looking at other ways to end the violence.

Babatunde Folayemi, a teacher at the California Youth Authority in Camarillo and community activist with the Pro-Youth Council in Santa Barbara, wants to negotiate some type of truce.

“First, we have to get a truce up here between the eastside and the westside gangsters and stop them from killing each other,” Folayemi said. “And then we can move beyond Santa Barbara. I interact with the bangers from Oxnard at the Youth Authority, and I’ve recently formed an alliance with a brother from Oxnard and we’re making the first steps.”

Gang violence can be directly tied to a handful of truly “hard-core gang members,” Folayemi said, while many other gang members are simply trapped by their associations.

They fight and commit violent acts because they feel there is no alternative.

Folayemi praised the cooperative effort by law enforcement officials, saying it is necessary to send a message, and to get the hard-core gang members off the street.

“You’ve got to face it that some of these guys are gangsters and that’s all they want to be,” he said. “But for the other guys in it, you’ve got to provide some alternatives . . . I think a lot of these kids know that the way they’re going leads to a dead-end. They’re just looking for a way out, but they don’t know how to do it.”

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Five Years of Trouble

The Spread of Ventura County gang violence to Santa Barbara

Jan. 25, 1997--Oxnard gang members allegedly shoot two Santa Barbara men at a parking complex, killing 23-year-old Michael Torres and seriously injuring 21-year-old James Miranda. Two Oxnard men, Efren Cruz, 22, and Leo Gonzales, 23, are charged with murder and attempted murder.

Nov. 3, 1996--Santa Paula gang members allegedly shoot and wound two young men on West Haley Street in Santa Barbara.

June 22, 1996--Ventura and Oxnard gang members get into a brawl involving more than 20 people outside a bar on State Street. There were no serious injuries.

May 4, 1996--Oxnard and Santa Paula gang members get into a fight at another State Street bar. Two youths are hospitalized with serious injuries, officials said.

Feb. 16, 1996--Suspected Ventura gang members shoot four young men in front of a liquor store on Milpas Street. The alleged gang members, all from the Saticoy area, are chased by Santa Barbara police onto the 101 Freeway, where the suspects are arrested after crashing their car.

July 22, 1995--Oxnard gang members shoot and kill a Lompoc man as he is talking on a phone in front of a liquor store. Two men were convicted in the killing.

Aug. 5, 1992--Ventura gang members beat and stab to death 16-year-old Robert Mitchum of Lompoc on the first day of Santa Barbara’s annual Fiesta Days celebration.

* Source: Santa Barbara Police Department