Getting Involved

By DOUGLAS P. SHUIT

June 10, 1997 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

New explanations abound for the downward trend in crime, but the oldest one is the simplest and the most essential: Get the neighborhood involved.

That’s the story in Long Beach, a city of 1,600 Neighborhood Watch groups that battle drug deals, graffiti, prostitution and other crimes.

Long Beach’s Neighborhood Watch groups have evolved into a second generation of small, citizen-run offices where the city pays the rent and police and residents staff phones and take unofficial crime reports.

In other parts of the city, neighbors are forming new groups under the banner of Safe Streets Now! They set up surveillance of properties where there is suspected criminal activity, write letters demanding that it be stopped and take the owners to court if it isn’t.

“Community involvement has played a major role in the decrease in crime,” said Sgt. Tom Taylor of the Long Beach Police Department’s community relations office.

Since 1991, there has been a 21.9% drop in crime in Long Beach, a drop roughly commensurate with the national average. Last year, serious crime dropped 14% across the board, twice the 7% decline charted nationally by the FBI and higher than the city of Los Angeles’ 11.6% drop.

Homicides, the only category of crime that went up in Long Beach during 1996, rose 19%. But the rise was reversed during the first months of 1997: As of June 1, the city had experienced only 13 homicides, one-third the number reported at the same point last year.

The city has increased sworn and civilian police personnel by more than 20% since 1993 and has benefited from enforcement of the three-strikes law, widespread use of automobile anti-theft devices and gang truces. Even more important were the neighborhood people, many of whom said they simply had enough and decided to organize.

The city’s Wrigley district, just east of the Long Beach Freeway, was plagued by panhandlers, graffiti and crime during the early 1990s. Then the 1992 Los Angeles riots spilled into Long Beach and devastated parts of Wrigley’s Pacific Avenue.

The riots seemed to galvanize the community, said Rommel Manalo, a travel agent and treasurer of the Wrigley District Business Assn.

A year later, to bolster already-active Neighborhood Watch groups, local business and community leaders built and furnished the storefront Wrigley Community Information and Police Center on Pacific Avenue.

Bicycle patrol officers use the storefront office as a base of operations, and other officers drop by to do paperwork, use the computers and check in with residents.

When local residents see a drug deal or suspicious people, they tell the police or volunteers who staff the office. When enough complaints build up about a specific location, police officers make arrests.

As a result, say police and neighborhood activists, crime in the Wrigley district is down.

“People here felt trapped, they felt like they were trapped in their own homes,” Manalo said. “Today, people feel more empowered.”

Two neighborhoods within walking distance of the center showed across-the-board drops in crime of 25% and 40% during 1996.

“People have been willing to step up and kick butt,” said Long Beach City Councilman Mike Donelon, a contractor who helped build the center. “The gangbangers and bad guys aren’t intimidating people as much as they used to. Neighborhood Watch and other programs have given the Police Department a tremendous advantage. Throughout the district there is a comfort level that the streets are safer than they used to be.”

Dave Burwell, who works at a plumbing supply firm on Pacific and lives nearby, said there’s still far too much crime. “People are still afraid to be out after 8 p.m. The teenagers still try to intimidate you.” But even he agrees that things have improved.

“The gangbangers aren’t hanging out like they used to,” said Winzella Bryant, walking her grandchild down a tree-lined street just off Pacific. “The places where they used to sell drugs--they aren’t there anymore.”

On the other side of the city, in the upper-middle-class Alamitos Heights area, residents of the 700 block of Los Altos Avenue are celebrating the result of a months-long fight they waged against the residents of one home.

Using a strategy devised by the Oakland-based Safe Streets Now! program, the residents worked with police, documented problems and took the owner of the home to Small Claims Court. Earlier this year, a variety of criminal charges were filed against the two residents. Also, the 31 residents who filed suits against the property owner won a total of $155,000. They have not been paid yet. The house went into foreclosure and is now vacant.

“We were a little afraid,” said schoolteacher Marilous Sams, 52, one of the neighbors. “But that didn’t stop us.”

“I’ve never worked with a group of neighbors like that,” said Long Beach Police Officer Michael Beckman, who oversaw the operation. “Over a period of months, we had complaints at this address about prostitution, lewd sexual conduct, drug activity, fights, a forged check ring and various health and municipal code violations. They finally put their foot down and said we aren’t going to take any more of this.”

“We had three choices,” said resident Tim Aronhalt. “We could continue to live in fear, we could move or we could take ‘em on.” ’

Bolstered by such victories, blocks of residents are pressing similar actions on problem properties elsewhere in the city, said Margaret Madden, a Neighborhood Watch veteran who now heads Safe Streets Now! programs for the city.

Madden, 28, got involved in Neighborhood Watch in 1991 when she returned home from college and found her block near downtown Long Beach a crime-ridden mess. Drug dealers sold their goods openly on the street, gunshots could be heard at night, and broken bottles and graffiti marked the neighborhood. One Fourth of July, relatives visiting from Arizona witnessed a drive-by shooting from her parents’ front lawn.

She and other neighbors began fighting back, phoning the police and confronting drug dealers, setting up lawn chairs on occasion in an effort to stare them down.

Today, Madden is a full-time city employee, coordinating the relationship between police and neighborhood crime-fighters.

“Since 1991, I’ve seen an incredible transformation,” Madden said. “Residents are tapping into a power that they never knew they had.”

Times staff writer Jeff Leeds contributed to this story.

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Long Beach Profile

Police say neighborhood activists have played a key role in the significant dropoff in crime in the 1990s. Though murder was up in Long Beach in 1996, there has been a sharp drop in homicides so far this year.

Crime Statistics:

Murder

1995: 80

1996: 95

Rape

1995: 171

1996: 158

Robbery

1995: 2,774

1996: 2,431

Assault

1995: 2,624