A Neighborhood Reclaimed

On summer evenings, Hattie Smith sits on the steps of her front porch, talking with her daughters into the night and greeting the neighbors who pass by under the dry sycamores.

Her shady street in South-Central has changed in recent years.

“It’s quieter now,” Smith said. “We don’t have the shooting like we used to. No more gangbanging.”

Her stucco home on 88th Place sits in what used to be a battleground. Young men and boys, emerging from an alley behind her home, would open fire on foes across the street in the Avalon Gardens public housing project. Retaliations always followed.

Parents kept their children indoors, and neighbors didn’t talk much. They rarely complained to police about the threats and violence--about the homeless junkies smoking crack and the prostitutes turning tricks in the weedy alleys behind their homes.

But last week, city work crews with a skip loader scraped Smith’s alley clean and closed it off with iron gates. And on Saturday, she gathered with hundreds to join hands in a gesture of community pride.

Among the honorary speakers at the event, called “Hands Around the Community,” one young man took the stage, shy in front of the crowd.

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“We should come together and have peace, love and happiness for the little ones,” he said. Minutes later, the crowd formed a circle and held hands before walking to a nearby park to celebrate.

To be sure, many problems still exist in the area--the development is still Crip turf surrounded by a neighborhood of Bloods. Unemployment is still high. But crime has been on a downward spiral.

In less than half a square mile surrounding Avalon Gardens, reports of robbery dropped 39% between 1992 and 1996. Assaults with a deadly weapon fell 36%. Homicides have fluctuated between four and nine a year over that same period, with six last year.

Residents credit numerous factors for the change. Many say they grew so tired of the physical and social decay that they banded together to stop it. Some credit a $2.3-million clean-up effort mounted at Avalon Gardens, including a 12-foot wrought iron fence encompassing the entire project. Others attribute the improvements to a shift toward community policing.

The changes probably stem from a combination of factors, but the result is as simple as Smith sitting on the stoop watching the daylight fade.

“I don’t have to worry about running in the house when the shooting starts,” she said.

With Smith, as with so many of her neighbors, the drop in crime has removed much of the fear.

“When you had fear, you couldn’t talk to anybody,” said Fannie Hopgood, a resident of Avalon Gardens for 23 years. “No one used to know each other. Now we’re trying to get to know each other.”

At a park near the development, Gustavo Carrillo, 15, can now skateboard with his friends without being hassled by gang members.

“Before it was terrible,” said Carrillo between “kick flips” and “grinds” on a curb. “Every time someone came up to me, I’d grab my board and was ready to swing. Everybody now is just calmed down.”

Since a push toward community policing began after the 1992 riots, residents volunteer as liaisons between the community and Los Angeles Police Department. These block captains meet with neighbors and local officers, keeping police apprised of citizens’ concerns.

“The police used to just run down the street and we wouldn’t know who they were,” said resident Inell Woods. “They would just grab young men and lay them spread-eagle on the ground. And we couldn’t talk to them and ask them what they were doing. Now we can.”

Officer Armando Ramirez spends a good part of his day chatting with residents and has even been known to stop by Avalon Gardens and shoot hoops with the kids.

“There’s more communication between people,” Ramirez said. “And they’re starting to trust the Police Department more.”

When Ramirez looks for reasons behind the neighborhood’s drop in crime, he also sees a more ominous factor: Many gang members have killed each other or are now in prison.

“Unfortunately, they eliminated themselves from the picture.”

But in the relatively small, 164-unit housing development, gang graffiti still mark unpainted light posts, picnic benches and cinder-block walls. And the Crips who quietly play dominoes under the jacarandas still put some residents on edge.

“I’m still a little shaky around them,” said Tyrone Munson, 19, who once lived in the project and now works there in a program aimed at combating teenage pregnancy. “I don’t know them well enough to know their mood swings, so I still try to keep my distance.”

Last summer, a fire destroyed Avalon Gardens’ management building shortly after housing officials prohibited gang members from having a reunion and picnic, said Hubert Taylor, the development’s manager.

He said that members also resented the increasing enforcement of laws banning drinking and gambling in public.

Taylor is careful not to overstate the improvements taking place in the project, citing the persistence of what he called common problems associated with poverty: unemployment, low self-esteem, long-term welfare assistance and apathy.

Bernice Laudermill, who has lived in the neighborhood for 26 years, sees gangs as an inevitable symptom of unemployment and a lack of community resources.

“We need a theater and a library,” Laudermill said. “There is nothing positive for [youngsters] to do. I’m sick of seeing wasted youth.”

But she and Taylor sense a palpable optimism among residents, saying that the time and money various organizations are putting into Avalon Gardens are helping it and the surrounding neighborhood.

The Health Realization Institute, run by the private California School of Professional Psychology, trains tenants to be self-sufficient, build self-esteem and take on leadership roles in their community.

The training has changed Hopgood’s outlook on the housing project.

“There’s more hope,” she said. Gang members had created such a climate of violence and fear that they, in effect, were controlling tenants’ minds, she said. The training, she said, “is to let you control your mind.”

Tenants recently reestablished a beautification committee to plant roses and flowers at Avalon Gardens. Others signed up for jobs with a tenant patrol that reports crime and checks for hazardous physical conditions in the complex.

These programs have been paid for with government grants and private funds funneled into the complex over the last five years.

The $1.7-million fence, as well as a security lighting system, bulletproof guard kiosks, a playground, barbecues and a fitness area, are among some of the improvements recently completed.

Richard Linzy, president of the resident council at the same-sized Hacienda Village Housing Development in Watts, has seen the security improvements at Avalon Gardens and wants the same for his development.

“We have a resident organization,” Linzy said. “But the people are afraid to come to the meetings and speak out, because if they speak out against the gangs, they’re afraid they’ll be retaliated on.”

Linzy said that many residents in Hacienda Village want a fence to keep criminals from fleeing into the development. They cannot start a resident patrol unit until they are assured a minimal level of safety, he said.

For Michael Lockett, the LAPD senior lead officer whose beat includes Hacienda Village, getting a fence is a top priority.

“[At Avalon Gardens] you see people out there watering their grass, cutting their grass. People are playing. You don’t see broken glass all over,” he said.

“[At Hacienda Heights] the people are afraid to go outside. Forget about cutting the grass.”

Don Smith, the Housing Authority’s executive director, said the agency is trying to find resources to build a fence around Hacienda Village, and added that a major renovation of the apartments has begun.

“We decided to make Avalon Gardens a good example of what you can do if you have the resources,” Smith said.

Smith said the 15-acre development was targeted because it was small. “We think the community has turned the corner,” he said, “and now the issue is to sustain it.”