Pubdate: Sat, 03 Aug 2002 Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA) Webpage: www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/08/03/BA5 7354.DTL Copyright: 2002 Hearst Communications Inc. Contact: http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/388 Author: Alan Gathright FATAL SHOOTOUT IN SANTA CRUZ PROVOKES RAGE Some Want Changes In Poor Neighborhood A wild shooting near the Santa Cruz Boardwalk that left a gunman dead and a police officer wounded has angry residents saying the liberal city's leaders need to care as much about citizens' safety as they do about offending the disadvantaged and their advocates. "This is a war zone," said Pat, 61, a third-generation Santa Cruz resident whose Victorian house sits on the Beach Flats alleyway where the Thursday night gunfight took place. "I'm really angry and I'm sick of being a prisoner in my own home." She wouldn't give her last name for fear of retaliation from drug dealers and gang members whose violence has plagued the largely poor, Latino enclave for decades. She complained that police patrols are increased during the summer tourist season -- when the boardwalk draws most of its 3 million annual visitors. "But as soon as the summer ends, the drug dealers are back on the corner and I make calls (to police and City Hall) but nobody listens." Thursday's police shooting -- combined with a surge in stabbings, heroin overdoses and complaints about belligerent street people in downtown -- has some residents, merchants and politicians calling for change. Details of the shooting were still murky Friday. Officers John Pursley and Pat Bayani were driving through the flats when they spotted two males -- one adult, one juvenile -- whom they knew as outsiders standing in the dirt lot of an alley known as an illicit drug drive-through. While questioning the two, Pursley was startled by a man later identified as Jose Avalos sitting in nearby car with the door open. Pursley was talking with Avalos when gunfire erupted, said police Lt. Joe Haebe. Initial indications are that Avalos fired first with a .45-caliber automatic handgun and a bullet penetrated the left side of Pursley's protective vest, breaking a rib and puncturing his lung, said Gary Brayton, a Santa Cruz County prosecutor conducting the shooting investigation. The two officers returned fire as they scrambled for cover. The repeated bursts of gunfire made nearby residents think someone was shooting off strings of firecrackers. Avalos was described by police as a Mexican national in his mid-20s with a long history of violence, including two California convictions for assault with a deadly weapon. He was pronounced dead at the scene, Brayton said. Investigators haven't been able to interview Pursley, who remained hospitalized at Dominican Hospital on Friday. They also haven't determined which officer killed the gunman. The shooting hit the small police department hard. Noting that Avalos had been deported twice after release from prison stints, only to return to Santa Cruz, Haebe said: "When we're repeatedly dealing with people like this in the community, it's a little bit like criminal roulette. You never know when you're going to cross them." The shooting has some saying the City Council needs to abandon a decades-old policy of opposing new development in the Beach Flats area for fear it would drive out low-income Latino residents. "A decision was made about 20 years ago to do what I would categorize as a progressive community putting a happy face on racial segregation," said City Councilman Mark Primack. He said the city needs to stop neglecting the troubled ghetto in the name of supporting "Hispanic solidarity." "It's one thing to talk about how intolerable the (street people) behavior has become downtown, but at the same time we're perpetrating an environment of crime in our Beach Flats area." Pat, the Beach Flats homeowner, said it's about time. She's put her house on the market in April, but two days later a 23-year-old man was killed outside the corner market in a gang shooting. The lone offer she had evaporated. "This should be the most prime real estate in Santa Cruz," she said. "It's right near the beach, and there's all these quaint cottages back here." Others agree. But, in 1998, a five-year plan to revitalize the Beach Flats with a conference hotel, expanded boardwalk and retail shops and upscale homes was gutted by a new "progressive" city council majority that feared it would driving out the neighborhood's largely poor, Latino residents. - --- MAP posted-by: Beth