Pubdate: Thu, 11 Aug 2005
Source: Las Vegas Weekly (NV)
Copyright: 2005 Radiant City Publications, LLC
Contact:  http://www.lasvegasweekly.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1036
Author: Damon Hodge

IT'S A WAR ZONE

The area bound by Desert Inn, Flamingo, Maryland Parkway and Paradise is 
one huge crime scene. A report from the front lines of the worst 
neighborhood in the city.

Monday, July 11, 8 p.m. Sierra Pointe 1064 Sierra Vista Drive

The moniker is apropos. "Crack Alley" is a stretch of pavement nestled 
between two brownish buildings that comprise Desert Aire and Sierra Pointe, 
the latter an apartment complex so crime-riddled that, in 2003, the Clark 
County Housing Authority refused to manage it, Nevada Sen. John Ensign 
tried to shutter it and many residents wanted to move out of it.

On this night, the alley is alive with foot traffic, mostly young black men 
going in and out of apartments and loitering in the walkways between 
buildings in the 160-unit, 10-building complex-waiting for folks looking 
for a hit, waiting for trouble, or both. The lone consumer is a woman in a 
blue dress, her eyes hollowed out and zombie-like. She's trying to sashay, 
but there's nothing sexy about her stilted gait. I pull into the alley's 
eastern end, at Rome Street, and before I hit the first speed bump (about 
15 yards in), a handful of young men lurch from a nearby walkway and begin 
staring holes in my head. I muffle the flight response, fearful that 
hitting reverse might unnerve the natives. Jumpy as more men appear, I 
speed up between speed bumps, eyes lasered in on the exit about 40 yards 
away on Cambridge. Finally, mercifully, I reach the end of Crack Alley. As 
I turn left on to Cambridge, a man emerges from a walkway, points an 
imaginary machine gun in my direction and starts firing.

Cops say Crack Alley is one of the most dangerous places in town and Sierra 
Pointe is one of the most violent complexes in the Valley, home to nearly 
every conceivable criminal malady-robbery, prostitution, drug-dealing, 
gangs, violence. Bad as Crack Alley and Sierra Pointe may be, they might 
not even be the worst places in the Metropolitan Police Department's N2 
Beat, an area bound by Desert Inn and Flamingo to the north and south and 
Maryland Parkway and Paradise (and sections of Koval Lane) to the east and 
west. Some of the Valley's more sensational episodes of violence have taken 
place in the area: Three shootings over 60 hours in mid-June left one man 
dead (hit with seven gunshots) and three wounded. In January, gunmen who'd 
robbed a McDonald's on Twain and Paradise killed a tourist who tried to 
stop their getaway. A Los Angeles man died in December after being shot in 
the head and left in an alley on Lisbon Avenue, adjacent to Sierra Pointe. 
Last August, cops had a shoot-out with suspected car thieves on Sierra 
Vista and Cambridge Street.  to view crime stats for the N2 beat.

Numbers crunched by Metro's Crime Analysis Central Unit for the Weekly 
paint a picture of a small area gripped by a startling amount of big-time 
violence. To wit: In 2000, there were 1,775 major crimes (assault, auto 
theft, burglary, larceny, murder, rape, robbery) in N2; that number jumped 
to 2,552 last year. From 2000 to 2004, the area experienced 10,918 crimes, 
including 66 murders, 153 rapes, 2,664 burglaries and 3,696 assaults. 
During the same four-year period, police calls for service increased from 
16,276 to 21,472 last year.

It's like our very own slice of South Central Los Angeles.

Thursday, July 28, Noon Cambridge Community Center 3333 Cambridge St.

The tables in the community room at the Cambridge Community Center are 
arrayed like a square, with an opening in the northeast corner for Dan 
Giraldo, a neighborhood liaison with Clark County government, to move in 
and out of. This is the monthly meeting of the Cambridge Area Management 
Council, which brings together apartment managers and owners, 
businesspeople and residents desirous of returning the historic Cambridge 
area, one of the town's most exclusive neighborhoods in the 1970s, to 
respectability. Most of nearly two dozen attendees are apartment managers 
representing complexes including Willson Square, Hazelwood, Sierra and La 
Mesa. A security official from the Boulevard Mall, which has experienced 
gang-related violence in the last 12 months, is also present. umuk

The meeting begins with Giraldo querying apartment managers on how they're 
dealing with the summer heat. Answers vary from good to not so. A manager 
at one complex says she's spent more than $41,000 on new air conditioning 
units. Others can't get help-repair companies are backlogged; waiting lists 
range from three to eight days. When Giraldo moves discussion to the meat 
of the meeting-"I know there's been some shootings recently. How are things 
going?"-the floodgates open.

"I dial 311 and I get no response," says Tony Nicolosi, who manages the La 
Mesa Apartments on 560 Sierra Vista Drive. "I mean, we have people who are 
trespassing and drug-dealing on the property and it's very frustrating to 
call and be put on hold. We have to wait an hour for help to get rid of a 
crack addict. If we dial 911, the cops are there, but not when we dial 311. 
Sometimes a 311 call can turn into a 911 call; I've had people chase me and 
throw tire irons at me."

A lady who manages an apartment complex on Twain and Paradise says every 
time she calls 311 she's put on hold for at least 30 minutes; three weeks 
ago, she waited one hour and 45 minutes. (Cops say dispatchers can't keep 
up with the call volume). "The criminals dare us to call the cops because 
they know they'll be gone by the time they get there."

Another apartment manager, an elderly, white-haired lady who's tired of 
hearing a nightly volley of gunshots, suggests confronting criminals face 
to face: "Maybe we're going to have to take our neighborhoods back ourselves."

The gripe-go-round is just beginning.

There's lament over the lack of a bike patrol (manpower problems forced 
Metro to pull two cops previously dedicated to the area), the inability to 
keep criminals in jail (one couple was back three days after being arrested 
for growing weed in their apartment on Dumont), and the price of pissing 
off scofflaws (vandals broke 21 windows at a complex on Twain and Pallas 
Verde; it cost $296 to replace each window). Why, one woman wonders, can't 
Vegas cops mimic their counterparts in Tucson who literally painted 
smiley-faces on complexes with histories of drug-dealing to identify them?

Myrna Williams, the Clark County Commissioner representing the Cambridge 
area, interjects at this point and lays much of the blame not on the thugs 
perpetrating the crimes, but on laissez-faire, out-of-state apartment 
owners and fiefdom-protecting state lawmakers. She says the former merely 
slap on a coat of paint and call it urban renewal while state lawmakers 
continually hamstring counties' ability to fight crimes. Her carping loses 
some folks, the looks in their eyes saying, "So?"

"In the city, if there is a crack house, the government can abate it," 
Williams tells the council. "Counties are creatures of the state. If the 
problem isn't outlined in Nevada Revised Statutes (state law), then we're 
out of luck. In the county, we can't even close a crack house."

But that seems incongruous-government unable to neuter a nuisance like a 
crack house.

Whereas cities are created by charters and typically have the ability to 
exercise "all powers reasonably related to enumerated powers," Mary Ann 
Miller, counsel for the Clark County District Attorney's Office, says 
Nevada counties are bound by the state constitution and state laws.

"The item would have to be reasonably related to statutorily enumerated 
powers," Miller says. "For example, if state law directed counties to take 
certain measures to eliminate crack, then closing down a crack house would 
be a reasonably related power."

While city officials can close a home known as a drug haven, county 
officials can only arrest the dope-dealers, leaving the house open for 
other thugs to step in.

Danger Everywhere

Driving the N2 Beat, especially in the evening and at night, can be a bit 
scary. During a particularly sweltering afternoon, Hispanic men with shaved 
heads shoot the breeze in McKeller Circle. The neighborhood near Twain and 
Paradise is a known haunt for the 18th Street gangsters (emigres from 
Southern California) and the place where former cop Ron Mortensen, while 
off duty, shot and killed Daniel Mendoza in 1997. Coming east on Twain, 
there's a street called Royal Crest. Turning left will take you to a series 
of tenement-style complexes with rocks where grass should be, gang graffiti 
on walls and gaggles of pebble-sized beer bottle shards on the ground. 
Further down Twain, a cop car sits in the entrance of the Beverly 
Apartments. Over on Swenson, maintenance crews tidy up the shrubbery at 
Swenson Apartments as two angry but innocent-looking-enough men scream into 
cell phones. Another cop patrols Paradise, from the McDonalds on Twain, to 
Desert Inn. Another black-and-white tools up and down Sierra Vista. Near 
the Renaissance Hotel, a man with a teardrop drawn under his left 
eye-popularized by Hispanic gangs-slowed down his burgundy Cadillac just to 
glare at me. On Cambridge, going north from Flamingo to Desert Inn: 
street-walkers; folks cutting across Molasky Park to get to and from Vons; 
kids playing field hockey in the fenced courts at the Al Snyder Boys and 
Girls Club. At Sierra Vista and Cambridge: three guys emerging from the 
7-Eleven with 40-ounce bottles of beer; two ladies walking-one whose face 
bears scars reminiscent of hellacious acne or methamphetamine abuse, the 
other, sickly thin.

The N2 Beat is in Metro's South Central Area Command. George Castro is a 
lieutenant in that command. Squat, with a movie-star face and the build of 
a welterweight fighter, Castro is part historian, too, tracing N2's crime 
problems-as well as much of the city's-back to 1973, when intergovernmental 
squabbling between the city and county led to the creation of one police 
department, Metro.

"We had to meld two styles of policing," says Castro, a 17-year veteran of 
the force. "Metro had to mature quickly because the city was growing. The 
days of 'one county, one mountie' were over. We couldn't hire enough cops 
to keep up. With all the growth over the years, Vegas is experiencing a 
larger inner city than ever before. The inner city now could be described 
as Sahara and Jones."

Moving here from California, Castro's family lived near 28th Street, where 
an Hispanic gang of the same name would emerge to rule the neighborhood. He 
remembers running to and from school to avoid getting beat up. Places like 
28th Street were popular because the units were plentiful and the rents 
affordable. They also magnetized out-of-state investors who bought them on 
the cheap, got them federally subsidized, charge above-market rents and 
made out like bandits.

Such places became havens for crime. By the time Metro implemented 
community policing in the '80s, Castro says, crime had spread across the 
city. Crackdowns in one area (28th Street, for example) simply moved the 
problem to another area (Naked City behind the Stratosphere or Pennwood and 
Arville near Clark High School).

"When (Bob) Stupak bought the Stratosphere and started trying to clean up 
the area, the criminal element moved to Pennwood and Arville and those 
people weren't prepared for the influx of crime," Castro says. "The same 
thing happened when we were cracking down on Pennwood and Arville, they 
moved over here (to N2 Beat)."

Cultural issues added to the crime problem. "In some places in South 
America, men beating their wives is OK. With immigrants coming in, we had 
cultural and language barriers to address," Castro says. "Some men just 
didn't understand that domestic violence is against the law here."

Eventually, the higher crime rates begat the need for more jail cells 
which, ultimately, begat a reassessment of the hook-'em-and-book-'em 
approach-demand outstripped supply. Over time, crime spread to the 
suburbs-no place was safe.

"The Cambridge area used to be a good place to live," Castro says.

Longtime developer Irwin Molasky, who developed most of Maryland Parkway, 
including the Boulevard Mall, disagrees. The area was never exclusive, he 
says. What was trendy, and still enjoys a nice quality of life, are the 
neighborhoods he built behind the mall.

"The area west of Maryland Parkway has always been suspect," he says. "For 
a long time, it was all vacant land. It was zoned high density in those 
days (1950s), about 50 units to the acre. What happened is that California 
developers snatched up the land, built cracker-box apartments and created 
an instant slum. It should be exclusive because it's close to so much good 
stuff-UNLV, the Boulevard Mall. Over the past few years, people have been 
trying to restore the area ... there's the Cambridge Community Center, 
Molasky Park next to Vons, walking and jogging paths and across the street 
is a school."

Tuesday, July 5, 10 a.m. Willson Square Apartments Willson Square

Metro gang unit officer, Det. Brian Kobrys, has arrived. He pops in a video 
of the local gang unit at work-officers talking about the Valley's gang 
problems (17 deaths, 110 shootings through June), patrolling, questioning a 
group of men smoking weed in a known gang neighborhood.

His presentation riles some apartment managers. How are they to know who is 
a gang member and who isn't? Among those active in the area are the Hoover 
Crips, the Valley View Crips and 18th Street. Kobrys: Hard to tell because 
everyone seems to dig urban clothing. Another manager complains that Metro 
responded to her call to remove gang members two weeks after they'd left; 
she had more luck on her own, fining a gang-affiliated tenant $50 to $150 a 
day each time his cohorts came to the premises and caused trouble. After 
Commissioner Williams snipes at judges who downplay the seriousness of 
property crimes and two Southeast Area Command and cops explain how amended 
car-chase procedures have led to more criminals getting away, Eva Pearson 
pipes up. She's had enough.

"You know what, we haven't had any problems in Willson Square," says 
Pearson, who's tallish, with a ruddy peach complexion and the build of a 
forward in the WNBA. "I talk tough and I mean what I say. Why can't we just 
run these hoodlums out? Like I said, I talk tough. One day, someone's going 
to call my bluff and I'll deal with it accordingly."

Pearson has managed the 24-unit complex on Sierra Vista, just west of 
Swenson, for nearly a year. Pulling up to the 31-year-old property, whose 
Spanish-style architecture resembles something out of the Alamo, Pearson is 
out front to greet me-you don't enter the complex without her permission. 
During the nearly hour-long interview, she'll finish four cigarettes. Hers 
isn't a nervous smoking habit, though she could be forgiven if it was. When 
she arrived last fall, Willson Square was troubled, a haven for squatters 
and addicts, vandals and tenants with a penchant for destruction. In her 
first week as manager, she evicted five families, "everyone but the 
maintenance crew."

A year later, she's still repairing damage wrought by squatters and renters 
who knocked out windows, ripped out cupboards, destroyed toilets and put 
holes in ceilings. With permission from Willson Square's owner, Norma 
Jackabowski, to do whatever it takes to make the place safe, Pearson filled 
the swimming pool and began nightly patrols of the complex. If you couldn't 
prove you belonged-she'd help you on your way. "I once ran Cox 
Communications out of the complex because no one told me they were coming," 
Pearson says.

Signing up for Metro's Identity Detect and Locate program gave her access 
to a program allowing managers to run criminal background checks on 
potential renters. Requiring credit checks and charging half a month's rent 
plus a security deposit kept more riffraff away. The main problem now, she 
says, is a pay phone across the street that she's convinced drug dealers 
and prostitutes use to conduct business.

A van she doesn't recognize pulls up. Two strange men emerge.

Stop the interview.

Liz Carmona, a member of Willson Square's maintenance crew, fills in while 
Pearson investigates: "One of the big issues we had was people copying 
leases, whiting out names and putting their names in," Carmona says. "We 
also had managers that didn't do anything and even took some of the rent 
money. We don't have these problems anymore. Crime is moving away from us."

Turns out the men are here to clean the carpets. Pearson introduce herself, 
whips out a card, says she's who they'll be dealing with from now on. "I 
live on site and I don't want to live someplace unsafe," she says upon 
returning. "I will do whatever it takes to give people here a good quality 
of life."

Wednesday, July 6, 1 p.m. Bingo Suites 750 Sierra Vista Drive

Down the street on the northwest corner of Sierra Vista and Swenson, urban 
renewal is taking shape-another notorious housing complex getting an 
extreme makeover.

Just a year ago, the property, Vista Arms, was rife with crime. Residents 
getting beat up. Dope-dealing in the stairways. Criminals lurking in trees. 
Bad write-ups on sites that rate local apartments. From ratelasvegas.com: 
"There are at least 10 to 15 drug dealers selling drugs in the parking lot 
at all times. There are many fights and shootings there daily. Not a place 
for children at all. The stairways and elevator always smell like piss from 
all the drunk homeless people that hang out there 24 hours a day." umuk

Weeks ago, painters were busy coating the complex's haggard aqua facade in 
an earthen brown. Prior to this, Steve Siegel, a California investor with 
the cultured look of a Laguna Beach pretty boy, came to Vista Arms to 
introduce himself to residents as the new owner and tell them of his plan 
to revive the property. Siegel is a managing member of the Studio City, 
California-based SASCO Property Management, a division of the Siegel Group, 
which acquires buildings in low-income areas and spruces them up. SASCO has 
six properties in Vegas, including the Paradise Suites, whose previous 
incarnation, the St. Louis Manor, was a mini-Vietnam. Since last year, 
Siegel has been spending lots of time in Las Vegas looking for apartment 
complexes to buy.

First thing he did at Vista Arms was to remove the pay phones. Next, he cut 
the shrubbery and installed lights. Immediate plans call for hiring 
maintenance and security and establishing a relationship with Metro. In six 
months, Siegel promises the complex will be transformed.

"We're going to try to get rid of bad eggs and bring in working people and 
provide a better quality of life for people who can't afford to live 
elsewhere," says Siegel, adding his company has turned around properties in 
Van Nuys, Canoga Park and North Hollywood, California, and will soon take 
over an apartment complex on Boulder Highway, south of Flamingo. "We're 
doing the opposite of the condo conversion-rehabbing apartments and keeping 
them as apartments and affordable. It's a challenge, but we're set up to 
make change. The minute you start to get rid of a few bad people, the 
remaining bad people get out."

Of course, progress can't be measured in promises. But Siegel's plan might 
be working. A sign hanging from a gate notes that the parking lot can be 
used for overflow parking at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

"You have people that have lived there for 18-plus years and would like to 
stay there," he says. "The profit potential may be not as good as other 
business transactions, but there's a sense of accomplishment in changing 
things. You can make money and improve people's quality of living at the 
same time."

Tooling Around N2

Back at Cambridge Community Center, discussion veers to the people who are 
not here, i.e., the apartment managers of the complexes that cause the most 
trouble. "We can't get them to come," Pearson laments.

There's five seconds of silence when a woman, a self-professed "document 
queen," asks how many of her colleagues are abiding by the new, stricter 
nuisance ordinances. Most leases have a clause allowing managers to enter a 
unit if they smell something weird, Liz Leone of Great Western Realty-which 
owns properties around town, which owns several properties in area-tells 
the council.

More silence.

Things will change, Leone says, when apartment owners realize that allowing 
drugs and prostitution to fester has financial consequences. "It's really a 
bad business decision and very shortsighted," she says. "Pretty soon, all 
the good tenants leave."

Kathi Horvath is quiet for most of the meeting, sitting back and absorbing 
it all. She manages the 208-unit Pinewood Crossing (764 E. Twain) and the 
556-unit Pinewood (3600 Swenson). Two years ago, her company, 
Portland-Oregon-based Pacificap Properties Group, purchased the 
30-plus-year-old properties-much to the delight of nearby apartment 
managers-refurbishing the units, paving parking lots, xeriscaping the open 
space and strengthening tenant application and screening procedures. In 
addition to background checks, prospective tenants' names are fed into a 
database that screens for such crimes as sex offenses. Gone are move-in 
concessions (One Month Free!!)-folks might trash the units. And if you owe 
money to another apartment complex, forget about living in Pinewood or 
Pinewood Crossing.

"We follow the rules of (federal housing law) Section 42, in which we go 
into communities, give people decent housing at affordable prices," says 
Horvath, noting that her best move has been empowering residents to take 
control of their neighborhoods.

"Residents would tell me (about) people selling drugs over at Royal Crest. 
These people would take Pinewood's parking spots. Now, I tell them to call 
the towing company and have had cars tagged and towed," Horvath says. k

The improvement has been contagious. Some of the surrounding properties, 
including Parkview Point, Clock Tower and Bingo Suites have improved. 
"Steve (Siegel) evicted the residents that moved from Pinewood after we 
evicted them. Now when we have problems, we send out warnings. Three 
warnings and you're going to be in our office talking about your future 
residency. We're not going to lose good residents because we have one bad one."

Unlike many apartment complexes in the area, the 40-year-old Sugar Tree 
Apartments looks homey and quaint-a pearly white gate yielding to a row of 
small trees and a brown, two-story complex owned by a local company, Becker 
Enterprises. Like other managers, Nina Kurjeza, manager at the Sugar Tree 
Apartments (655 Sierra Vista) between Swenson and Paradise, refuses to 
identify bad managers or complexes.

"At one property, I don't want to mention the name, the manager was selling 
drugs out of her apartment," says Kurjeza, who came on as manager of the 
48-unit complex in November. "We're supposed to be keeping drugs out and 
she was bringing them in. The security guard wrote it in a report and she's 
no longer there. When I got here, I saw hookers walking up and down the 
street and residents told me about being approached for drugs. The 
neighborhood has improved with Metro's help. My complex is quiet and I 
don't have anything to complain about. I don't see why all those apartment 
managers are complaining."

Pointe Blank

"While crime near densely populated public housing is not in itself 
uncommon, the residents of the Sierra Pointe Apartments in this particular 
case would obviously be much safer by receiving Section 8 vouchers so that 
they may live elsewhere. The centralization of public housing has been in 
most cases an absolute failure and it is time to end this glaring example 
of a property that does nothing but serve as a crime incubator."

- -April 8, 2003, letter from Nevada Sen. Ensign to then-U.S. Housing and 
Urban Development Secretary Mel Martinez.

Ask folks living and working in and around Sierra Pointe how dangerous the 
place is and you're likely to get the same response-very.

An employee at Big O Tires, about a block away on Maryland Parkway: "It's a 
war zone. In January, someone was shot and killed in front of the store. A 
few weeks ago, someone was killed on Sierra Vista Drive. That place is the 
projects."

The clerk at the Mini Mart up the street, where a 28-year-old was fatally 
shot on June 12: "You heard of the Wild, Wild, West? You're in it." Word 
has it that the shooting was caught on store surveillance and that it shows 
someone rifling through the dead man's pockets. The clerk says Metro has 
the tape. A police official declined to confirm the claim, citing an 
ongoing investigation.

A clerk at the 7-Eleven on Sierra Vista and Cambridge, responding to a 
question about violence in the area: "If you think that six people killed 
getting killed in the last few weeks right outside here is dangerous, then 
yeah."

A maintenance worker at Sierra Pointe: "It's a pretty rough neighborhood .. 
the roughest place I've ever worked in."

Even during the day, a trip through Sierra Pointe can be slightly 
harrowing. Viewed during a visit on a recent morning: a half-dozen young 
black men sharing what looked like a joint; others posted in walkways, 
almost like they're lookouts; a handful of folks make beer runs to the 
7-Eleven. When I stopped in the office, a polite-enough receptionist said 
the manager was unavailable. When management did answer the phone, the 
Weekly's inquiries were referred to Dolores Trioke at BNR Management. She 
never responded before press time.

Sierra Pointe wasn't always troubled. Well run into mid-1990s, it began 
deteriorating when vacancy rates began rising, according to a series of 
lengthy investigative articles in the Las Vegas Sun in 2003. The stories 
paint a picture of a complex so overrun with crime that Sen. Ensign pressed 
the Department of Housing and Urban Development to cease funding it, the 
Clark County Housing Authority (which administered HUD funding) wanted 
nothing to do with it and residents wanted to escape from it. The Sun 
stories note that Sierra Vista Housing Associates, which owns the property, 
sued the housing authority for allegedly reneging on a HUD agreement to 
maintain a waiting list of tenants to fill vacancies. The authority also 
lied to prospective Sierra Pointe tenants about the complex's safety, 
according to the lawsuit, and directed them to other complexes owned by the 
authority.

Complaints from neighboring landlords and residents-about crime and 
mold-prompted a federal investigation. An attorney for Sierra Vista told 
the Sun that the landlords were jealous of Sierra Pointe's high occupancy 
rate. Reached in Washington, D.C., Michael Zerega, a spokesman for HUD's 
inspector general's office who was quoted in the articles, said he was 
unsure if the probe was completed.

"I can't say the investigation ever occurred," Zerega told the Weekly.

Patricia Sherwin Lucus, who has since left her post as executive director 
of the Clark County Housing Authority, told the Weekly that the county's 
20-year contract with Sierra Pointe ran out in September 2003-and none too 
soon. "It's just not a very good area," she said in April. "There was high 
crime during the time we had the contract. We tried to help out, tried to 
get money to address the problems. Ultimately, it's up to the landlord to 
improve the property."

So why is HUD still funding Sierra Pointe?

"There were many allegations, but what ultimately came out was that the 
property was going through renovation at the time and was never a troubled 
property," says Ken LoBene, Nevada state coordinator for the Department of 
Housing and Urban Development.

He says significant improvements have been made at Sierra Pointe-new paint, 
better landscaping, improved security-and that management will do whatever 
it takes to make the complex safe. "Anytime cops are called to the 
property, a slip is dropped in the resident manager's box. On Monday 
morning, those slips are viewed and appropriate moves are taken, either 
sanctions or removal. Ownership and management will do whatever it takes to 
make it safe."

Larry Bush, communications officer for HUD's Pacific region, says the 
federal agency is satisfied with Sierra Pointe, and that the complex "was 
mired in controversy and problematic and now it's not."

Friday, Aug. 5, 9:30 p.m. Sierra Pointe 1064 Sierra Vista Drive

Crack Alley seems to be waking up. I cruise the blocks surrounding 
it-Sierra Vista (people running to 7-Eleven), Cambridge (five guys 
loitering in a walkway), Lisbon (bare-chested black men standing next to a 
Jeep Cherokee) and Rome (a group of young Hispanics heading to the Burger 
King). Going south on Rome, I pull in front of the alley and ponder turning 
in. Thankfully, a cabbie is trying to maneuver between parked cars and 
Dumpsters.

The next day, 26-year-old Jesus Escoto-Gonzalez was fatally shot in the 
3300 block of Athens Street, a block from Crack Alley. On Monday, cops 
arrested a 16-year-old and 14-year-old, charging both with murder.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Beth