Pubdate: Mon,  6 Feb 2006
Source: San Jose Mercury News (CA)
Copyright: 2006 San Jose Mercury News
Contact:  http://www.mercurynews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/390
Author: Patrick May, Mercury News

PUBLIC ENEMY NO. 1: A STREET

Police Chief Vows to Clean Up Cul-De-Sac

While the justice system deals with accused cop-killer Alberto
Alvarez, East Palo Alto Police Chief Ron Davis is going after his main
accomplice:

The one-block-long cul-de-sac called Sacramento Street.

This gritty tenth of a mile is close to where police officer Richard
May was gunned down the night of Jan. 7 after responding to a
disturbance call at a nearby taqueria. It's where Alvarez, now being
held without bond in San Mateo County Jail, was discovered hiding the
next morning. And for over a decade, police say, it has served as an
open-air drug bazaar for the Sac Street Gang, one of the city's three
major crime groups and Alvarez's suspected crew.

Drawing on a variety of tools -- including a "Most Wanted"
television show, stepped-up graffiti removal and temporary restraining
orders pioneered 16 years ago by the city of San Jose -- Davis hopes
to formalize plans this week to avenge May's slaying. Part of that
effort features a crime-busting magic trick: He would like to make
Sacramento Street disappear.

"We'll be asking the community about possibly changing the name of
the street," Davis said in an interview. "That way, you'd now belong
to a gang named after a place that doesn't exist. We want to strip
away their identity because there's power in identity."

The clean-up campaign, which Davis says will target Sacramento Street
and expand to other neighborhoods in this city of 32,000, really began
during last spring's crime wave, perpetrated in part by Sac Street
Gang members. Police stepped up their crime analysis, including a
five-year homicide study, and began pin-mapping robberies and
burglaries to better redeploy officers. They began immediately erasing
gang graffiti and removing sneakers strung over telephone lines, an
"Open for Business" sign among drug peddlers.

But it was May's slaying, and another incident shortly before it, that
has supercharged the campaign, leaving Davis almost breathless as he
runs down his battle plans. Shortly before the officer's death, gang
members allegedly threatened at gunpoint a homeowner trying to put up
a security camera. That, said the chief, put the Sac Street Gang "at
the top of our list. Threatening a community member who's trying to
take affirmative action in a neighborhood -- and now shooting a police
officer -- constitute a threat to our entire criminal justice system."

Old Problem

Despite the tough talk, a safer Sacramento Street won't be an easy
fix. Former Police Chief Wes Bowling spent his entire decade as the
city's top cop trying to clean it up. Bowling recently pointed out
that the physical layout of the dead end -- with access limited and
visitors easily monitored by rooftop lookouts -- makes Sac Street a
safe harbor for the outlaws who rule it.

"We hear gunshots all the time, so I guess we're used to it," says
Regina Wagner, 35, a secretary who has lived at the end of the block
for 10 years. "This street has had a 25-year history of drugs and
gangs. They've been trying forever and ever to clean it up, but
nothing ever happens."

So Wagner and her neighbors have their routine: Come home, go inside,
lock the doors and don't come out. Even Davis acknowledges that "this
is not first time we've tried to clean up Sac Street; these are
entrenched problems that need long-term solutions."

But there is an encouraging precedent for East Palo Alto's efforts,
located 20 miles south in the Rocksprings neighborhood of San Jose.
Ten years ago, the four-square-block area was described by one judge
as a gang-infested "urban war zone," where residents were
"prisoners in their own homes." The city of San Jose became one of
the first communities in the nation to try a novel approach to taking
back Rocksprings after traditional policing methods came up short.

Injunctions

The idea was simple: Identify a small geographical area, compile a
list of its known gang members through arrest records and statements
to police, declare them a public nuisance and personally serve each
one with a restraining order known as a "gang-abatement
injunction."

Joan Gallo, then city attorney for San Jose, said the order
"described what they couldn't do -- they couldn't associate with
other known gang members; they couldn't carry weapons; they couldn't
bring spray paint into the area. It was very issue-specific."

Challenged by civil libertarians, the city prevailed before the
California Supreme Court. Meanwhile, back on the streets, "the
results were absolutely fantastic," Gallo said. "I remember going
back into Rocksprings, and people who'd been afraid to leave their
homes were coming out and reclaiming their neighborhood. It was very
dramatic."

Rocksprings seems a safe and sleepy place today. Minh Luu, who grew up
in the neighborhood and still lives there, has never heard of
gang-abatement injunctions, "but they must have worked," the
24-year-old said the other day. "As a kid, I remember groups of 15
and 20 gang members selling drugs at the corner, but we gradually saw
them less and less."

East Palo Alto police admit they will never completely get rid of
gangs. They realize that dispersing gangs could simply create more
problems in adjacent neighborhoods. But San Jose's experience has
convinced Davis they can at least shake things up on Sacramento Street.

On the agenda at this week's meeting with other law-enforcement
agencies will be developing "a comprehensive plan that will disrupt
and dismantle the Sac Street Gang," he said. "When you dismantle
something, the pieces are still there, but they're just not together
anymore.

"We want the Sac Street Gang to know," Davis said, "that their era
of terror will soon be over."
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake