Gangs Erode Feelings of Security in Santa Paula : Crime: City officials pin hopes on organizing youths and opening a teen center. But police say they are unable to crack down because of an impenetrable code of silence.

On a quiet, well-kept street in Santa Paula, a 37-year-old woman was drinking a beer in her living room and listening to Judy Collins records when she heard her back porch window shatter.

“My 12-year-old came to the door and said, ‘Mom, did you hear that?’ ” the woman recalled. “I went out there and said, ‘My God, that’s a bullet hole.’ ”

Police believe the stray 9-millimeter round was fired from more than a half-mile away, from a house directly behind the police station. The target, a red Camaro carrying three gang members, was hit once in the right fender as it was passing down the street.

No one was injured in the spray of gunfire earlier this month, but police and residents say that was simply luck. Of the 11 shots fired, six peppered the stucco front of a Pentecostal church, two hit an apartment wall and three more hit occupied homes.

The shooting, which capped a week marked by three street shooting incidents, was the latest sign that gang violence is eroding the sense of security many citizens once felt in the rural town.

Surrounded by orchards and rugged canyons, Santa Paula is described by residents as a tight-knit community, still a world away from the urban problems of Los Angeles. But as in other cities throughout Southern California, Santa Paula’s gang problem has taken root in recent years and shows no sign of slowing down.

In fact, police estimate the number of hard-core members in the city’s five Latino gangs has jumped from 49 in 1990 to 125 today. And they have become more violent and less turf-based, making their influence felt throughout the city and the county, Sgt. Gary Marshall said.

But in trying to crack down on gangs and make arrests, Santa Paula police say they face a code of silence as impenetrable as any from the inner city. Unless more people start coming forward, police predict, the violence will only get worse.

“Who’s going to run this town in 10 years? The citizens and the police, or the gangs?” asked Police Agent Rick Cook, a 20-year department veteran who was raised in Santa Paula.

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Community leaders recognize that something must be done to reign in the city’s youth, and they are hoping the most recent wave of shootings will galvanize support for a citywide, anti-gang effort.

“This is too nice a small town and has too many good people to be lost to gangs,” said Donna Nelson, who is co-leader of the Santa Paula Youth Task Force, a broad-based coalition that is trying to open a permanent teen center.

‘I think we all feel like we have to do something or our time is running out,” she said.

Mayor Margaret Ely said it will be difficult to reach the city’s teen-age youths already involved in gangs. But by focusing on the children now in elementary school, and with support from the city’s Latino population, she believes the problem of gang violence can be curbed in a few years.

“I think we’re going to have to concentrate on the kids we might be able to save,” she said.

The key, she added, will be the involvement of Latino men to serve as positive role models for would-be gang members.

“I think we really do believe we need men teaching young boys how to be men,” Ely said.

But while Ely and others focus on steering future generations away from gangs, Santa Paula police say they face a difficult battle on the streets. Outnumbered 4 to 1 by hard-core gang members, police have launched a campaign to take guns off the streets and apply pressure to the gangs.

Police Chief Walt Adair said he has ordered officers to conduct more probation searches of gang members’ homes and question them on the street whenever possible.

“As far as I’m concerned, they should stop them and frisk them every time they see them,” Adair said.

Police demonstrated the new tougher policy Friday night when they raided a home in the 200 block of South Mill Street where they believe the barrage of gunfire came from the previous Saturday night.

Residents of the house dispute the police account, saying the shots were fired from the red Camaro. But when officers stopped the Camaro immediately after the shooting, they found no gun, although the driver was arrested on suspicion of drunk driving.

On Friday, police waited several hours for more people to show up at the house. Then officers walked briskly across the back parking lot of the police station, turned down the sidewalk on Mill Street and surrounded the house.

Officers announced they had a search warrant, then swept through the house room by room, hoping to find a cache of weapons, drugs or other contraband. In particular, they were hoping to find the 9-millimeter semiautomatic pistol used in the recent shooting.

In 1990, the same house had been targeted in a raid that yielded evidence linking two Santa Paula gang members to a drive-by shooting.

But on Friday night, the effort proved less successful. Besides finding a holster and gun cleaning fluid, officers confiscated several photo albums containing pictures of gang members making hand signs and posturing at parties.

“We had been hoping to get something a little better than a photo album,” Marshall said as he walked back to the police station.

Recently, Santa Paula’s gang problems were highlighted when violence wrought by Santa Paula’s youths with gang ties erupted in other communities.

A shootout on a crowded Ventura beach was blamed on rivalry among Santa Paula youths, some with gang ties. Two adults and two juveniles face criminal charges in the Aug. 4 melee, which frightened sunbathers at the popular beach near Ventura Harbor.

And in Santa Barbara, two Santa Paula gang members, both 17, were arrested Aug. 8 after shots were fired at other teen-agers in an outdoor mall off State Street. The youths were arrested on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon, said Santa Barbara Police Sgt. Chris Moore.

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But clearly, violence provoked by out-of-town gang members is not limited to Santa Paula’s youth. Last August, five Ventura gang members were involved in the fatal stabbing of a 16-year-old boy during Santa Barbara’s Fiesta Days celebration. Authorities said the knife fight erupted after an exchange of gang slogans and hand signs.

Even so, Santa Paula Police Cmdr. Bob Gonzales said the two most recent incidents have given the city of 26,000 people a worse reputation for gangs than it deserves. And, he said, it encourages people to stereotype all of Santa Paula’s Latino youth as troublemakers.

“It’s just that little core of people who make it ugly for us,” he said. “So do you blame the entire community? Do you give us a stigma?”

Because of the town’s size and relative isolation, the gang activity becomes magnified and has a greater impact on the community, he said.

“It’s like somebody talking about Mrs. McGillicutty’s daughter getting pregnant,” he said. “In a small town, that’s big news. But in a big town, who’s Mrs. McGillicutty? And for that matter, who the hell cares?”

Still, Gonzales conceded, the past several months have seen “more gang activity than ever before.”

Adair blamed the recent spate of shootings on the cyclical nature of gang violence and stressed that the violence is not unique to his city.

“It’s not just one small town in California, it’s across the United States. And it’s not just one small group of Hispanic kids or black kids or Asian kids; it’s an entire generation at risk,” he said.

Adair blamed much of the gang problem on families who do not control their children and fail to instill in them a sense of responsibility.

“We deal with families who literally throw up their hands and say, ‘What can I do?’ when they could be the most important in guiding their children,” he said.

Others point to the city’s lack of employment opportunities, a high dropout rate and the absence of activities for teen-agers.

Marcos Vargas lives in Santa Paula and is the executive director of El Concilio del Condado de Ventura, a Latino advocacy group in Oxnard.

He said Santa Paula’s geographic isolation--it is surrounded by agricultural fields--makes the city’s youths feel even more hopeless.

“It’s a community whose youth are severely underserved,” he said.

Vargas said gang activity throughout the county has escalated rapidly in recent years, but the impact in Santa Paula has been greater because of the city’s small population.

The situation, however, is not without hope, community leaders say.

In the next few months, the Santa Paula Youth Task Force is hoping to open a permanent teen center that would offer everything from recreation activities to alcohol and drug counseling.

The task force and El Concilio are looking at two possible locations. But in order to purchase and run the center, Vargas estimates the task force will have to raise at least $570,000.

So far, the county and the city of Santa Paula have committed $43,000 in federal funds earmarked for projects in low-income areas. The task force is hoping to raise the rest from private foundations.

But not everyone agrees that opening a teen center is the best solution.

“I think it’s ridiculous,” said Jess Victoria, 70, who owns a shoe repair business on Main Street. “Just because they’re teen-agers doesn’t mean they’re going to get along.”

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Overall, crime in Santa Paula reached its highest level ever in 1992, with 60.4 crimes reported per 1,000 people, which was a 3.1% increase over 1991.

Statistics show that in the first six months of this year, crimes typically committed by gang members--robberies, aggravated assault and the firing of gunshots--rose sharply, while other crimes remained level or declined.

Comparing the first six months of 1993 and 1992, robberies increased 74%, jumping from 23 to 40. Aggravated assaults were up 83%, from 48 to 88. And reports of “shots fired,” which range from a person wounded to residents hearing gunfire, were up 33% from 92 reports to 138.

Eight of the “shots fired” calls this year involved people shooting at occupied houses or cars, Sgt. Marshall said.

Farm laborers are particularly vulnerable prey for gangs. Distrustful of banks, the workers often carry cash with them and are reluctant to report robberies to police, said Sgt. Gary Marshall.

On Aug. 5 Jose Fernandez, a farm laborer, had just left a liquor store on Harvard Boulevard when he was confronted by four robbers who police believe were gang members. When Fernandez told the robbers he had no money, one of them shot him in the forehead.

The bullet grazed Fernandez’s skull and he was released from the hospital the next day, authorities said. No suspects have been identified, detectives said.

Even when gang members are victims themselves, they often refuse to cooperate with police. “We can make a case against a lot of these people, but if we don’t have a victim come forward, we can’t prosecute the case,” Gonzales said.

Santa Paula’s two homicides in 1992, both gang-related, are the most stunning examples of the stifling power of the code of silence, police say.

In both cases, detectives believe they know who committed the crimes, but no witnesses have come forward and police have been unable to make arrests.

Richard Brian Gutierrez, 20, a member of the Bad Boys gang, was fatally shot Sept. 23 during a running gun battle through the streets of Santa Paula. He had been released from Ventura County Jail just hours before.

Detectives have interviewed a dozen possible suspects or witnesses who were with Gutierrez or were in the truck carrying rival gangsters, Cmdr. Gonzales said.

In the second killing, Joey Lara, 18, a member of the Crazy Boys, was fatally shot in the back on the grounds of McKevett Elementary School. Police have interviewed approximately 30 possible witnesses, who had been attending a party with Lara across the street from the school.

Besides gang members who clam up, police are also hampered by residents too frightened of retaliation to tell police what they’ve seen.

“ ‘I didn’t see nothing’ is the typical response,” said Officer Lynette Ingold, who believes one solution is to assign officers to work undercover on gangs and drug dealers.

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Like many people affected by gang violence, the 37-year-old woman whose porch window was shattered by the bullet, is outraged, but afraid to speak out publicly.

Since the incident, she said, she no longer feels safe talking with neighbors outside at night, and she has taken precautions to protect her three children.

“I’ve taught my kids the gunfire drill,” she said. “You hear a noise, you fall flat on the floor.”