Crime-Plagued Sherman Now a Little Less ‘Nasty’

Loum Chum knows what it means to grow up wild in Sherman, one of San Diego’s rougher, rowdier, meaner graffiti-scarred, drug-crazed, police-on-alert neighborhoods. Even as a 12-year-old--one of eight children--he has felt the sting of Sherman’s lawless avenues.

Not long ago, during a shadowy sunset, Loum was walking near Sherman Elementary School, where he happens to be a fifth-grader. Two big guys looked him over with sinister eyes and walked toward him. Fast.

“They told me they wanted me to buy some drugs,” Loum said. “But I said no, and so they chased me. I ran as fast as I could. Luckily, a cop car came around the corner just at that instant.”

Wears the Waste of Gangs

Cops--and big guys pushing drugs--are hardly strangers to Sherman, which from time to time explodes with gang warfare. In the estimation of San Diego Police Officer Boyd Long, who works the area, Sherman has the nastiest cocaine and heroin problem of any area in the city.

Sherman also wears the waste of gangs: graffiti, trash and drug paraphernalia, which kids like Loum sometimes see on the street.

Tuesday afternoon, Loum, Officer Long and several hundred Shermanites got together to change a little bit of that with a paint-over and cleanup, capped with door prizes and cans of bubbly pop.

This first cleanup and painting was the brainstorm of Long and Richard Grano, youthful-looking police officers who work 10-hour shifts in Sherman four days a week. Long and Grano are part of the San Diego Police Department’s Walking Enforcement Campaign Against Narcotics unit, or WECAN.

Tuesday’s effort was also aided by the Environmental Health Coalition and I Love a Clean San Diego, which donated paint and trash bags.

From 1 p.m. to dusk, 30 adult residents, 20 officers and more than 200 students from fourth through sixth grades cruised a 25-square-block area from 19th Street to 25th Street between Market and Imperial.

The mood was happy, playful, unabashedly optimistic. It belied the evidence of crime that covers the area.

In the midst of the hustle and bustle, one officer thought he saw a burglary taking place. He gave chase and apprehended a large man. One youngster found a loaded syringe during the cleanup.

Long, who started working Sherman a year and a half ago, said police have at least reduced the “flagrancy and blatancy” of drug activity.

“When we first started down here, drugs were everywhere ,” he said. “Any corner had people of all ages pushing drugs. Kids couldn’t go out to play without bumping into a dealer. I think we’ve stopped--or at least slowed down--the obviousness. And, if we work hard enough, maybe we can wipe out all of it.”

‘We’ll Paint It Again’

Frank Hoerman, a WECAN officer, said he isn’t worried about gang reaction to the painting. “If we take the attitude of doing nothing, nothing will ever be accomplished,” he said. “We’ve got to stop this stuff. Let ‘em paint it again. Then we’ll paint it again. And again. And again . . . “

“We’re tired of people saying this is a nasty neighborhood,” said Dwayne Grube, 12. “It’s not. We wanted to do something about it. We want people to say, ‘Go to Sherman. That’s a clean school, even in a tough neighborhood.’ ”