Painting 2 Pictures of Gang Threat : Crime: The chief of police and some officials say no, but others say they ignore the growing menace of teen gangs in the area.

After a group of Oxnard teen-agers drove to Ventura’s Buenaventura Mall and fired shots at Ventura gang members last May, county prosecutors identified one of the gunmen as a member of a Filipino gang in Oxnard called the Kanto Gang Boys, also known as the KGB.

In November, Oxnard gang members allegedly struck again, opening fire with a shotgun and wounding five people outside a Round Table Pizza restaurant in Moorpark, where about 40 teen-agers had gathered after a football game.

Ventura County prosecutors say the Oxnard youth suspected of driving the car in that shooting wore a black baseball cap with the letters RSGC, signifying membership in the predominantly black and Latino Oxnard gang called the Rolling Sixties Gangster Crips.

The violence took a fatal turn Nov. 22 in Oxnard when Manuel Rodriguez, a member of a Latino gang called the Lemonwood Chiques, was shot in the head and left to die in front of Channel Islands High School.

Witnesses said the shooting occurred after Rodriguez yelled gang slogans at Arnel Salagubang, 19, a member of a Filipino gang called the Santanas or STS who has been charged with the shooting.

To some Ventura County officials, the pattern of violence suggests that Oxnard has a growing gang problem that has spread from the city to surrounding communities throughout the county.

“There’s always been violence in barrios,” Ventura County Deputy Dist. Atty. Peter E. Brown said. “Now, we’re seeing Oxnard gangs in Santa Barbara, we’re seeing them in Moorpark, we’re seeing them in the Conejo Valley.

“They go in groups, they wear their colors and they go armed,” he said.

Some law enforcement officials say privately that they think many Oxnard officials--among them Oxnard Police Chief Robert Owens--have deliberately downplayed the extent of the problem, at least in their public comments about gang activity.

“I heard one local chief say that Owens won’t admit there are gangs in Oxnard until one of them shoots him,” one top official, speaking anonymously, told The Times last week.

Owens, who has been Oxnard police chief for 20 years, responded to that comment this week by saying that he thinks he has irritated some law enforcement officials in the county with his policy of avoiding giving gangs unnecessary publicity.

“We have an ongoing battle among some people who have been maximizing gang activities,” he said.

Owens said he expressed annoyance recently after another official made what he believed to be exaggerated statements about an influx of Los Angeles gang members into Ventura County.

“I accused some of my fellow law enforcement officials of grandstanding and giving gangs what they want--attention--and using the announcement for the drama of the moment and more funding from their city,” he said.

Despite the views of others, Owens maintained, Oxnard’s gang problem has not reached serious proportions.

“Merely because kids identify themselves as gang members doesn’t mean we have a gang problem,” he said.

Owens conceded that gangs do exist in the city. He stressed, however, that they are not comparable to the hard-core street gangs that have become notorious in Los Angeles.

“My position has been and will continue to be, until the situation changes, that we have not had the classical gang confrontations--drive-by shootings, mini-wars and battles over turf,” Owens said.

“Ever since I can remember, there have been areas of the city, barrios, where they affiliate and associate,” Owens said. “Once in a while they will have a donnybrook with people in other areas.”

Owens said at least part of his policy of downplaying gang activity stems from a desire to deny publicity to gangs.

“We try to be very objective and accurate,” he said. “It may appear that we’re minimizing it. We don’t think we’re doing anybody any favors by giving gangs the publicity that they want.”

That public policy contrasts with an official Oxnard police assesment of the gang situation that was made in a recent application for a $391,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Justice for increased narcotics patrols.

In that application, the Oxnard Police Department said one of the reasons it needs the extra money is because “gang activity in the city is increasing rapidly.”

The application, approved by Owens, lists the Chiques as the “oldest and largest gang in the city.” It also mentions the Crips, which have “direct linkage with the Los Angeles Crips,” the Santanas and “a large number of smaller neighborhood gangs.”

The application included a newspaper article that quotes a 17-year-old ex-Crips member: “Being on the streets of Oxnard, I’d say more of the gangs are coming from Oxnard than anyplace else in Ventura County. A new gang rises up about once a month.”

When asked about the discrepancy between his public comments and the language used in Oxnard’s request for federal funds, Owens said the funding request contained “dated information” compiled before two gangs became “virtually inoperative.”

The chief’s views on the gang situation were echoed in recent weeks by Oxnard patrol officers, who said they agree that the gang problem has been exaggerated.

They described Oxnard youths involved in gangs as “wanna-bes” or “fragmented groups of kids” or “little punks” or “misguided youth”--not a major problem.

“There are very few, very few gangs,” Officer Dennis McMasters said during a recent patrol. “If we had hard-core gang members here, you’d have some homicides.”

Even as McMasters minimized gang activity, he was told several times about gang activity by Oxnard citizens and even a fellow officer.

McMasters responded at one point to a call from workers at a warehouse who dubbed the vandals who had broken into their facility and left only a bat behind as “members of that gang, the Lemonwood Chiques.”

About an hour later, as McMasters cruised the south end of Oxnard, a motorist honked insistently at him to stop. As McMasters slowed and rolled down his window, the middle-aged driver pointed toward Oxnard Boulevard.

“‘Just over the overpass, there’s a hell of a gang fight,” he said.

“How does he know it was a gang?” McMasters grumbled before heading to the overpass for a look that revealed no activity.

A few minutes later, McMasters was told over the radio by another officer that a similar confrontation had occurred earlier that afternoon.

And toward the end of his shift, when McMasters stopped for a quick chat with a former partner, the officer said:

“Did you hear about the ICC’s big gang fight in Port Hueneme tomorrow?”

According to the Ventura County district attorney’s office, the two largest gangs in Oxnard are the Oxnard Chiques and the Colonia Chiques.

Also in the Colonia are the Loma Flats, who claim to be associated with the Los Angeles Bloods.

At the south end of town are the Rolling Sixties Gangster Crips and the Inner City Crips, a Latino gang.

Other gangs in the city, according to county officials, are the Lemonwood Chiques, the Kanto Gang Boys, the Santanas and a predominantly white skinhead gang.

While acknowledging that the gangs exist, Owens maintained this week that they are a relatively insignificant factor in Oxnard crime.

Owens called the Colonia Chiques “an amorphous mess.” He said the city’s total gang population is about 100.

In downplaying gang activity in Oxnard, Owens has the support of some Oxnard City Council members.

Councilwoman Ann Johs said she saw gang activity during a recent ride-along with police. But she said the gangs should not be glamorized.

“They’re there,” said Johs, a member of the public safety policy commission of the California League of Cities. “There was one section of town where I could physically see 12 gang members up to no good.”

But the tactic the city uses, she said, is to not admit that there are gangs. In that way, she said, gangs do not get publicity.

“If they don’t get any publicity, they’re not as active,” Johs said. “Our people know where they are and what they’re doing and so far they’re not out of hand.”

The Oxnard policy of trying to ignore gangs, while similar to the approach of many cities throughout the state, was questioned by several leading law enforcement experts, who termed the approach outdated and potentially dangerous.

Criminal justice expert G. Albert Howenstein told The Times that any city policy of denying that gangs exist and are a problem “allows gangs to grow and take control of the neighborhood.”

“It’s important to get them before ‘wanna-bes’ become ‘are-bes,’ ” said Howenstein, the director of the state office of criminal justice planning. “Whether they’re ‘wanna-bes’ or have signed-up membership cards, the fact that they’re ‘wanna-bes’ should be frightening enough.”

Los Angeles County Sheriff Sherman Block, who addressed the issue of under-reporting of gang activity at an anti-gang conference, said last week that the downplaying of gang activity often results from pressure by politicians who do not want their cities to be viewed as having such problems.

“I believe the result of political influences is to downplay the negatives in a community, particularly as they concern gangs,” Block said in an interview with The Times. “Gang violence in a community can impact house prices, commerce and tourism.”

Ventura County Deputy Dist. Atty. Stephen McLaughlin, who serves as a department consultant on gang-related cases, called Oxnard’s gang policies appropriate, but would not comment further.

However, he praised the public approach taken by the city of Ventura in dealing with gang problems as “proactive and progressive.”

The Ventura Police Department and City Council held news conferences and issued press releases to publicize the city’s gang problem last March, after a drive-by shooting in front of Ventura High School stunned the community.

The Police Department set up a six-officer suppression team that for the last six months has aggressively enforced ordinances against youths believed to be in gangs--from breaking a 10 p.m. curfew to drinking in public.

And the Ventura City Council approved $145,000 for an emergency graffiti removal program to paint over the gang slogans that mark different territories and established a 24-hour hot line for residents to report graffiti.

Santa Paula also has taken a public stance about its admitted gang problem.

“It’s difficult to acknowledge the problem without conferring status on the gangs,” said Police Chief Walt Adair. “By the same token, you can’t tell people you don’t have a problem when you do.”

Despite the opinions of some officials outside Oxnard, however, other experts and many community leaders sided with Owens in portraying Oxnard’s problems as relatively minor. Some, in fact, accused the Oxnard police of exaggerating the gang problem.

Armando Morales, a UCLA professor, studied youth criminal activity in Oxnard two years ago in a study funded by the U.S. Department of Justice.

Morales concluded that many youths belonged to groups characterized as gangs, but that the gangs were nonviolent.

“What I’ve found in that area was that by and large there are a few gangs in the community, but they are not the violent type,” Morales said.

At the northeast end of Oxnard, residents of the Colonia, the county’s largest barrio, staunchly defended the Colonia Chiques, one of the city’s largest gangs, as nonviolent.

They said Oxnard youths are unfairly singled out as gang members simply because they may wear the same attire, listen to the same music and paint the same graffiti as authentic gang members.

“We don’t believe we have a serious problem in Ventura County,” said Luzmaria Espinosa, a youth counselor at El Concilio del Condado de Ventura. “We have kids who get together, who are friends and who dress a certain way, and because they are, they’re considered gangs.”

Times staff writer Psyche Pascual contributed to this story.