They’re Out to Reclaim the Neighborhood : Activism: It’s the poorest area of the city, where violence is a way of life. But residents have discovered their potential political strength and are demanding attention.

SANTA MONICA —  Their scars testify to the dangers of Santa Monica’s Pico neighborhood.

Michael, 23, shows a purplish knob where a bullet hit him in the shoulder during a drive-by shooting two years ago. His friend Tony, 17, has a raised red spot from a bullet that passed through his thigh this summer. The same round, a .38-caliber slug, was later extracted from his girlfriend Lori’s abdomen. She is too modest to show her wound.

The three say they were innocent victims of violent crime in Pico, where residents say that drive-bys and drug deals have long been an all-too-common feature of neighborhood life.

Lately, however, a growing number of Pico residents have concluded that it’s time for things to change. They have begun to organize and demand that city officials pay more attention to their concerns.

For many residents, a turning point was reached Oct. 20, when 150 people showed up at a Santa Monica City Council meeting to complain about neighborhood crime. The turnout became both a source of pride and a symbol of the neighborhood’s potential political power.

“Oh boy, we really gave it to them that night,” said one still-excited elderly woman who had never been to a council meeting before. “That was some crowd-and-a-half. (The council) really listened to us,” said the resident, asking that her name not be used.

But others are more cautious and worry that the plodding pace of government action will sink the community into an even deeper state of apathy.

“The people in this neighborhood have to believe that they have the right to a surrounding that’s safe,” said Rosemary Cuadros, who is prominent in Pico’s fledgling activist movement.

“In a working-class area like this, the focus is too often on day-to-day survival. We’ve got to get away from that mentality and let city officials know that we are watching what they do and are holding them accountable.”

In other words, Art Casillas could use some company. A 45-year Pico resident and a plumber, Casillas attends most council meetings and can usually be counted on to speak.

“People talk about the problems on their doorsteps, but they never seem to make it to City Hall,” he said. “But I understand that way of thinking. I mean, how often are you going to go to the council Tuesday after Tuesday and not have them do anything?”

Pico is Santa Monica’s poorest neighborhood. It is bounded by Pico Boulevard on the south, Centinela Avenue on the east, Santa Monica Boulevard and Colorado Avenue on the north, and Lincoln Boulevard on the west. The Santa Monica Freeway bisects the neighborhood, with most of the crime problems centered in the residential area south of the freeway.

Police statistics show that for the first nine months of the year, major crime in Pico dropped by 4% from a year earlier, although the number of reported assaults by firearm (which includes drive-by shootings) rose from five to 13.

Santa Monica Police Chief James Butts said that far from being ignored, Pico has more officers assigned to it than any other area, including a two-person gang unit based in Virginia Avenue Park, a weekend duty car that spends most of the time in Pico and a five-member “crime impact team,” which Butts said also spends most of its time in the neighborhood. The department also plans on adding 20 officers to the city’s police force next year.

Butts said he is developing a long-term crime-reduction plan for the neighborhood based on a recent survey of residents’ opinions about the Police Department. In January, the department will sponsor a series of community meetings to discuss the plan.

Butts said it is important for the crime-reduction effort to be a “holistic” program, including employment and family counseling services.

“I know people in the neighborhood are impatient and want to see more officers out there, but we want long-term solutions, not knee-jerk reactions,” Butts said. “It is easy for an executive to put out brush fires by moving (officers) from place to place, but that’s not a very effective strategy. . . . It only pushes the problem down the street.”

Butts added that an example of the kind of long-term strategy he favors was the recent three-month undercover operation targeting crack cocaine dealers that led to 21 arrests in Pico, including four suspects thought to be significant drug suppliers.

“By taking a little more time, which in some cases meant making repeated buys, we were able to get some charges of substance rather than to simply displace the suspects,” he said.

Longtime residents say the problems in the neighborhood extend beyond crime statistics and the number of drug dealers on corners. There are also such nuisances as graffiti scrawled on the sides of their houses, strangers who sit on their front lawns, a parade of late-model BMWs, Volvos and even limousines that double-park to buy drugs and drug users who smoke crack behind their homes.

“It just keeps getting worse,” said James Johnson, who has lived in a house on Delaware Avenue for 28 years. Pointing to what he identified as a crack house across the street, he said, “First it makes me angry, then I get frustrated.”

The feeling appears to be widespread.

Children complain about being herded in at night and escorted to and from school each day. Some elderly residents say they rarely leave their homes at all. Others worry about the onset of Los Angeles-style violence.

“We want to be safe,” said Ed Bell, pastor of Mount Hermon Baptist Church and a driving force behind the neighborhood’s anti-crime push. “We want to establish a relationship with the city and the police before we end up like L.A.”

One of Bell’s responses to the crime problem has been to organize the neighborhood’s Community United Crime Fighters Assn., which has some 200 members. The organization meets in smaller groups administered by block captains, who in turn meet about once a month to discuss community concerns, Bell said.

According to census data, Pico is Santa Monica’s most ethnically diverse neighborhood. In 1990, the population of about 11,000 was 45% Latino, 30% Anglo, 18% African-American and 7% Asian.

The census showed a decline in the African-American population since 1980 and an increase in the number of Anglos, but it also showed that the neighborhood--a mix of houses, apartments and a recent influx of condominiums--was relatively stable.

Pico residents have long complained that the neighborhood, which lacks a supermarket and contains a majority of the city’s public housing units, is neglected in favor of the city’s tourist attractions and wealthier areas north of Wilshire Boulevard.

“Since it’s mostly a (minority neighborhood), you don’t find it is given the type of attention other areas get,” said Kerry Davidson, a physical education instructor at nearby Santa Monica College who lives in the same modest house he was born in 32 years ago.

“The city seems to feel that we should be happy to have a place to live in Santa Monica (and) that we have rent control,” Davidson said. “The only time they think about us is when they come looking for a place to put in more public housing units.”

Another resident, Matthew Millen, filed a lawsuit against the city two years ago that ended with the city, without admitting fault, agreeing to build no more than 30 low-income housing units in the area bounded by 14th and 20th streets and Pico and Olympic boulevards over the next five years.

“There are (low-income) units in my back yard, my front yard, two doors down,” Millen said, “but can you guess which neighborhood doesn’t have a library?”

Peggy Lyons, a member of the Santa Monica/Malibu Unified School District Board of Education and a 14-year resident of Pico, agreed that the neighborhood is often overlooked.

“I don’t feel either city administrators or the City Council as a whole is terribly responsive to this neighborhood,” Lyons said, pointing out that no council member has ever lived in Pico. “The problems here with crime and drugs and gangs are the same ones that are everywhere. It would require intensive work on the part of the city to change things.”

Councilman Tony Vazquez said one solution might lie in a jobs program that employed 15 Pico youths in city departments during the past summer and fall. He said he hopes the program will be expanded to provide 100 jobs in the coming year.

“Simply adding police officers ignores the real problem because you’re not addressing underlying causes,” Vazquez said. “The bottom line is to get young people jobs and give them something to look forward to.”