City to Seek Ban of Gangs on Blythe Street : Panorama City: L.A. officials see a restraining order as a powerful first step toward driving out cocaine dealers.

Responding to the shooting death of a popular landlord, Los Angeles police and city officials vowed Monday to reclaim Blythe Street from an armed gang of cocaine dealers, saying the city will ask for a court order allowing police to arrest gang members for otherwise legal activities.

Police conceded to a group of residents and landlords from the Panorama City street that “we have let you down” in failing to protect them from a gang of about 100 drug dealers, as reflected by the death of building owner Donald Aragon.

Deputy Police Chief Mark Kroeker told the group that Aragon’s death Oct. 31 in a shootout with gang members is the inspiration for a multi-pronged effort to make the strip of crowded apartment buildings just west of Van Nuys Boulevard “a place that is safe, a place that is sound in terms of its economic future and a place that is home.”

The most powerful weapon for achieving that goal would be a restraining order the city attorney’s office plans to seek from a Superior Court judge.

The order would give police broad authority to arrest gang members virtually on sight on the troubled block. The unusual order, to be modeled after one issued last month by a Burbank judge against a gang on Elmwood Avenue, would allow police to arrest gang members for a variety of otherwise legal activities, including merely hanging out together.

“The injunction is not going to solve the problem, but it’s an extremely powerful beginning,” said Deputy City Atty. Robert A. Ferber.

Ferber said the only other time such an order has been sought in Los Angeles was in 1987 in a 26-square block Westside neighborhood near Cadillac Avenue and Corning Street.

Warren H. Deering, the Superior Court judge asked to issue that order, said in a preliminary ruling at the time that the city’s request violated basic constitutional liberties. Ferber said, however, that merely seeking the order was enough to cause the gang members to disappear from the area.

But he said he did not think the Blythe Street gang would leave so easily. “This is a tough, well-entrenched gang here,” Ferber said.

In announcing the new steps to be taken against the 100 or so youths who claim the street as their home turf, police acknowledged that their past efforts have been inadequate.

“You have a right to be angry,” Detective Wayne Dufort, who works with the Police Department’s anti-gang CRASH unit in Van Nuys, told the group.

“We have let you down.”

In the department’s defense, however, he said city residents have failed to pay for enough police officers to keep up with a growing crime problem.

In response to skepticism from apartment owners who said they asked police two years ago to mount an offensive against the gang, Dufort said, “We’re . . . getting down on our knees and begging everybody to trust us” to back up rhetoric with action this time.

In addition to the injunction, the Van Nuys Division commander, Capt. John Moran, said he has put together a policing plan that includes additional foot patrols as well as a coordinated effort by narcotics and gang officers. The task force also will make arrests on outstanding warrants and will team up with the Probation Department to crack down on parole violations.

The FBI’s gang task force also will be part of the team.

“We are going to have a . . . real structured, guided, coordinated effort aimed at one thing--the elimination of what’s going on here on this street,” Moran said.

He also vowed that Aragon’s killing would be solved.

When a group of at least a dozen gang members demanded that he give them his truck, Aragon opened fire, shooting two of them before they killed him. One alleged assailant died and the other was wounded and is in custody on a murder charge. But at least 10 other suspects are being sought, police said.

Apartment owners welcomed the police promise of action but some remained unpersuaded.

“We took a stand a year ago on this street . . . but you people didn’t stand with us,” Brian Zimmerman, a member of a partnership that owns three buildings on the block, told police.

“We’re sitting here and saying this is very good, and is something that should be done, but when exactly are you going to give us our street back?”

Another building owner, however, reacted positively to the promise to make the street safe again. “We’ve been given commitments in the past, but they’ve never been given as forcefully or as clearly or from such a high level in the Police Department,” said Richard Silliman.

In addition to the extra police efforts on the street, an “impact team” comprising representatives from about 20 mostly city agencies is being formed. The agencies include the Police Department as well as those dealing with gangs, housing, building codes, recreation and employment.

If police manage to eliminate the gang from the street, the “impact team” will be able to effectively address the wide range of other poverty-related social ills that afflict the block’s approximately 4,000 residents, team members said.

City Councilman Ernani Bernardi, who represents Blythe Street, is the force behind the impact team. David Mays, Bernardi’s chief deputy, vowed at Monday’s meeting to “renew our war on Blythe Street” in Aragon’s memory.