A Troubled Street, Even if It’s Tree-Lined

Most everyone agrees there’s been a change on Fickett Street, a rough stretch of Boyle Heights notorious for drug trafficking, prostitution and gang shootings.

Apartments are freshly painted. New lampposts illuminate the dim alleys. The dirt strips along the sidewalks have been filled in with bricks. Small, newly planted trees line the street. The police patrol nightly and the sound of gunfire echoes less frequently.

So why, then, do most people remain sequestered inside, leaving the streets deserted? Why are some residents afraid to attend the neighborhood meetings held at a local library a few blocks away? Why do neighbors feel that, in many ways, the area really hasn’t changed--and fear it never will?

The answers expose the limitations of the oft-quoted “broken windows” theory, which claims that tackling neighborhood deterioration prevents crime. They also serve as a cautionary tale about Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan’s philosophy of revitalizing L.A.’s depressed communities, one that many other American cities have embraced.

The concept is rooted in a 1982 Atlantic Monthly article by political scientist James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling. They argued that common disorders such as broken windows and potholes are critical signals: They tell criminals that the community does not care, encouraging more serious crime. Tackling such urban decay, the theory holds, is crucial to making neighborhoods safer.

In recent years, many police departments have incorporated this thinking into a proactive law enforcement strategy known as community policing. Riordan repeatedly quotes the essay when talking about transforming blighted neighborhoods.

It was in that spirit two years ago that city officials selected the 14-block Fickett corridor as one of 12 Los Angeles areas that each received $3 million in federal funding and extra city services as part of Riordan’s Targeted Neighborhood Initiative, an effort to jump-start revitalization in run-down areas.

Planners said the program would empower residents to take control of their neighborhoods by improving public works and bolstering a sense of “community ownership.”

But as the effort heads into its third year, Fickett Street is still struggling to pull out of a mire of violence and poverty that has left residents feeling besieged and apathetic. The neighborhood’s brighter outward appearance has failed to convince them that they have the ability to yank out the twisted roots of gangs and poverty gripping their community.

“They’re making improvements on the houses and the streets, but that doesn’t do anything about the people shooting at each other,” said Monica Garcia, 19, whose husband Cesar was shot and killed on Fickett last August.

To many, Fickett Street shows where the “broken windows” theory breaks down: It appears better tailored to neighborhoods in transition--on the edge of failing--than neighborhoods like this one, which deteriorated long ago.

Drug Deals and Gang Gunfire

During the day, life seems calm among the rows of rambling old Craftsman-style houses and small stucco bungalows along Fickett. Birds hang in cages in front of bright lemon- and lime-colored homes. The air is perfumed with the smell of orange blossoms, laundry flaps from lines in the yards, roosters crow.

But chain-link fences encircle most of the houses and iron bars cover the windows. Darkness ushers in a violence that has corroded this community. Transients wander the alleys, drug deals go down in cars idling on the streets, bullets fly between rival gang members.

The Fickett corridor, home to about 6,000 people, remains one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the LAPD’s Hollenbeck division, with 90 violent crimes reported last year, including three homicides.

The area, only a few blocks from the Golden State Freeway, is a prime location for people looking to score drugs. Its heavy proportion of renters creates high turnover and instability. Three liquor stores within seven blocks attract unruly crowds that hang out on the corners.

Under Riordan’s initiative, almost a dozen city agencies have dedicated extra time to tackle problems in the neighborhood. Last year, the Department of Building and Safety issued property owners almost 500 orders to correct building code violations. The city attorney’s office cracked down on prostitution, filing 76 solicitation cases. Animal Services picked up 56 stray dogs wandering the streets. Public Works repaired potholes and painted over graffiti.

“I think this is the model for how you’re going to turn neighborhoods around,” Riordan said in a recent interview. “If your community looks good and feels good, your community will feel safer. By working together, you will get closer to your neighbors and police. . . . I think it becomes a catalyst.”

He acknowledged that the program alone would not reverse Fickett Street’s decline. “But without it, the problems would be much bigger,” he said.

“The whole idea is that neighborhoods have to take control of themselves. If they’re expecting government to solve their problems, they’re going to wait for eternity.”

Elsa Casillas, a community organizer with the East Los Angeles Community Corp., which is working on the Fickett Street project, sees a neighborhood paralyzed by fear.

Some residents worry that gang members will retaliate if the community improvements interrupt their drug trade; others fear drawing attention to themselves. Many are afraid to come to meetings or sign petitions. “A lot of people forget these are communities under siege,” she said.

Sylvia Tamayo, 58, is the only one on her block who attends the monthly gatherings in the Malabar Library at the north end of the neighborhood. She dismisses the danger. (“I’m not afraid of them. When my time comes, I’ll go.”) But she, too, feels trapped by the violence.

At one of the first meetings, Tamayo spoke up and said she often saw a suspicious man parked near her house, drawing a large crowd of youths. Later, a neighbor told her that a gang member heard what she reported and threatened to burn Tamayo’s house down.

“Now I don’t say anything at the meetings,” Tamayo said. “If I see something to report, I call the police. When neighbors talk about things, I pretend I know nothing.”

Since she and her husband moved with their four children into their small stucco house 13 years ago, they’ve had a front-row view of the violence.

One evening last summer, she was coming out of the corner store and a car drove by, a volley of shots bursting from the window. The bullets zipped so close, she said, that she felt the wind in her ear. This fall, a 2 a.m. shooting between rival gang members in front of her house left her husband’s truck riddled with shots. Two bullets lodged in the concrete wall in front of her house.

“My kids are traumatized from it,” Tamayo said. “They always wanted to leave. What would happen if they walked outside one day and a bullet hit them? I want to live anywhere else that doesn’t have this.”

The family tried to move three years ago, but potential home buyers saw the neglected area and fled. Now, they’re trying again. Their home has been on the market for six months with no takers.

“It’s calm right now because the police are here,” she said. “But once they leave, the crime will continue. . . . Planting new trees doesn’t change anything.”

Local gang members agree.

“If it was as easy as snapping our fingers to get out of the violence, I would go for it,” said Bam Bam, an 18-year-old gang member. “But if you live in the neighborhood, you can’t stop. If they [rival gang members] come shooting at us, we’re going to shoot at them.”

Observations like that underscore the difference between tackling the effects of poverty and getting at its causes. “Undoing the isolation of a neighborhood is very complicated, and there are many things you have to work on at the same time,” said Lisbeth Schorr, director of the Harvard Project on Effective Interventions, which studies neighborhood revitalization efforts. “The problems you’re dealing with have been in the making for decades. In order to deal with them, you really have to turn around not individuals, but whole systems,” like schools, generations of gang activity and poverty.

Citizens Fear Speaking Up

John Pedroza sounded frustrated. The LAPD’s senior lead officer for the Fickett area faced a group of about 30 residents gathered in the small, wood-beamed Malabar Library for their monthly neighborhood meeting, his words reproachful.

“I’ve come to many meetings where everyone is saying the police this, the police that. Then how many calls do I get? Zero.”

Now a new strike force was starting extra night patrols in the neighborhood, he announced.

“I need your help. If you don’t call, this special unit will go somewhere else.”

Hands shot up. One man said he heard shooting and told officers, but no one responded. Why do the officers always take so long? asked a woman.

“You have to understand the number of gunshot calls we get,” Pedroza said. “Call me, as well, when you have something to report.”

He issued a plea for volunteers to start a neighborhood watch or be a block captain. People stirred in their seats, but no one responded. He wrote his number on a white board at the front of the room.

Later, Pedroza, a 15-year-veteran of the Hollenbeck division, said he understood the residents’ reluctance, and echoed their concern that violence would rise as soon as the extra patrols left.

“They’re afraid,” he said, cruising through Fickett in his patrol car one afternoon. “They see us take [gang members] in, and then they’re out the next day. . . . But I put it on them to be accountable. It’s their neighborhood, not mine. I’m there to assist them.”

The influx of city improvement funds is “a gallant attempt,” he said. “But if they don’t get the cooperation from the residents, the program will go elsewhere.”

Windows Not High on Priority List

One clear disparity between Riordan’s vision and the reality of Fickett Street is that residents are far more concerned with the immediate specter of gangs than the notion that fixing broken windows will indirectly quell the violence.

A list the residents made last month of their top priorities for City Council candidates read: “Remove gangs, more policing day and night, more youth services.”

The neighborhood improvement project’s biggest event so far was a Peace Posada in December. The march attracted about 800 residents who walked down Fickett Street holding candles and banners pleading for peace among the youth.

Manuel Luquin, a 37-year-old textile company salesman who regularly attends the community meetings, took advantage of the program by applying for a no-interest home loan to repaint and re-roof his Mott Street home. He’s happy with the rehabilitation, but remains doubtful about long-term change. Worried about the shootings, he and his wife still keep their two sons inside at night.

“It looks better in the neighborhood,” he said. “But that’s not going to stop the violence, the drugs. We need to take the boys off the corner. We can’t do that with this project.”

Harvard’s Schorr said such distinctions are crucial.

“If you want to organize a neighborhood, you’d better start with the thing they feel most strongly about,” she said. “If you say, ‘We’re going to put in a stop sign,’ and nobody there feels it is the biggest problem, then it’s going to fall flat.”

And so Fickett’s organizers face a tough challenge: Use the bricklaying and tree-planting to make residents more “invested” in the community. That, in turn, will help overcome their fear and create leaders in the neighborhood, says organizer Casillas. “Then you can tackle those more systematic issues that create gangs.”

For Casillas, who does community organizing in four Boyle Heights neighborhoods, Fickett Street has been one of the toughest areas to mobilize. “It’s going to take far longer than three years to transform the neighborhood and develop the leadership capacity.”

City officials working on the project nonetheless express optimism. Crime dropped 40% during the last month with the increased police patrols, they said. In the next few months, all the streets will be repaved. In the next year, the aging local Boys and Girls Club will be renovated, and a new day-care and community center will open. Organizers hope to get residents to paint murals in the area, and find jobs for local youths.

“By the end of the [program], we’ll have a self-sufficient community group,” said Phil Orozco, a project coordinator with the Housing Department who is heading the effort in Boyle Heights. “After a while of working together, they will say, ‘We will not take living in fear anymore.’ ”

Like many other residents, Monica Garcia, who lost her husband here, isn’t convinced it will happen.

When she was 10, her mother got hooked on crack cocaine and drifted out onto the streets. By age 15, Monica was pregnant. At 19, she was widowed. Her husband of a few months was gunned down as he walked down the street with a friend affiliated with the local gang.

Desperate to get away from Fickett, she moved last fall to a small apartment in East Los Angeles with her 4-year-old daughter and her two sisters, ages 10 and 11.

She goes back to Fickett Street every week to visit her grandmother. Sometimes she runs into her mother on the streets. They don’t talk. Sometimes she passes the corner where her husband was shot. She tries not to look.

“It’s an ugly place,” she said. “I’m glad they’re doing something to try to fix it up. But I don’t think it will ever change.”