Orion St. Split on Gang Plan

NORTH HILLS â€”  Dora Orozco, a mother of three, walks her children to Langdon Avenue Elementary School every day, because she is scared to let them walk alone.

She worries most about her son, who will go to middle school next year.

“I have an 11-year-old; he could come himself,� Orozco said Tuesday, sitting in the schoolyard, which is separated from the street by an 8-foot-tall wire fence. “But I don’t let him come alone. I don’t like [gang members] to look at my son that way.�

She welcomes City Atty. James Hahn’s attempt to control the activities of what’s known as the Langdon Street gang. He is seeking an injunction against the gang and 31 alleged members that would bar them from associating in public, hanging out on private property, flagging down cars and using walkie-talkies.

Hahn also wants to impose a 9 p.m. curfew on the gang, which the city alleges has ties to the Mexican Mafia.

Like Orozco, mothers around Orion Street have the same goal--the best for their children. But their position on a possible court injunction against the Langdon Street gang depends on their children’s ages.

Mothers of young children praised the possible injunction, while those of older boys said they were against it.

The latter group wondered Tuesday why the city could scrape together enough money to seek legal action against gang members, but couldn’t find enough for a park, organized sports or job-training programs.

“Bring programs for the young people,� said Evelio Franco, the mother of eight children, ages 2 to 25. “We have 100 kids who want to play soccer, and they have nowhere to go. There is not one park in the area for them to play. If there is no money for kids, why do they have money for the gang injunction?�

Mothers of older children also worried that their sons--whether they are gang members or not--will be harassed by police.

“You don’t have to be a cholo,� Franco said. “You just have to have short hair or be Hispanic, and they will treat you like a criminal.�

Added parent Mercedes Aguilar: “I think it’s bad, really ugly. Those who are on the list--my son is on it--they are working, they are studying.�

When well-dressed city officials gathered Tuesday on an Orion Street lot to announce they are seeking the injunction, women peered from the upstairs windows of dilapidated apartment buildings nearby to watch the commotion.

The street--considered by police to be the heart of gang turf--looks like an area under siege. Just a block off the San Diego Freeway, the dull roar of traffic never dies on Orion Street. Law enforcement officials say easy freeway access makes the street ideal for drug sales and has transformed the area into the center of the rock-cocaine trade in the San Fernando Valley.

Graffiti coats the freeway walls behind apartment buildings. Tall fences surround every complex, and rings of razor coil wind along some of them. Trash is heaped in bins that look as if they have not been emptied in weeks.

People walk the streets, but mothers keep their young children close, holding their hands or pushing them in strollers or grocery carts.

“They never play in the street,� said Virginia Zamarripa in Spanish, clutching the hands of her children, Cecilia, 5, and Manuel, 4. “It’s dangerous. And [gang members] are a bad example for them.�

Authorities say the Langdon Street gang, which has been around for about 15 years, has been a serious problem in the North Hills neighborhood.

Two Times reporters who lived on Orion Street for several months in 1997 concluded that law-abiding residents were essentially prisoners in their homes, afraid to venture out or let their children outside for fear of the street gang, which ran a thriving open-air drug market.

Capt. John Egan of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Devonshire Division said there has been a 45% reduction in crimes such as murder, assault, robbery and burglary in the Langdon Avenue area from 1995 to 1998.

But LAPD Capt. Joseph Curreri said narcotics-related crimes have remained at a high level. The LAPD made 4,000 narcotics arrests last year in the Sepulveda corridor dominated by the gang. That is one-third of all narcotics arrests made in the Valley.

Law enforcement officials said the injunction was prompted by increasing gang violence, which they attribute in part to a street war with the Bryant Street gang.

The lawsuit against the Langdon Street gang includes areas on both sides of the San Diego Freeway, as far north as Tupper Street in one area, and as far south as Roscoe Boulevard in another.

A judge is scheduled to decide in a hearing next month whether to grant the injunction.

The lawsuit, which was filed Friday, is the second in the Valley. An injunction against the Blythe Street gang was approved in 1993 and is credited with helping to clean up and stabilize one of the Valley’s worst neighborhoods.