Community Unites to Stop the Violence

By Erica Williams
Staff Writer

May 24 -- Rattled by three consecutive days of gunfire, residents of the Pico Neighborhood hastily assembled with community activists and school and City officials last week in a call-to-action to take back their community.

The more than 60 participants who attended the meeting organized by School Board member Oscar de la Torre sat across from each other in a wide but tight circle that filled the recreation room at Virginia Avenue Park Wednesday evening and engaged in an open discussion that was remarkable for its focus and relative lack of rancor.

Though the shootings last Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, and on May 9, did not result in injuries, residents, hardened by a rash of fatal incidents in recent years, resolved to nip this latest wave of violence in the bud before anyone gets hurt.

“We’re dealing with an ugly spirit here,” said Rick Mejia, a former gang member from Barrios Unidos in Venice, who recalled a rampage of gang violence in his neighborhood during the 1990s that left 17 people dead. “You have to tell this community, ‘We want peace.’”

“If you guys don’t put a stop to it it’s going to spread out,” Jimmy Bravo, also of Barrios Unidos, added. “You’re going to have to stand up for your community.”

And that’s just what Marizsa Bravo-Casillas, a resident on the 1800 block of 17th Street, has been trying to do ever since the first shooting on May 9.

Her family has been shaken by that nighttime shooting in which a stray bullet pierced the walls of her second-story apartment whizzing by her eight-year-old daughter’s head as she slept on a lower bunk bed.

Casillas, who described the incident in an emailed plea for action that rapidly circulated among parents and community groups and eventually got to school and City officials, asked, “Whose problem is this?

“It’s a community problem,” she answered at the meeting, “not just a certain neighborhood or race or age group’s problem.”

The 27-year-old mother of four, who has lived in her Community Corporation apartment building for four years, came armed with outsized photos magnifying her family’s frightening ordeal. She repeatedly pointed to the bullet hole in a crayon-lined wall of her children’s bedroom saying, “It’s at their levels.”

Leanna, who attends Edison Elementary, holds up her drawing with a bullet hole.

“Nobody wants to sleep in the room,” she said of her children’s anxious response to the shooting. “Nobody wants to sleep in the house.”

Casillas led others in the gathering in expressing deep frustration with a seeming lack of police response to the May 9 incident and the string of shootings that followed two weeks later. Most pointed to a lack of police presence on the streets despite the incidents.

Casillas related that over the past two weeks she has been trying to obtain an incident report from the police department that she could take to the Community Corporation to demonstrate why she wants to “get out” of her current apartment and into another building in a safer area.

“I can’t live like this,” echoed Anthony Goudeau, another resident of a Community Corporation building at 17th and Delaware.

“I don’t believe it’s going to stop,” he said as his wife clutched their active two-year-old daughter on her lap. “Whoever is involved in this wants to see death or blood.”

Mia, 5, points to the hole left by a bullet that pierced the bathroom wall in her family's unit May 9.

Casillas said she has been stymied at every turn by police, who told her as late as Wednesday that the case had not been assigned because “it wasn’t a high priority” -- there were no leads, no suspects and did not meet the threshold of being part of a number of incidents, she said police explained.

Police Sgt. Dave Thomas of the Pico sub-station tried to reassure Casillas.

“There needs to be justice for a bullet that came through your house and almost took your daughter’s life,” Thomas said. “I just want to commit to you that these people will be brought to justice.”

Meanwhile, Sgt. Joaquin Vega repeatedly implored the group to “trust us,” hinting at ongoing investigations.

Likely spurred by the community’s overall expression of frustration at the meeting, police, in a show of force, cracked down Thursday and Friday, arresting two suspects who were violating their probation and two others who were wanted on outstanding warrants.

“It is believed that these suspects are responsible for the four shootings,” said Lt. Frank Fabrega, the police department spokesman. “The motive of the shootings is gang-related at this time.”

Police have said they have stepped up patrols in the area, deploying additional uniformed, as well as plainclothes officers.

But some residents at the meeting expressed reservations about stepped-up police involvement. Salvador Sanchez, 20, a former gang member, credited the community with stopping a spree of violence several years ago that left four dead in four days.

“The community came together,” Sanchez said. “They didn’t use the police at all.”

“People like Oscar (de la Torre) and Big Mike gangbanged me,” he added. “They befriended us, they didn’t disrespect us. They kept coming around.”

“I’d rather take my chances with the gang members than the cops,” echoed Sebastian Cantero, an 18-year-old student at Samohi who said he is not a gang member but has friends who are. “I don’t want cops following me around. It makes me feel like I did something.”

Councilman Kevin McKeown said that while heightened police activity was necessary, you “can’t just call on police enforcement and make the good kids feel like they’re being targeted. It’s up to us in the community to make the few bad kids accountable.”

“Five years ago, I attended a funeral march after a gang shooting resulted in death,” McKeown said. “I don’t want to do that again.”

Melvon George, 24, a Santa Monica College student trustee who recalled being shot in a gang incident, said seeing police actively patrolling the neighborhood made a difference.

“We didn’t hang out when we saw police on the street,” George said. The question, he asked rhetorically, is: “Do you want the respect of the gangsters, or do you want your life?”

“You have to stay on them,” he added, of youth involved in gangs who typically roam the streets. Bravo of Barrios Unidos agreed, adding that older males in the community “are going to have to stand up and go out into the streets… to the hotspots.”

The group agreed that involving male role models has proven successful in the past and should be tried. A handful met briefly immediately following the meeting to make arrangements to hit the streets and talk to the youth.

George added that youth may also be “hanging out all day” because they are unaware of the many resources available to them. “The people that need it don’t know that it’s there,” he said. He recommended doing a better job of informing them.

Terry Lopez-Archuleta, a 35-year resident who lives on 17th and Michigan, pointed out that youth who have been incarcerated also need help. “We need resources when they come out, with no age limit.”

Many expressed concern that a rash of recent incidents at Samohi could have spilled out onto the streets, escalated and led to this week’s shootings, though police and district officials refrained from making a direct link.

“I was shocked at what I found out,” Casillas wrote in her email of hearing about fights in recent months at the high school campus, including the most recent in which “a large number of children were suspended.”

Associate Principal Mark Kelly detailed a number of incidents at the meeting and said the school was engaging the kids involved and their parents in “ongoing dialogue” to help resolve conflicts.

Rev. Felicia Bagneris, a recent transplant from Sylmar in the San Fernando Valley, said she is similarly shocked by the wave of violence in the neighborhood and on campus at Samohi where one of her three teens attends school.

“I thought I was coming here to paradise,” said Bagneris, a youth minister at the First AME Church by the Sea at 1823 Michigan Avenue. Bagneris said she moved from Sylmar to escape gang violence there.

Casillas also moved to Santa Monica from Inglewood “to come to a better neighborhood.” But now, she said, she’s finding it increasingly hard to tell the difference.

“I told my husband, ‘Why do we live in Santa Monica?’” she said. “I had to really think why I’m here. I’m thinking ‘God, coming to Santa Monica, I shouldn’t have to put up with this, not in Santa Monica.’”

Consuelo Perez, a resident of Pico for over 25 years, seemed undeterred by the recent crime wave. She said she wasn’t afraid for herself, but was concerned for her 10 and 17 year-old sons because “the innocents are the ones that get hurt,” she said.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Perez, added. “I think 10 years ago this community was worse (than it is now). It has improved a lot.”

By the end of the nearly three-hour conference the group resolved to meet again to plan a “Peace March” that could take place as soon as the following week.

Another community meeting is scheduled for Wednesday May 28 at 6:30 p.m. at Virginia Avenue Park.

Anyone with information about the shootings is encouraged to contact the Robbery/Homicide Unit of the Santa Monica Police Department at 310 458-8451 or the Watch Commander’s Office at 310 458-8426.