Man shot in torso is latest incident in gang turf war plaguing Pico neighborhood
Four Hispanic men driving a dark-colored sport utility vehicle shot a black male bicycling in the Pico neighborhood Sunday, police said.
After he was shot in the lower torso, the victim rode his bike south half a block to the 1900 block of 19th Street where police found him. The victim, whose identity and age has not been released by the police department, was then taken to an area hospital by para-medics where he was listed in stable condition, according to police officials.
The shooting occurred on the 1900 block of Delaware Avenue at 1:10 p.m., according to a police department press release.
The neighborhood surrounding Delaware Avenue has been engulfed in a turf war between two gangs — the Graveyard Crips and the Santa Monica 17th Street gang — for years. And the tension appears to be not only racially motivated between the two groups — one black, the other Latino — but also drug-related.
Drug dealing on street corners along Delaware Avenue has a been a problem for years, according to residents. Most of it is cocaine dealt out of homes and apartments on 17th Street and Delaware, residents said.
One 19th Street resident named Nancy, who refused to give her last name, was walking back from church when she saw the man laying down across the street from where she lives.
“After he got shot he rode his bike up here, I guess about as far as he could, and asked somebody to take him to the hospital,” she said. “But by that time I guess somebody had already called the police because they were there before they could take him.”
Nancy said the residents of the neighborhood aren’t the ones doing the shooting.
“When these things happen, it’s not folks from this block,” she said. “We’re all seniors living here, or people that are ill. So we’re not the ones out here causing all this trouble.”
Residents on 19th Street said they would like to see more police patrols in their neighborhood. They said that would act as a deterrent to drug and gang related crimes.
Oscar de la Torre, director of the newly opened Pico Youth and Family Center, said a stronger police presence is not necessarily the answer to the neighborhood’s crime problems.
He said Pico is already the only neighborhood with a police substation to bring the police department and officers assigned to the area closer to the community.
“A lot of it is related to gangs but I attribute this youth violence that we have been experiencing to hopelessness and despair and the lack of stable income for our young people,” de la Torre said. “They feel a lot of social advancement opportunities are being closed to them.”
Sunday’s shooting is only the latest in a string of shootings this year in the Pico neighborhood — an area that covers about eight square blocks just north of the Santa Monica Freeway to Pico Boulevard, and east to the city limits.
A teenager was shot twice in the head Feb. 11 on Virginia Avenue, near the Edison Elementary School in the Pico neighborhood. The boy — who’s identity is being withheld — remains in stable condition at an area hospital, police and residents said.
On Jan. 25 police locked down a portion of the neighborhood after a driver tried to evade police when officers tried to pull the vehicle over for a traffic violation. Officers stationed at 18th Street and Delaware reported being fired upon — the bullet hit a patrol car.
Police do not consider any of the recent Pico neighborhood shootings gang-related, officials said.
“What we need is more security,” said Nancy, as she watered her rose bushes in front of her tidy-looking one-story home on Monday. “Not just when things are happening but all the time.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 12, 2002. Read the original PDF.