More SM police officers will be deployed in Pico
Santa Monica Police Department officials announced Tuesday they will deploy more officers to an east-side neighborhood, which experienced its fourth shooting of the year Monday night.
The shooting happened at about 10:30 p.m. Monday on the 1800 block of 17th Street. When officers arrived they found two vehicles that had sustained or had bullet holes in them, according to Lt. Frank Fabrega.
Nobody was injured in the gun fire and the incident is under investigation by police department detectives, who are still interviewing witnesses.
High-ranking police department officials met Tuesday about the recent spate of shootings in the Pico neighborhood and increasing the department’s presence in the neighborhood.
To protect the operation, police department officials declined to say how much it would increase its presence there or how many officers are currently based in the Pico neighborhood.
However, four officers and a sergeant are based out of the Virginia Avenue Park Police substation and beat officers routinely check through the Pico neighborhood with an over-lapping of patrols between 10 p.m. and 3 a.m.
“We want to deploy our officers to deter and arrest these suspects that are armed,” Fabrega said. “We want to be proactive rather than reactive.”
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.
Since January there have been four shootings in the Pico neighborhood, which runs south from the Santa Monica Freeway to Ocean Park Boulevard and east from Lincoln Boulevard to Centinela Avenue.
On Sunday four Hispanic men driving a dark-colored sport utility vehicle shot a black male in the lower torso who was bicycling along the 1900 block of Delaware Avenue. A teenager was shot twice in the head Feb. 11 on Virginia Avenue, near the Edison Elementary School located between Virigina Avenue and Kansas Avenue. The boy — whose identity is being withheld — was in stable condition at an area hospital earlier this week, 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 on a traffic stop. Officers stationed at 18th Street and Delaware reported being fired upon — the bullet hit a patrol car. No one was injured.
However, police do not consider any of the recent Pico neighborhood shootings gang-related, officials said.
Peter Tigler, president of the Pico Neighborhood Association, said the organization has been seeking more police presence for years, though some neighbors are split on the issue.
“But I guess I would say to those who don’t want more police, ‘there’s a lot of bullets flying around’,” he said. “Is that OK with you, because it’s sure not OK with me.”
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.
“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 recently. “They feel a lot of social advancement opportunities are being closed to them.”
Fabrega said the police department’s community relations office has been in contact with Pico residents requesting information on forming neighborhood watch groups.
Many of the groups already exist in the area, but police and some residents would like to heighten their presence. Residents requesting additional information on forming or joining neighborhood watches can call the police department’s community relations office at 458-8474.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 13, 2002. Read the original PDF.