Gangs steer clear of park

By Tony Castro, Daily News Staff Writer
Updated: 02/09/2009 02:08:49 AM PST

It’s a tale of two gang turfs.

Lanark Park in Canoga Park and Van Nuys Sherman Oaks Memorial Park share an unfortunate distinction: Each has played host to some of the San Fernando Valley’s most feared street gangs.

But today Lanark Park is back in neighborhood hands, with mothers pushing babies in strollers, kids playing on the ball fields and a swimming pool where no one fears threats or intimidation.

But gang members still roam Memorial Park, a neighborhood center for drug dealing and other crimes.

Last year, gang crimes committed by Canoga Park Alabama, the area’s toughest gang, fell 48 percent while crimes carried out by Van Nuys Barrios climbed 50 percent. The numbers were released late last month when Police Chief William Bratton and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced the city’s latest gang-fighting strategies.

Police are hesitant to credit an injunction against Canoga Park Alabama for single-handedly lowering the crime rate there. Among other things, court-ordered injunctions limit gang members’ freedom of movement and often ban them from meeting in public.

Still, police acknowledge the Canoga Park Alabama injunction has helped make the area feel more like a neighborhood again.

“Lanark Park is a much more vibrant park – a lot safer – than it was five years ago,” says LAPD Deputy Chief Michel Moore, the San Fernando Valley’s top cop.

Lori Broyer, a disabled 42-year-old former security guard, has seen the change firsthand.

Almost any night of the week – and sometimes well after midnight – you’re likely to find Broyer walking her two service dogs in Lanark Park across the street from her home without any worries of danger.

“And to think that there was a time when you wouldn’t dare walk into this park even in broad daylight,” said Broyer. She said she knows Van Nuys and Sherman Oaks dog owners who say they would never think about walking their pets in Memorial Park after dark.

“There used to be fights and drug deals going down all the time (at Lanark Park),” Broyer said. “It was gang territory.”

That was when the Canoga Park Alabama gang all but owned Lanark Park, and you wandered into the recreation areas at your own risk.

Then law enforcement authorities, using a court injunction against the gang and other anti-gang measures, dramatically reduced crime.

But Moore and some gang experts caution that the figures pointing to a decline in gang crime at one end of the Valley and a rise in the other paint only a partial picture of the police’s gang-fighting campaign. Overall, they say, gang crime in the Valley is definitely down.

The permanent injunction bans Canoga Park Alabama and its members from associating in public with one another and provides police officers with a greater ability to enforce the law.

“Here at (Lanark) Park, any time police see even two of three (suspected gang members) hanging around together, they break them up,” Broyer said. “It used to not be that way.”

According to City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo, a Los Angeles grand jury report concluded that gang injunctions have cut crime from 7 percent to 50 percent, depending on the injunction.

“I’ve always believed that gang injunctions can be an effective tool in reducing crime,” said Delgadillo, “and the Canoga Park Alabama injunction has had an impact in the Canoga Park neighborhood.”

Law enforcement officials hesitate to say that an injunction is the next step in the policing war against Barrios Van Nuys, and they argue that injunctions are just one part of a multiprong fight against gang crime.

“We’ve had five injunctions against gangs in the Valley,” Moore said. “They have helped and assisted in reducing gang crime. However, none has eliminated gang crime.”

But law enforcement officials acknowledge that Memorial Park is today where Lanark Park was just a few years ago: snared in the grip of gang terror.

“All you have to do is see how safe (Lanark) Park is, and go over to Van Nuys and see how terrible and unsafe it is,” Broyer said.

On any given day, Memorial Park almost resembles a ghost town. The few people still hanging around with their dogs are suspicious about anyone approaching them, especially a reporter.

“They say gang crime is down,” said one dog-walker. “But if gang crime is down, why does it seem like they run the show.

“All you have to do is look at the graffiti.”

There’s barely a trace of Canoga Park Alabama graffiti in the neighborhood, while the Barrios Van Nuys leave their mark everywhere.

“You see graffiti of the (Barrios Van Nuys) up on almost every block,” said Bruce Riordan, director of anti-gang operations for the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office. “That gang has an identity and signature (of crime) all the way up to serious felonies.”

Meanwhile, Broyer is looking forward to many more nights of uninterrupted dog walking.

“I’m a believer in gang injunctions,” said Broyer on one of her nightly strolls with Tye and Teddy. “Whatever it takes to handcuff the gangs.”