THE WAR FOR ST. JAMES PARK

[Photo: Patrick Tehan: Officer Janet Cusimano searches a man for
drugs in St. James Park. None were found and he was released.]

THE LITTLE BLOND looks like a sister from the Brady Bunch. Happily
riding her bike in St. James Park, she suddenly spots Cowboy and his
partner, John, across the green expanse.

Cowboy is sitting on a bench in the middle of the downtown San Jose
park, talking to a man who wants to score some dope. John, standing
nearby, turns to see the girl heading their way and mutters to himself,
''Here comes trouble. She loves us. She hates us. She loves to hate
us.''

''Hi Teresa,'' sing out Cowboy and John when she arrives, but the girl
barks directly at the doper, ''Hey man, don't be trying to buy no s-t
offa them. They'll f--- bust you!'' The doper doesn't get it-some foul-
mouthed Jan Brady, ratting out undercover cops from the seat of a
mountain bike? Whassup with this?

Fearlessly, the girl continues. ''These guys gonna bust your ass,
man!'' But the hapless doper again pleads with Cowboy to help him
scrape up one measly blunt.

''Go ask that guy,'' says Cowboy, pointing to another known addict in
the park. As the doper shuffles off, John explains that if enough needy
addicts get together, usually some kind of dealing results-and the oft-
present police are right there to make arrests.

Having blown the SJPD undercover cops' cover, Teresa looks triumphant.
Not too shabby for a minor who has lived on the streets of San Jose
since age 13 and has fallen so far into the cracks of the social
services system that she doesn't exist anymore. No one is looking for
her, not even the authorities. Her netherworld homes are dirty hovels
under bridges and secret squats around town. A few blocks from St.
James Park she gets anything she needs, thanks to Santa Clara County's
generous downtown help system.

''Cecil White, Georgia Travis, Salvation Army,'' says Teresa, ticking
off the names of places she can nab all the food, clothing and hot
showers she wants. ''And in a year, when I turn 18, I'll go on G.A. and
then I'll really be set.'' General assistance is a county-funded
program of aid for indigent people that pays up to $300 a month, a
fortune for Teresa.

Cowboy sarcastically thanks the girl for exposing them. Then both men
watch as she pedals around the park pointing out the undercover cops to
anyone who needs to know.

''Sweet kid,'' snarls John. ''Just a nice young girl having some fun.''

[Photo: A homeless man and his dog are among those who spend their days
in the park.] [Photo: "Sideshow," a park regular, hangs out near the
statue of President McKinley.]

Field Of Dreams

Teresa, Cowboy and John are soldiers on a battlefield called St. James
Park. There, seven days a week, a war is being waged for control of the
loveliest real estate in downtown San Jose-and the most infamous.

Rich with historical significance dating back more than a century, St.
James Park today is the antithesis of the Silicon Valley experience.
The gloriously green gathering place of homeless people, drug dealers,
drunks, addicts, prostitutes, the mentally challenged, undocumented
workers and runaways is the focus of a power struggle between the city,
anxious to reclaim the park and make it another shining example of the
valley boom, and the street people who have dominated it for decades.

''If Plaza de Cesar Chavez is the heart of downtown San Jose,''
rhapsodizes 3rd district councilwoman Cindy Chavez about the high-class
park near the Fairmont Hotel, ''then St. James Park must be the soul.''
While Chavez's view of the two parks in her district is a bit romantic,
what is more true is that St. James has long been a source of mystery
and outrage.

Any mention of St. James inspires longstanding questions: Who are those
people in the park? Are they dangerous? Crazy? Violent? Is the park
safe, or is it an illicit amphitheater of crime?

''A lot of homeless people hang out in the park, but many are homeless
by choice,'' says Sue Cam, an outspoken activist in the Horace Mann
neighborhood where the park is located. ''They stay there because
shelters ban anyone high on drugs and alcohol. Those people make the
park unsafe and I'm sick of it. I want my park back.''

Scott Knies, executive director of the Downtown Association, puts it
this way: ''St. James always had the potential to be our urban living
room, but remains our junky back porch.''

Such criticism has hardly put a dent in its appeal.

''I call it the field of dreams,'' says John, undercover in the park
for a few months. ''If you build it, they will come, for the drugs,
contacts, food and clothes. No wonder they never leave.''

The police do not gather crime stats for the park, but anecdotal
evidence backing its reputation as a mecca for drugs and other vices is
strong. Gordy Bowen, a sergeant with the SJPD's Metro Unit, which
dedicates lots of uniform, bicycle and undercover surveillance to the
troubled 7.6 acres, says that ''kids from all over the Bay Area know
about St. James Park. There are people who ride in on public
transportation, score or sell dope, and then ride back home. Young
people come to connect with other kids.''

Like the 13-year-old girl from Palo Alto who recently hooked up with an
older man. In a typical park pattern, he soon had her turning tricks
for money, drugs and protection.

''Her mother asked us to find her and we did and took her home and she
came right back,'' says Bowen. ''We took her home again and she came
back again. We took her again and we haven't seen her lately. I hope it
took.''

Whether the park is relatively innocent or a den of crime, everything
is about to change. The whirlwind that has enveloped Silicon Valley in
the past decade is about to touch down in St. James Park.

[Photo: A group of young people - Chris' crew - hang out in the park.]
[Photo: Morris Foster is one of the park's regulars.]

Unstoppable Changes

In recent decades, as downtown San Jose has undergone a revitalization,
city leaders have grown more impatient about the dingy denizens -dozens
on any given day-controlling such a fetching tract of land.

While politicians carefully ruminate about ''the homeless problem,''
Scott Wagers, of the radical Community Homeless Alliance Ministry, says
nothing will stand in the way of ''the economic apartheid of San
Jose.''

In 1985 the ''St. James Park Master Plan'' called for beautification of
the park. Plenty changed cosmetically, but never the regulars. Today,
the city has an extra million dollars it's itching to use on the park
inside a neighborhood that will be the next gentrified wonderland.

The 28-block Horace Mann neighborhood is slated for a spectacular $500
million makeover. It will be home to a new $22 million elementary
school, a $214 million civic center complex, and a $171 million mega-
facility that will include a library, parking ramp, housing complex and
banquet hall. There are two public/private housing projects-56 rental
units and 98 condominiums-rising on nearby Julian Street. Inside the
park, the venerable St. James Senior Center offers an amazing array of
recreational, cultural, and nutritional programs to active seniors.

An expanding dot-com presence has drawn so many new residents and their
kids downtown that attention to St. James, as a perfect piece of open
space, has grown exponentially.

That's why for months police activity and arrests have been on the rise
in the park. A number of concerts, civic picnics, night religious
services, rallies and sprucing-up parties have served as the-end-is-
near signal events to the park regulars.

But when it opens in January 2001, the $875,000 children's playground
being constructed by the San Jose Redevelopment Agency on the southeast
quadrant of St. James Park will do what nothing else ever could before.

''The playground will be a magic lever,'' says Cowboy, who is about to
finish his three-year assignment in St. James. ''All the crap that's
been going on down here will cease and desist in the name of child
endangerment.''

In short, say police, criminal activity near children will get zero
tolerance. And even criminals know that drug-related crimes, in
proximity to children, automatically carry ''enhanced'' sentences.
''Lots of people down here are upset,'' says Cowboy, ''but that's too
bad. Things, they are a-changing.''

Black And White

''They can't run us out of here,'' bellows Tina Mestaz. ''This park
belongs to us!'' The heavyset brown-skinned woman in a Spandex top
doesn't look anything like Teresa, the pale little street girl. But the
two of them, like people all over St. James Park, share one belief:
''This is our house,'' says Mestaz. ''This is where we live. They can
have the rest of the downtown, but St. James belongs to us.''

Morris Foster, a park regular, backs Mestaz with a story: ''Cops came
by one day and said, 'The new city hall is coming down here, which
means we ain't puttin' up with y'all hanging out in the park anymore.'
Now what kind of thing is that to say? This is still a public park, and
we are still protected by the Constitution.''

Foster and Mestaz are gathered in the southeast edge of St. James, on
what is known as ''the black side,'' because African-Americans
predominate on benches and the lawn. The talk here-where the ''tot
lot'' will be-is raw and riled-up. It's about ''racial profiling'' and
''constant police harassment'' and the police treating all blacks as
''gang bangers,'' ''crack dealers'' or ''dope fiends.''

''They use any excuse,'' says Foster, 41, ''to harass us, to give us
citations or to force us to leave the park.''

Meanwhile, over in the shade of the park's southwest corner, ''the
white side,'' a crew of homeless teens and twenty-somethings are also
cursing the escalation in police activity. Here everything is strictly
first names, nicknames, street names or no names. Paranoia is rampant,
and rightly so.

''That dude right there,'' says Chris of a man across First Street
walking to his car. ''Watch that sumbitch,'' he warns his pierced,
baggy-clothed, long-haired posse. When the man yanks binoculars to his
eyes, they explode.

''Bastards!'' shrieks Chris, ''Why the hell they spending taxpayers'
money out here spying on us? We ain't fighting and cutting and
shooting. We just chillin' in the park.''

And selling weed and crank. Nothing big, says Chris, just enough to get
by, enough to keep the faithful crew contentedly buzzed and preaching
the group's mantra: ''Weed is a natural herb. It's good for you.''

Chris knows exactly how much product is moving out of every side of the
park-except the black side, about which Chris knows nothing. Over
there, some say, is where they're selling hard stuff-crack and heroin.

On the black side they call that speculation pure ignorance. Here, they
say, the deadly sins flow from bottles and cans. ''There are good
people out here caught in a web of self pity,'' says Bernard Kitchens,
who spent many drunken years sitting in St. James. Now sober for two
years, Kitchens, 48, was stopping by to see old friends gathered to
fondly reminisce about Roy Stevens, a beloved homeless advocate who
died a few days earlier. ''Who numbs the pain or stitches up the heart
of a failed life?'' Kitchens asks poetically. ''Human beings do. This
park is filled with human beings who self-medicate with alcohol and
drugs.''

Tales From The Underworld

Back over on the white side, the ever-changing players include the
''Border Brothers,'' as Mexicans are called. The mix is made up of
strangers, runaways, violent felons, predators in search of young
stuff, homeless moms with kids and addicts-all with stories to tell.

A young man whose face is covered with crude self-applied tattoos calls
himself a degenerate crank addict and says he is HIV positive. Without
self-pity he growls, ''I'm looking forward to dying on the streets.'' A
woman who came to the park a few weeks back, because her teenage son
spent so much time there, has now become a regular groupie, though her
son is in jail. Another mother habitually dispatches her little son to
beg money from dealers like Chris. ''I hate children,'' he says as he
gives the nagging kid three bucks. A cross-dresser tells police that
he/she no longer is that crazy gay crack whore they knew 15 years ago.
''Back then I was a bad girl,'' he says, touching polished fingernails
to a 32-year-old face so aged and ravaged it speaks more poignantly
than words.

A raging, rapid-fire commentator on all subjects earned his name,
''Sideshow,'' by being the living embodiment of one. The 20-year-old
declares ''every single aspect of my life is totally wrapped up in the
pursuit of drugs. I'd like it to stop, but I don't think it ever
will.''

Lady, 18, a crank addict, entered the juvenile system at 13. Lady's
mother blew crack smoke up her daughter's nostrils when she was 4, and
gave her a line of cocaine at 10. Smart and comely enough to be a teen
queen, Lady is living on the streets with a scraggly dealer 10 years
her senior. ''The cops have used every possible means to run us out but
nothing has worked,'' says Lady. ''Now the city is using babies against
us,'' referring to the tot lot. ''That s-t sucks.''

War On Drugs

The police say that, according to their surveillance, drug dealing
rarely occurs on the black side. Some neighbors call that assertion
ridiculous.

''A drive-through for drugs'' is what Father Roberto Hernandez calls
the corner his Trinity Episcopal Cathedral shares with the black side.
He says drug dealing, prostitution and other agonies infect many
establishments circling the park. In August the body of a 37-year-old
park regular, who police say turned tricks for drugs, was found behind
the 139-year-old carpenter gothic sanctuary, dead from an overdose. The
coroner's office is still investigating the possibility that she was
beaten to death.

''We find used condoms, needles, syringes all over the place,'' says
the priest. ''One time a group of children was waiting in back for
Sunday school and below them, two people were having sex and they
didn't even stop.''

Jack Eltzroth, former assistant superintendent of the San Jose School
District, said a female church employee recently drove to work and
almost ran over a line of men in the church parking lot awaiting oral
sex from a woman servicing them for dollar bills. ''We have to keep
chasing them off,'' says Eltzroth, a church volunteer, ''and they
always act indignant.''

Church members' concern for homeless people is undercut by the criminal
element contaminating the mix, Hernandez says. Mornings he exchanges
cutting glares with young men he says are dealers, heading to the park.
He also blesses the foreheads of pious alcoholics and addicts who are
also going there. The tough clergyman got inches from the face of one
hopped-up gang banger and warned him to stay off church property or
else.

''They are always threatening us,'' Hernandez says. '' 'We will burn
the church down,' they say, or, 'We will kill you.' ''

Problems in the park can also be traced to workers from office
buildings cruising for drugs. A white man with a crew cut and wearing a
crisply ironed white shirt came inquiring on the black side and
appeared to be the world's most obvious undercover cop. Foster waved
him away, but said, ''That dude buys drugs all over this park, two or
three times a week.''

Whenever new drug customers enter the park, facilitators help them
connect. Facilitators also keep watch for cops, with high-pitched
whistling each time the bicycle officers slice through on patrol-which
these days is often.

Police say harder drugs, crack and heroin, are sold a couple of blocks
off the park at the major downtown light rail stop at 2nd and Fountain
Alley. The police work Fountain Alley aggressively, so facilitators
there get handsomely ''paid,'' with generous leftover scraps of drugs
dubbed ''kibbles and bits.''

In the park itself, the police are a constant presence. Cowboy and John
and other plainclothes officers hang out in every corner and cultivate
respectful, good-cop/bad-cop relationships with characters, both decent
and dangerous. Because of who passes through there, police say it's a
gold mine of intelligence on suspects in a wide variety of city and
county cases.

Though the police say they have nothing current on Foster and his
friends, many people in the park do have police records. Anyone on
parole or probation can be questioned or searched at the discretion of
police.

On the white side, regulars try to avoid the police. On the black side,
they confront them. Foster even challenges traffic stops around the
park as being a kind of racial profiling known as ''driving while
black.'' When a black motorist was stopped by uniformed officers,
cuffed, questioned and searched, Foster and his friends never stopped
ragging the police. After nearly an hour, the man was released with a
ticket for ''a bad tail light.'' The officers said the search was done
because the man was on probation and had prior drug offenses.

On another occasion, a plainclothes officer flatly asked Foster if he
was a drug dealer. ''Are you asking me that because I've got one of
these?'' said a livid Foster, pulling out a wad of cash. The cop was
miffed because a taunting Foster had loudly identified an undercover
vehicle after it drove past the park only once.

''I'm not a dealer,'' growls Foster, ''but if I was, they couldn't
catch me because they're too damned stupid.'' But when no one is
around, Foster's voice goes soft. The real injustice with the
increasing police activity in the park, he says, ''is they're being
extra hard on people whose lives are already hard enough.''

When Darkness Falls

The hard lives are loosely collected on the corners-blacks, whites and
Latinos of all ages in three of them, and in the fourth, where the
senior center sits, the old, sick and broken are outdoors nodding off
or howling at demons.

Along the west edge and down the center of the park runs the light
rail. Riders flock to and from the trains, but many steer clear of
entering the park, not knowing what to make of all the congregants,
waking or sleeping-no pillows, no blankets. To the dispossessed in the
park, it is their very own place of rest.

Some there are ''working homeless,'' people who simply can't earn
enough to meet the crushing housing costs of the South Bay. To them the
park is a daylight oasis. But as night falls, and the park legally
becomes off-limits, anyone without a home begins to trek. Some head to
shelters or flophouse motels-if they're lucky. Many more begin a
diaspora of desperation to doorways, cardboard boxes and concrete caves
inside overpasses all over town. They live in violent, filthy creekside
colonies called ''jungles,'' where drug overdoses, assaults, robberies,
rapes and even murder are daily risks.

''I hate sticking my head up inside a soffit where some homeless guy,
on a three-day high, is paranoid out of his mind, and tries to cut my
head off,'' says Cowboy of the long, dark, narrow spaces inside freeway
structures that are favored by the homeless. Each one is secured by
overhead steel trap doors that are padlocked. CalTrans workers enter
them to inspect for earthquake damage. Homeless people break the locks
and live like beetles inside the black caverns, invisible to the
millions of drivers rolling a few feet overhead. They are prime places
for ferreting out suspects on the run. Sometimes they are the final
resting places.

Some park people search out abandoned buildings known as ''squats.''
Teresa, a ward of the state since age 5, when her mother could no
longer take care of her, said, ''Cowboy and John been trying to find my
new squat, but I ain't telling nobody where it's at.'' She would say
only that it was an empty house in San Jose.

One couple recently squatted for weeks inside Hamburger Mary's, a
deserted restaurant on San Pedro Square. ''I like my houses quiet,''
said the boyfriend, sounding like a suburbanite. ''I get home after a
hard day in St. James Park, I want to smoke a joint, drink a beer, have
sex with my lady and get some peace and quiet. I don't want people
attacking me in the middle of the night.'' But it was during daylight
hours when the girlfriend was discovered there by two businessmen
connected to the property. They angrily drove her into the streets. Now
the place is surrounded by a new security fence.

Mestaz, a former crank addict, is kicking the habit in an attempt to
retrieve her five kids from the child welfare system. She usually stays
in cheap motel rooms with boyfriends, but sometimes that doesn't work
out.

''Last night I rode the bus all night long, back and forth between San
Jose and Palo Alto,'' she said of the well-known 22 line, packed
nightly with homeless passengers. ''I was miserable, but at least I
wasn't cold.''

Helping Hands

St. James Park is homeless central partially because it's within
walking distance of dozens of helping agencies. Showers, food,
clothing, job referrals, computer training, medical services,
transportation, mail drops and even voice mail for those seeking
employment are available. Drug, alcohol and psychiatric counseling are
also there for the taking. Best of all, there's no quibbling about who
gets help.

''They drive up steering shopping carts or BMWs,'' says Anne Ehresman,
director of outreach at First United Methodist Church, a program a few
blocks from the park. ''Everyone gets dignity and respect.''

Which is why a bulletin board at First United Methodist brags that
''Vicki,'' who had ''seven felony convictions,'' recently landed a
$43,000 job with stock options. But at the same moment, a man who came
for lunch was crawling in a drunken stupor on the sidewalk outside, his
pants halfway down his naked rear.

Always a focal point for substance abuse counselors, homeless
coordinators, youth ministers, even social science majors at nearby
universities, St. James remains a place where churches and charity
groups-many from the suburbs-regularly bring food and clothing as a
form of liturgical outreach.

These charity efforts are controversial. ''I believe those people want
to make the world a better place,'' says Councilwoman Chavez. ''But
then trash cans in the park are left overflowing and clothes are strewn
around, conditions those people would not tolerate in their own
communities. Plus it's disrespectful to feed people and then just drive
away.''

''This place tries to be a sanctuary,'' says Ehresman, of First United,
''but if my guys are drunk and urinating on my building, I will call
the police. While I believe we should help anyone who wants it,
everyone needs to be held accountable.''

And accountability, she and others say, is what needs to happen at St.
James Park. ''I walk through there and people will be calling out my
name, saying hello like they love me,'' says Ehresman, ''and yet I
would never take my child there.''

Exodus

Soon, however, when the long-controversial park transforms into a place
where Ehresman and others will flock with kids, what will be the
resulting price? Social service agencies fear traumatic alienation to
those who are innocently homeless. Politicians have nightmares about
downtown businesses and streets invaded by endless armies of shabby
panhandlers and street criminals with no place else to go during
daylight hours.

In an attempt to head off such scenarios, Councilwoman Chavez is
leading an unprecedented teaming of agencies, volunteers, churches and
charities-including the suburban drive-by agencies-in a kind of super
civic, unified effort of tender, loving care. At an inspirational
dinner meeting inside St. James Senior Center in mid-August, Chavez
masterfully corralled more than 40 community leaders-from homeless
advocates to the police-to discuss their differences and to solemnly
pledge to do whatever will be necessary to ease the lives of the people
affected by change in the park.

''When I think of the future St. James Park, it is not without the
homeless people,'' Chavez says solemnly. ''The question is how to have
a safe environment for the homeless, and for families and children and
anyone who comes there. Our challenge is to raise the expectation for
what the quality of life should be in that park, now and in the
future.''

Over in the park, however, Chris has his own thought.

''They always wanted to sweep us out of St. James park, and now it
looks like they're going to do it,'' he says, eyes glowing as fiercely
as the hot tip of his cigarette. ''But when it's all over, we are going
to be somewhere. They used to know where. Now . . . they won't.''