POLICE TRY, BUT GANGS THRIVE

Arrests And Crackdowns Seem To Have Little Effect On Wily Street `Families'

Flashing cash, spiky "500 Block" tattoos, Stanford baseball caps and the
hint of handguns in their sweatshirt pockets, the new generation shouts out
in Spanglish that this is their street now, this dusty dead-end destination
that has no sign, needs none, to announce itself.

The 500 block of Sacramento Street is about 75 yards of rutted asphalt, two
lines of working-class homes, some graffiti, some flowerpots and a small
drug gang with one of the Peninsula's most bloody and incorrigible criminal
pedigrees.

They are the scourge of East Palo Alto, a city that's working hard to put
its hardscrabble past behind it and build a safe community. City leaders
openly acknowledge that East Palo Alto's future depends on whether it can
tame and transform Sac Street and the other gangs scattered around the city.

Ten years of crackdowns by police -- headquartered just three blocks away
- -- haven't driven crime off the road. The Sac Street gang has survived,
even prospered. Its stubborn endurance illustrates why all the raids, laws
and even Proposition 21's lock-em-up mandate, passed by California voters
last fall, have not dissolved street gangs here or in many other cities.

From San Jose, which has about 40 gangs, to San Francisco, which has
hundreds, communities are struggling with the underground war on their
streets. Law enforcement and social services agencies have created task
forces, youth diversion programs and special schools. Police have developed
intelligence about the gangs and target them when they go awry.

But the gangs persist.

Repeated police raids have reduced the number of dead bodies and the
bullets flying on East Palo Alto's Sacramento Street. But for the Sac
Street set itself, the only major difference police crackdowns have made is
that there are younger faces than there were a decade ago.

Their routine remains the same. Slowly at first in the hot dusty
afternoons, but then picking up when streetlights glower, cars pull
judiciously onto the street and coast toward the night shade of some dusty
eucalyptus trees. If it is a car they know, the boys amble up to the window
while another runs to get whatever is needed -- white or green -- cocaine
or marijuana. If it isn't, someone hoots and another puts a flashlight on
the driver's face, and some of the boys automatically put their hands in
their pockets.

If it's a police car, the street clears. In less than five seconds
Sacramento Street transforms into a residential Californian cul-de-sac with
the sound of a Mexican TV channel and a baby crying.

As soon as the black-and-white exits, returning into the stream of traffic
on University Avenue, the knot of guys reassembles, throwing Corona empties
and curses after the taillights.

"This ain't no gang, there isn't any Sac Street gang, it ain't like that,"
said one 16-year-old, called "S" here because he didn't want his named
published. S had a thick gold rope around his neck and eyes that pretended
they weren't working hard.

"This is family," he said.

But law enforcement officers approach this particular "family" with guns
and bulletproof vests.

Local police, a task force and now a highly trained special force from the
San Mateo County Sheriff's Department have targeted Sac Street, which has
about 25 members. Police have hidden in bushes, listening; talked to them;
and swept down the street photographing the gang members, cataloging their
tattoos and red-and-black colors, making parole arrests.

Arrests don't stop the trouble

There have been dozens of arrests. In 1995, Mexican police finally busted
the legendary Bernardo Chacon, a Sac Street leader and cop killer who once
shot an 18-month-old and her father while trying to hit a rival gang
member. And as a result of Chacon's removal, murders and other violent
crime have been dramatically reduced, here and throughout the city.

Yet Sac Street perseveres. Sac Street prospers. Sac Street grinds.

"Look how long it took to arrest Al Capone," said Tom Maloney, the
detective sergeant with the sheriff's department who heads the city's
gang-suppression squad. "Stopping gangs is like stopping crime -- it's hard."

There are at least several other small gangs plaguing East Palo Alto, still
inhabiting pockets of the city not far from neighborhoods now gentrifying.
Sac Street still holds the reputation for being the most successful, as
measured on the streets, and the most violent.

"And in a pretty violent city that is saying a lot," said detective John
Munsey of the sheriff's department's Crime Suppression Unit.

On a recent weeknight, there was a drug buyer driving down to the dead end
every 15 or 20 minutes. And most of the teenage gang members are pulling in
impressive street salaries and showing off their gold jewelry, Mustangs,
pristine Nikes and fistfuls of $20 bills.

The gang has a long criminal resume beyond drug dealing, including auto
theft, violent home invasions, the robbery of other drug dealers, shooting
at police officers and murder.

Even East Palo Alto's last homicide was a Sac Street affair: On Aug. 1,
Jose Valencia -- a 17-year-old who police believe was a Sac Street member
and who they said was trying to rob two men -- was shot and killed.
Investigators suspect other gang members may have been involved in the
botched robbery. As the coroner counted the bullet holes in the teenager's
body in a dusty alleyway, the mailman was delivering Valencia's GED -- the
equivalent of a high school graduation.

"It's frustrating," Munsey said. "You arrest one generation and another
takes its place."

R.B. Jones -- a city councilman and former mayor -- lived on the street for
more than two decades, until he moved away three years ago. He clearly
remembers the bleeding kids running into his living room for refuge and the
days he and other neighbors would walk their children to and from the
corner with a loaded pistol for protection.

"Some people don't want to believe that there is a gang problem in East
Palo Alto," Jones said. "Well, they better believe it or we will never
clean this town up."

Boom! Boom! Boom! The Mustang shudders with the bass beat and the gang
fake-fights and feints around it under a streetlight shot through with
bullet holes.

During the day, the street is quiet except for a rap group practicing in a
garage. Drug sales are slow but steady, attended to by one or two
gangbangers who generally hang back toward the leafy tail of the street.

But at night, the graffiti-tagged north edge of an apartment building turns
into what used to be called "The Million Dollar Spot." There literally once
was a dark spot spray-painted there. It's gone. But it's still the place
where the younger, more brazen street faction of Sac Street make their money.

"T," the gangly, tattooed jester of the gang, takes regular snorts of the
cocaine that he sells in small baggies. By the time the rush hour unchokes
University Avenue, he is flying.

"American Airlines," he sings, "leaving from East Palo Alto to the mooooon!"

T and the other guys sober up when it comes to talking about what they are
doing there.

"We're just businessmen trying to make a livin'," he said. "How's it any
different? I have expenses."

S nodded.

"You expect me to work at McDonald's or Home Depot?" he said. "I make more
here in an hour than I would make there in a week."

Maloney said only the tip of Sac Street's drug operation is in plain view.
Behind closed doors and off the street, the gang also operates with large
quantities of the drug, kilos and tens of thousand of dollars, he said.

But at night, the gang's fortune is made in increments of $20.

Maloney said the Million Dollar Spot is an example of how ingenious and
evasive the gang has become. The spot is next to an alleyway that leads to
a maze of fences and homes -- all potential hideaways. At the end of one
alleyway a car is parked so that someone can leap onto the roof and vault
over the fence.

J, with wild hair and a wilder smile, says neighbors put them up when the
cops are on the prowl.

"We watch each other's back," he said. "Everybody helps out."

Steep price for resistance

Maloney said the gang often doesn't give the local residents a choice. When
neighbors have bought pit bulls to keep Sac Street members away, the gang
has shot the dogs. Most neighbors know the price to be paid if they run up
against the gang. One man told the police he was terrified of getting a
call from them because his son might pick up the phone and tell the gang he
was talking to police.

This gives the gang physical hideouts and a neighborhood ethic that
strongly discourages giving police or prosecutors any useful information.
The gang operates right in front of everybody's front doors and open
windows. But when the bullets fly on Sacramento Street, no one sees
anything. It's safer to close the blinds and turn up the radio.

The same things that make Sacramento Street a simple target -- its small
size and dead-end -- make it easily defended by the gang. They use lookouts
on nearby corners and on rooftops.

This job goes to the younger kids, sometimes to the children of the block.
Like S, the youngest of the group on the street, who wheels his silver
scooter through gang members' Mustangs.

Later, these children will be gang members themselves.

Where other gangs try to grow big and add members, Sac Street has a wanted
to stay small and close-knit.

"The way they came up, they were always really tight," said Munsey. "They
have known each other since they were little and trust each other and never
snitched on each other."

Maloney said Sac Street could not be easily be pigeonholed: It has
different factions, a racial makeup that is mostly Latino, with some
African-Americans and Tongans. But the group is always in flux and has an
unspoken hierarchy based more on fear than on seniority or smarts.

"It's a big puzzle that has some liquid facets to it," Maloney said. "The
shapes of the puzzle pieces are ever-changing."

At 10 p.m. it's getting colder and the gang gets quieter, sipping beer and
watching the ebb and flow of traffic.

S quietly holds his girl -- one of the few who comfortably venture on the
street at night -- near the Million Dollar Spot.

He said he sometimes dreams of doing other things, having babies, leaving
the street life for legitimacy.

"I once took a class in architecture, I really liked that," he said. "I
could go back to school . . ."

He didn't get to finish the thought because a car was rolling up.

Contact Sean Webby at swebby@sjmercury.com or (650) 688-7577.