Los Angeles police have set up a mobile command center on Drew Street and will conduct regular foot patrols of the neighborhood over the next several weeks as part of their ongoing gang crackdown, police and city officials told Glassell Park residents at a community meeting Wednesday night.
"We've done these kinds of operations before. We arrest a lot of people, make a big splash and then pull out," said LAPD Deputy Chief Sergio Diaz, who was joined at the meeting by City Councilman Eric Garcetti and U.S. Atty. Thomas P. O'Brien. "But we're not going away. We're going to stay here."
Frank Silva, 20, who was among 250 area residents attending the meeting at the Glassell Park Community Center, said he hoped Wednesday's police raid would in fact be the start of a greater law enforcement presence in the neighborhood. "It's pretty dangerous here," he said.
Others were skeptical.
Chris Mancilla, 20, who lives on Eagle Rock Boulevard in the heart of the Avenues gang's turf, came to the meeting with his 7-month-old daughter, Destiny, "to see what's going on in the neighborhood."
Like others, he said he awoke Wednesday morning to the sound of police helicopters overhead.
After the meeting, Mancilla said he doubted that the LAPD and city officials would be able to hold the ground they claimed in the raid.
"It's the same thing they always say," he said. "They're not actually going to get anything done."
Hade Mahdamad, 23, a resident of Drew Street for almost three years, said he awoke to the sound of "breaking windows like Afghanistan" as police broke into nearby residences.
He expressed deep frustration at what he saw as the excessive show of force by police and federal agents.
"I have nothing against the cops, but we're not animals," he said. "I appreciate the fact that they came out, but there's ways of doing this that doesn't hurt other people."
The neighborhood first came to the attention of most people only after undercover police officers got into a shootout there in February with gang members who had allegedly killed a man in the nearby Cypress Park neighborhood. But police had long had Drew Street on their radar.
Many of the immigrant families on Drew Street whose members authorities have charged with criminal acts hail from the town of Tlalchapa in the state of Guerrero, which has a reputation as one of Mexico's most violent regions. Police estimate that dozens of members of these extended families belong to the Avenues gang.
