‘Ours is a mission of prevention and intervention for our babies.’ : Sepulveda Center to Help ‘Reclaim the Streets’

Last winter, drug trafficking on Langdon Avenue in Sepulveda had escalated to the point that elementary school students were taught “drug drills” to protect themselves from gunfire.

Thursday, after months of organizing crime-watch groups and successfully requesting increased police patrols to push out the worst of the criminal element, neighborhood activists opened a community resource center, a project at least one activist hopes will help “reclaim the streets.”

The Sepulveda Community Resource Center, which will be run out of a small back office at United Methodist Church, will offer family counseling, job referrals and drug-awareness programs to residents in the Langdon Avenue neighborhood.

The center has its own hot line--892-HELP--for counseling, job referrals or crime information, and Los Angeles police and county probation officials will also staff the center two days a week for four hours.

Molding A True Neighborhood

“We are becoming a neighborhood in the truest sense of the word because we are willing to get off our duffs and do something about our problems,” said Debbie King, a neighborhood activist who will serve as coordinator of the center. “Ours is a mission of prevention and intervention for our babies.”

The neighborhood around Langdon Avenue has long been plagued with drug dealing and crime. Sandwiched between busy Sepulveda Boulevard and the San Diego Freeway, the streets are lined with two- and three-story apartment buildings, new and old, some run-down and deteriorating, others well-kept.

Last November, drug dealing on Langdon Avenue had become so blatant that dealers did a brisk business in front of the elementary school and the sound of gunshots were frequently heard. Residents reported that armed lookouts for the dealers would post themselves on apartment roofs.

Fearful that a child would be shot, Gerald Gottlieb, principal of Langdon Avenue Elementary School, initiated police alert drills to protect students.

At the sound of a school bell, students playing outside would run into classrooms and teachers would lock doors and close windows.

Students Respond

The drills were a rallying point for residents enraged by the scope of the drug trafficking. After a series of community meetings, police task forces increased patrols, and crime-watch groups were strengthened.

“At least the naked eye can no longer see the drug dealing on the street and in front of the school,” Gottlieb said Thursday. “We feel danger of drug dealing interfering with school activities has been eliminated.”

He said the drills stopped in February.

Capt. Mark Stevens, commanding officer of the Devonshire Division, said increased community awareness and stepped-up police patrols have driven away the bold curb-service dealers, making the area “a hundred times better” than it was last winter.

In opening the resource center, Assemblyman Richard Katz, (D-Sepulveda) said residents have sent a strong message to drug dealers that “we have had enough of you trashing our neighborhood. . . . This isn’t a fun zone anymore. There will be police, probation officers and community people watching you from this office.”

Staff members from Pacoima-based Project HEAVY, a social service organization that develops guidance programs for youths, and officers from the Los Angeles County Probation Department will be available two days a week. General Telephone donated phone service, and the agency staff time is donated.

Robert Medina, a supervising deputy probation officer, said his staff will work with police in taking reports from residents and identifying gang members in the neighborhood.

“All of those agencies that knew about us because our kids were problems are now here to help us,” King said. “Our children will have a haven in the midst of a jungle.”