Santa Cruz used to be such a cool place to visit on the weekends. Now you have a chance of being killed if you go down there wearing a 49ers jersey. I guess this is the end product of the so called good and hard working people that are just looking for a better life...just poor migrants. Aren't we the saps for taking them in!

Gang rivalry takes deadly turn in Santa Cruz

Julia Prodis Sulek

jsulek@mercurynews.com
Posted: 08/07/2010 08:00:00 PM PDT

Long before Sureño and Norteño gangs came to Santa Cruz, a line was already drawn down the middle of town -- reds on one side, blues on the other. In the old days, it was a good-natured surf rivalry between the city's eastsiders and westsiders, each sporting their school colors and one-upping each other over whether the best surfers came from Pleasure Point to the east or Steamer Lane to the west.

Occasionally neighborhood pride resulted in testosterone-fueled fisticuffs. But these days, the rivalry among Santa Cruz youth is turning deadly as the surfing and gang cultures are intersecting, blurring and clashing. In the past 10 months, two surfers have been killed in altercations with alleged gang members. A hand sign was flashed in at least one of the cases, police say, and it didn't mean "hang loose."

For a liberal, laid-back beach town known for its Boardwalk and bikinis, hippies and hemp, the recent rise in gang violence, and especially the killings of the two white teenagers, have tested the limits of tolerance. Although tourists escaping the valley for a day of bodysurfing and cotton candy probably wouldn't notice it, to locals the fear is as audible as the screams from the Giant Dipper.

"This safe little hot rod beach town that the Beach Boys sang about, it's now gone," said Brad Simons, whose son attends Santa Cruz High School. "It's been taken over by gangs that the police can't keep up with. It's almost sent up a
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flare."

For the first seven months of this year, there were six homicides in Santa Cruz, compared with two for the same period last year and four for the whole year. Aggravated assaults, which police say are mostly gang-related, have climbed 23 percent during the first seven months of 2010 and robbery has risen 39 percent, compared with the same period last year. A look farther back shows overall crime in Santa Cruz has been relatively stable over the past 10 years.

To track the latest violence, a neighborhood activist has launched a website on local stabbings, complete with a "stab-o-meter" keeping count. Even some of the most liberal-leaners are pleading for a law-and-order crackdown.

In the past three months, this seaside "sanctuary city" for illegal immigrants invited the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to track down and deport gang criminals, upsetting many in the Latino community who are feeling a communal backlash with racist undertones. And the City Council, led by a mayor who considers himself a "socialist-feminist," acted so quickly to authorize the hiring of eight new police officers that it hasn't even figured out how to pay for them.

"This community that is tolerant and welcoming has been taken advantage of to the point that violence has escalated and they're now willing to step up. We've allowed our community to be taken over by people who wish us harm," said Analicia Cube, a 37-year-old mother who founded Take Back Santa Cruz, a neighborhood activist group formed after the stabbing death of Tyler Tenorio, 16, in October. Her group has gathered by the hundreds to stage "positive loitering" meet-ups and cleanups in known gang areas.

Some in the Latino community, however, are worried that the two deaths have not only created a backlash against the immigrant community -- and spread fear that ICE agents will deport otherwise law-abiding immigrants -- but also focused attention on police suppression tactics instead of gang prevention and intervention.

"What people do is resort to fear, and the fear comes out with all these ugly things, racism and classism," said O.T. Quintero, assistant director of Barrios Unidos, which runs outreach programs for immigrants. "When people get into fearful mode, common sense leaves."

Outraged by killings

Reyna Ruiz, program director at the Beach Flats Community Center, which runs gang prevention programs, says it's a shame it took the killing of two white teenagers for the rest of Santa Cruz to take a stand against youth violence, even though two young Latino men were killed in January.

Alejandro Nava-Gonzales, 21, and Oscar Ventura, 18, were both killed when an 18-year-old alleged gang member opened fire after an argument erupted over a small amount of cash during a crowded gathering in an apartment, police say.

"These outraged parents don't talk about these young men," Ruiz said. "Every murder should outrage us."

But concern didn't seem to seize the city until after the deaths of Tyler and Carl Reimer, as well as a violent night of window-bashing downtown in May that police blamed on anarchists.

In May, the local director of a surf documentary, "The Westsiders," asked for police security at the Santa Cruz Film Festival premiere "just in case." In June, the Guardian Angels marched in red berets and Army boots through downtown and to the Latino neighborhood of Beach Flats. And at the "Woodies on the Wharf" classic car show, someone plastered fliers saying, "Entering Gang War Zone."

Surf shops have removed their popular red "Westside" T-shirts for fear those who wear them will become targets.

"I've got to be careful what kind of shirt my kids wear to school. It's totally ridiculous," said Bruce Noland, who owns Shoreline Surf Shop, where one of the surfer victims, Carl Reimer, worked. "Do we have to move out of Santa Cruz to someplace safer?"

Police blame a perfect storm of pop culture trends and naivete for the recent conflicts between gang members and surfers. Most of the killings so far this year have been gang-on-gang killings. But the two deaths of the surfers have created more widespread worry, said Santa Cruz Deputy Police Chief Rick Martinez.

Red vs. blue

Norteños, who wear red, and Sureños, who wear blue -- the same colors of Santa Cruz High School's red Cardinals and Soquel High's blue Knights -- have claimed the westside/eastside rivalry as their own. At the same time, some surfers and other young people are dressing like gang wannabes, sporting boxy ball caps, baggy pants and plaid flannel shirts.

"If you're dressed as a surfer, you're not going to get challenged by gang members," Martinez said. "But if you're a surf kid dressing like a gang member walking around flashing hand signs, you're going to get challenged. It's not only made it difficult for gang members to identify rival gang members, it's made it difficult for police to identify gang members."

Most surfers hanging out along the coastline still look the part -- board shorts, flip flops, mops of bleached hair. But from the looks of the fading photographs glued to a memorial at Mitchell's Cove along West Cliff Drive, Reimer appeared to stray from the classic surfer look. While one picture shows the 19-year-old, red-haired and freckle-faced, in a wet suit catching a wave, another shows him in a knit cap with a plaid flannel shirt buttoned to the top, together with friends wearing backward ball caps.

Reimer's family and friends have said he was never in a gang. He worked at a surf shop for three years and embraced Rastafarianism. After his death, more than 100 surfers and friends honored Reimer with a "paddle-out" off Mitchell's Cove, forming a circle and holding hands while Reimer's parents scattered his ashes.

"It was a big bummer, a heavy scene," said surfer Sky Zucker, 20, a classmate of Reimer's at Santa Cruz High. "I don't want to live someplace where you're afraid to go out, where something might happen at night. Now I won't go out on my skateboard in areas that might be sketchy."

Their side of town

Police say Reimer was with friends in a park next to a westside apartment complex on an April night when suspected gang members approached.

"He's just standing there. They just ambush him and kill him, mistake him for a gang member," Martinez said. "Now the question is, was it a rival gang member looking for a Norteño or a Norteño looking to push the neighborhood kids out? Either way, he wasn't necessarily involved in gang activity and he was killed."

In the stabbing of Tyler, there was a conflict. He and three friends were driving near a known gang hot spot on the westside when they encountered two apparent gang members. "Some gang challenges were thrown down," Martinez said. The surfers "responded with 'westside,' claiming their side of town."

Tenorio and his friends didn't know other gang members were waiting around the corner. "They get out thinking it's going to be a fistfight," Martinez said, "and it turns out that weapons are displayed."

Tenorio was stabbed 16 times as he tried to run away, police say. While suspected gang members have been arrested in Tyler's slaying, police are still investigating Reimer's.

Since the deaths of Tyler and Reimer, the city decided to spend $50,000 on gang prevention programs. One, through a private foundation, has cropped up in the Latino neighborhood of Beach Flats. The Jay Moriarity Foundation, named after the late famed surfer, started a pilot program this summer.

Ruiz of Beach Flats signed up her daughter for the program. The idea, she said, is to not only integrate Latino children into the greater beach community, but teach them the best values of the surfing culture: self-reliance, respect for the ocean and respect for each other.

"They've been going strong all summer," she said. "There's a plan to continue on. We'll see what happens."

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