STREETLOW 2007
- Thread starter YG_MAE
- Start date
i was driving down vine street by virginia and saw a brown apartment complex wit scraps chillin on the porch wearing sharks shirts that say" the bay" on them.
i think scraps sporting sharks is like homeboys sporting dodgers.
scraps are str8 confused.
but last time i went to gramercy and poco way. there was nobody.
those two scrap hoods are pretty much dead.
gramercy was all tagged up by homeboys on every corner. and poco way had hella black guys chillin outside.
im guessing all the scraps that are leftovers are tryin to regroup in dead parts of the city.
right now cadillac dr has homeboys and scraps both living in the same apartments going at it. so hopefully we see some results
i think scraps sporting sharks is like homeboys sporting dodgers.
scraps are str8 confused.
but last time i went to gramercy and poco way. there was nobody.
those two scrap hoods are pretty much dead.
gramercy was all tagged up by homeboys on every corner. and poco way had hella black guys chillin outside.
im guessing all the scraps that are leftovers are tryin to regroup in dead parts of the city.
right now cadillac dr has homeboys and scraps both living in the same apartments going at it. so hopefully we see some results
Poco Way Shooting
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_6910280?source=rss
By Mike Cassidy
Mercury News Columnist
Article Launched: 09/16/2007 01:46:01 AM PDT
There is no need to panic about Poco Way.
Yes, two men were gunned down last week on what was once San Jose's meanest street. But while the gangland-style killing was terrible, discouraging, a tragedy, city officials and police say it in no way means that the street's miraculous makeover has been reversed.
The words are comforting, but they don't have a lot to do with what it feels like to live on Poco Way now. Violence and murder have come again. The yellow police tape fluttering on a fence means something terrifying along this tidy block of pastel-colored apartment buildings. There is history here - ugly history that nobody wants to see repeated.
"Everybody knows Poco Way," said a young man standing a few hundred feet from the parking lot where one of the two dead men recently lay in a pool of blood. People know Poco Way for the bad and the good. Over the past two decades, the street has seen abject misery as well as joyful redemption.
Today the place looks like a million bucks - or like the many millions the city spent to turn the street just east of Highway 101 and north of Story Road into a model of neighborhood renewal. The street, sidewalks and compact lawns are tidy. Flowers and plants flourish on apartment patios.
Stroll down Poco Way today - with its green park benches and colorful tot lot - and you can't imagine what went on here, into the early '90s.
It was a place where you lived only because you had to. Poco Way was
a block and a half of nearly constant gang-banging, gunfire, drug dealing, prostitution and street violence. You visited only if you were looking for trouble, blood or dope. Its smelly, decrepit two-story buildings were infested with rats and roaches.
"You could go to Poco Way 24/7 and it was a maze of people," said Alex Sanchez, executive director of the Santa Clara County Housing Authority, which owns the 27-building complex. "And some were there to do good things and some were there to do very bad stuff."
$20 million effort
That all changed starting in the early '90s when a massive effort by police, housing officials, educators, community groups and recreation managers uniformly aimed their good intentions at the hardest place of all - Poco Way. They forced out the pushers, the hookers, the gangbangers and much of it was bulldozed and rebuilt.
The resurrection of Poco Way was as astounding as the depravity that once resided there. The city spent $20 million. Tenants were carefully screened - to eliminate anyone with gang or drug-dealing affiliations.
And with the new buildings, Poco Way's soul was rebuilt, too.
"In the '80s, people were fleeing Poco Way," said Sanchez, who followed the street's turnaround as San Jose's housing director from 1988 to 2001. "Today people are lined up and want to rent from us."
So forgive those who live there if Tuesday's shootings have residents filled with fear and bad memories. They are like a patient who has beaten cancer, only to see old symptoms returning.
The unease is not based only on the distant past.
Saturday night, several gunshots rang out in a drive-by shooting from a white van or pickup truck on Poco Way near McCreery Avenue. There were no injuries, at least not ones you can see.
Subtle signs of gangs
Some residents say they've noticed an uptick in gang activity.
"Lately, like two or three months ago," said the complex's manager, Pepe Ordoñez, who's lived on Poco Way for five years, "we started having problems again."
Ordoñez doesn't have a database or incident reports, so I ask him: What makes you say trouble is on the rise?
"Because, I have fights," he said. "I have people yelling at each other. I have to wake up at night to find out what the yelling is about. People break into the laundry."
Others along the street have seen gang members congregating in the Rose Marie Judge Community Park, which backs up to Poco Way.
"They're kicking it in the park," said a father of two, sitting with his wife on a Poco Way bench. "Norteños, the red ones, they said they were going to take over."
No, he didn't want his name in the newspaper. There's often retaliation when gangs are involved. "It's teeth-for-teeth, eye-for-eye time," is how one young man put it.
The woman on the bench says anyone with vengeance in mind will wait until things quiet down. Then they'll be back.
Her husband said he had just left to pick up a pizza at about 8:30 Tuesday night when his wife called to say there had been a shooting. His reply: Keep the kids away from the windows.
Witnesses reported hearing five gunshots and shouting. One man, identified by his relatives as Cesar Saavedra, 30, lay dead a short stroll from the tot lot. A second man raced across the street and into a covered parking lot where he was gunned down. A chalk-drawn cross, votive candles and flowers mark the spot in memory of Gonzalo Ruiz Navarro. A third man was shot in the hand.
The San Jose Police Department is providing few details. Sanchez said neither the suspects nor the victims are believed to be Poco Way residents. But family members say Saavedra had a long history on the street, starting at age 13, when his family moved there from Mexico.
Though his family moved away in the early '90s, Saaverda returned to the revitalized complex as an adult. He lived there for a time with his ex-wife and four children, two of whom were Saavedra's. He moved in February to Gilroy, but often visited friends, his kids and an aunt in San Jose - as he did Tuesday night.
On Friday night, in the parking lot where Saavedra was gunned down, about 70 friends and family members gazed at a second shrine of flowers, balloons, beer cans and a rosary created to memorialize him.
There were prayers, hugs and sobs. Saavedra's mother hid her grief behind dark glasses. Saavedra's girlfriend buried her nose in a jersey Saavedra wore last week.
"It still smells like him," said the 23-year-old Santa Clara woman, who last heard from Saavedra about 10 minutes before he was shot.
"He called and said he was coming home," the girlfriend said. "I was waiting for him to come home."
After the memorial service, friends and family painted a portrait of a man not unlike Poco Way itself. Yes, he was trouble early - a gang-banging teen. But like Poco Way, he changed. He gave up the gang life, attended church regularly and had his tattoos removed. All but one - the elaborate Aztec calendar around his neck that police described to Saavedra's sister early Wednesday, confirming her horrible fear.
After the impromptu memorial, the people of Poco Way drifted back into their homes. With little official information, they are left to craft their own narrative of what happened and what it will mean for the future of their street. You can imagine what they're thinking: This can't be happening again.
The possible return of the gangs worries everybody.
"Now I think about it because I have my girls," the mother sitting on the bench with her husband said. "We don't want them growing up with shootings and cops."
Poco Way is a working neighborhood now, as the plaster dust on the father's shoes shows. It is a step on the ladder to the American Dream - and it is not easy to come by.
The couple waited two years to move into their modern two-bedroom, $734-a-month apartment. And despite the shooting, they're not leaving.
For all Poco Way has working against it - it's in a high-crime part of town and is saddled with underfunded schools and high poverty rates - it also has much in its favor.
Neither the city nor the other social agencies that helped turn Poco Way around have forgotten the place. They don't want it reclaimed by thugs who worship power and territory.
Angel Rios, the city staff person who oversees the Mayor's Gang Prevention Task Force, says the city is watching. "That is definitely an area that we view as what we call a hot-spot area," says Rios, a deputy director of Parks, Recreation and Neighborhood Services.
He does not doubt the Poco Way neighbors' reports of increased gang activity.
Such activity is cyclical, he says, on Poco Way and in neighborhoods citywide. Visual indicators are up throughout San Jose.
"More people, kids, hanging out in the neighborhood or at a park. We have seen increases at that level."
Crisis plan
The morning after the shooting, the task force received a briefing on the attack and activated its standard crisis response plan. More cops were sent to the area, outreach workers went to schools and also talked with neighborhood leaders, positive leaders as well as those who lead troublemakers.
And Rios, who grew up a mile from Poco Way, drove out to the neighborhood to talk to residents who were scared, worried, but hardly defeated.
Maybe that is the greatest hope for Poco Way in the wake of the gunfire, bodies and blood. It is no longer a street populated by two groups: those who don't care about anything and those who cower in their presence. It is a place that offers opportunity and an example - an example of what can happen when there is enough desire and dedication by bureaucrats and residents alike.
Rios says a drive out to Poco Way after a shooting 20 years ago would have brought him face to face with residents who wanted nothing to do with him or who simply could not see a way to a better future. Not this time. This time, he says, he heard a different message.
"We're not giving this up."
It's a flicker he hopes to fan into a bright future.
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_6910280?source=rss
By Mike Cassidy
Mercury News Columnist
Article Launched: 09/16/2007 01:46:01 AM PDT
There is no need to panic about Poco Way.
Yes, two men were gunned down last week on what was once San Jose's meanest street. But while the gangland-style killing was terrible, discouraging, a tragedy, city officials and police say it in no way means that the street's miraculous makeover has been reversed.
The words are comforting, but they don't have a lot to do with what it feels like to live on Poco Way now. Violence and murder have come again. The yellow police tape fluttering on a fence means something terrifying along this tidy block of pastel-colored apartment buildings. There is history here - ugly history that nobody wants to see repeated.
"Everybody knows Poco Way," said a young man standing a few hundred feet from the parking lot where one of the two dead men recently lay in a pool of blood. People know Poco Way for the bad and the good. Over the past two decades, the street has seen abject misery as well as joyful redemption.
Today the place looks like a million bucks - or like the many millions the city spent to turn the street just east of Highway 101 and north of Story Road into a model of neighborhood renewal. The street, sidewalks and compact lawns are tidy. Flowers and plants flourish on apartment patios.
Stroll down Poco Way today - with its green park benches and colorful tot lot - and you can't imagine what went on here, into the early '90s.
It was a place where you lived only because you had to. Poco Way was
a block and a half of nearly constant gang-banging, gunfire, drug dealing, prostitution and street violence. You visited only if you were looking for trouble, blood or dope. Its smelly, decrepit two-story buildings were infested with rats and roaches.
"You could go to Poco Way 24/7 and it was a maze of people," said Alex Sanchez, executive director of the Santa Clara County Housing Authority, which owns the 27-building complex. "And some were there to do good things and some were there to do very bad stuff."
$20 million effort
That all changed starting in the early '90s when a massive effort by police, housing officials, educators, community groups and recreation managers uniformly aimed their good intentions at the hardest place of all - Poco Way. They forced out the pushers, the hookers, the gangbangers and much of it was bulldozed and rebuilt.
The resurrection of Poco Way was as astounding as the depravity that once resided there. The city spent $20 million. Tenants were carefully screened - to eliminate anyone with gang or drug-dealing affiliations.
And with the new buildings, Poco Way's soul was rebuilt, too.
"In the '80s, people were fleeing Poco Way," said Sanchez, who followed the street's turnaround as San Jose's housing director from 1988 to 2001. "Today people are lined up and want to rent from us."
So forgive those who live there if Tuesday's shootings have residents filled with fear and bad memories. They are like a patient who has beaten cancer, only to see old symptoms returning.
The unease is not based only on the distant past.
Saturday night, several gunshots rang out in a drive-by shooting from a white van or pickup truck on Poco Way near McCreery Avenue. There were no injuries, at least not ones you can see.
Subtle signs of gangs
Some residents say they've noticed an uptick in gang activity.
"Lately, like two or three months ago," said the complex's manager, Pepe Ordoñez, who's lived on Poco Way for five years, "we started having problems again."
Ordoñez doesn't have a database or incident reports, so I ask him: What makes you say trouble is on the rise?
"Because, I have fights," he said. "I have people yelling at each other. I have to wake up at night to find out what the yelling is about. People break into the laundry."
Others along the street have seen gang members congregating in the Rose Marie Judge Community Park, which backs up to Poco Way.
"They're kicking it in the park," said a father of two, sitting with his wife on a Poco Way bench. "Norteños, the red ones, they said they were going to take over."
No, he didn't want his name in the newspaper. There's often retaliation when gangs are involved. "It's teeth-for-teeth, eye-for-eye time," is how one young man put it.
The woman on the bench says anyone with vengeance in mind will wait until things quiet down. Then they'll be back.
Her husband said he had just left to pick up a pizza at about 8:30 Tuesday night when his wife called to say there had been a shooting. His reply: Keep the kids away from the windows.
Witnesses reported hearing five gunshots and shouting. One man, identified by his relatives as Cesar Saavedra, 30, lay dead a short stroll from the tot lot. A second man raced across the street and into a covered parking lot where he was gunned down. A chalk-drawn cross, votive candles and flowers mark the spot in memory of Gonzalo Ruiz Navarro. A third man was shot in the hand.
The San Jose Police Department is providing few details. Sanchez said neither the suspects nor the victims are believed to be Poco Way residents. But family members say Saavedra had a long history on the street, starting at age 13, when his family moved there from Mexico.
Though his family moved away in the early '90s, Saaverda returned to the revitalized complex as an adult. He lived there for a time with his ex-wife and four children, two of whom were Saavedra's. He moved in February to Gilroy, but often visited friends, his kids and an aunt in San Jose - as he did Tuesday night.
On Friday night, in the parking lot where Saavedra was gunned down, about 70 friends and family members gazed at a second shrine of flowers, balloons, beer cans and a rosary created to memorialize him.
There were prayers, hugs and sobs. Saavedra's mother hid her grief behind dark glasses. Saavedra's girlfriend buried her nose in a jersey Saavedra wore last week.
"It still smells like him," said the 23-year-old Santa Clara woman, who last heard from Saavedra about 10 minutes before he was shot.
"He called and said he was coming home," the girlfriend said. "I was waiting for him to come home."
After the memorial service, friends and family painted a portrait of a man not unlike Poco Way itself. Yes, he was trouble early - a gang-banging teen. But like Poco Way, he changed. He gave up the gang life, attended church regularly and had his tattoos removed. All but one - the elaborate Aztec calendar around his neck that police described to Saavedra's sister early Wednesday, confirming her horrible fear.
After the impromptu memorial, the people of Poco Way drifted back into their homes. With little official information, they are left to craft their own narrative of what happened and what it will mean for the future of their street. You can imagine what they're thinking: This can't be happening again.
The possible return of the gangs worries everybody.
"Now I think about it because I have my girls," the mother sitting on the bench with her husband said. "We don't want them growing up with shootings and cops."
Poco Way is a working neighborhood now, as the plaster dust on the father's shoes shows. It is a step on the ladder to the American Dream - and it is not easy to come by.
The couple waited two years to move into their modern two-bedroom, $734-a-month apartment. And despite the shooting, they're not leaving.
For all Poco Way has working against it - it's in a high-crime part of town and is saddled with underfunded schools and high poverty rates - it also has much in its favor.
Neither the city nor the other social agencies that helped turn Poco Way around have forgotten the place. They don't want it reclaimed by thugs who worship power and territory.
Angel Rios, the city staff person who oversees the Mayor's Gang Prevention Task Force, says the city is watching. "That is definitely an area that we view as what we call a hot-spot area," says Rios, a deputy director of Parks, Recreation and Neighborhood Services.
He does not doubt the Poco Way neighbors' reports of increased gang activity.
Such activity is cyclical, he says, on Poco Way and in neighborhoods citywide. Visual indicators are up throughout San Jose.
"More people, kids, hanging out in the neighborhood or at a park. We have seen increases at that level."
Crisis plan
The morning after the shooting, the task force received a briefing on the attack and activated its standard crisis response plan. More cops were sent to the area, outreach workers went to schools and also talked with neighborhood leaders, positive leaders as well as those who lead troublemakers.
And Rios, who grew up a mile from Poco Way, drove out to the neighborhood to talk to residents who were scared, worried, but hardly defeated.
Maybe that is the greatest hope for Poco Way in the wake of the gunfire, bodies and blood. It is no longer a street populated by two groups: those who don't care about anything and those who cower in their presence. It is a place that offers opportunity and an example - an example of what can happen when there is enough desire and dedication by bureaucrats and residents alike.
Rios says a drive out to Poco Way after a shooting 20 years ago would have brought him face to face with residents who wanted nothing to do with him or who simply could not see a way to a better future. Not this time. This time, he says, he heard a different message.
"We're not giving this up."
It's a flicker he hopes to fan into a bright future.
