Help LAPD Clean up Mess Left by Gang Members

Los Angeles Police Department Senior Lead Officer Nina Preciado is looking for volunteers to help clean up the mess that a group of gang members from Highland Park and Echo Park created in a vacant Eagle Rock home.

At her monthly public security update to the Eagle Rock Neighborhood Council Wednesday night, Preciado said that four members of the major gang that goes by the name of “Highland Park” recently teamed up with a gang member from Echo Park to occupy a house on 905 Pine Grove Ave., east of North Figueroa Street.

“It’s a little unusual for us because they don’t usually cross each other’s territory,” Preciado said, referring to the presence of the Echo Park gang member on the border of Eagle Rock and Highland Park. Just about everybody who lives on Pine Grove Avenue called the LAPD to complain about what was going on in the house, which was vacated by a tenant recently, Preciado said, adding that the house belongs to a widower who lives in Pennsylvania and whose daughter keeps an eye on the property from Lancaster, CA, but “she’s got her hands full.”

'We’re Going to Clean up the Entire Yard'

The LAPD worked with the City Attorney’s office to get the gang members out of the house “after a lot of hard work,” Preciado said. “The locksmith came in today, changed the locks and locked the windows.” (See attached Google Maps image of the house.)

Preciado said she is going to be at the 905 Pine Grove house at 8 a.m. on Monday, Aug. 12, with “all neighbors who live on the street—and we’re going to clean up the entire yard.”

Preciado, who became senior lead officer for Eagle Rock this past February after being SLO for the northern section of Highland Park for five years, mentioned the well-known “broken windows” theory to explain why Monday’s planned clean-up is important. “All these houses are nice and clean, and you’ve got just this one house right on the corner,” she said. “Everybody drives by and sees it—and the yard is just filthy.”

Preciado said she’ll be there at 905 Pine Grove on Monday even though she’s off that day. “Come in your jeans, T-shirt, gloves—bring your shovels, whatever,” she said. “We’re going to clean up this yard and we’re going to have this family [that owns the house] keep it clean.”

Arrest For Violating Restraining Order

In another incident, a man who had a restraining order to keep out of Eagle Rock was arrested following a radio call last week Monday, July 29, Preciado said.

“He’s one of our problem homeless individuals in the area,” Preciado said, adding: “We’re hoping he’ll be put away for at least 10 days—initially that’s the longest we can hold him.”

The senior lead officer confirmed that the man was served a restraining order to stay out of Eagle Rock after he assaulted a priest at St. Dominic’s Church in 2012. “He’s been back in the area—and we know it,” Preciado said, adding that a restraining order usually doesn’t work on transients who tend to “come back to the area that is home to them.”

The man, said Preciado, has got “a narcotics problem, and he’s usually okay until he starts using it [narcotics] again.”

Robbery Suspect Arrested

Another homeless man whom Preciado described as “a problem” and “a nuisance” and who is given to hanging around in the rear of the Center for the Arts, Eagle Rock, was arrested Wednesday, Preciado said, adding that he attempted to rob somebody a couple of weeks ago.

“We were able to detain him for a different thing that he did today,” Preciado said (without specifying what the man was arrested for). “But we recognize and know that he’s wanted for something else.”