Reproduced with permission from the Sacramento Bee April 22, 1994 edition.
When the drugs and gunfire next door grew unbearable, John Sanders moved his 85-year-old mother to a safe apartment several blocks away.
Then the 62-year-old homeowner hunkered down against the gangs, drug dealers and thieves who invaded a city-owned parking lot at Grove and Las Palmas avenues behind Johnston Park in North Sacramento.
Sanders became the lone sentinel on an isolated block of immigrants who were cowed by criminals and unable to talk to police in English. For six years, he refused to abandon his post – even after thieves ransacked his home five times and fired several rounds into the small, two-bedroom house. “All they do is try to intimidate people” Sanders said. “I told them they might run me in the house, but they ain’t going to run me from my house.”
Last week, like the cavalry in an old Western, Sacramento City Council rode belatedly to Sanders’ aid by agreeing to sell the parking lot property for $25,000 to an apartment complex next door. The new owner [Bruce Mintzer] has promised to fence the parcel and use it as a parking lot for residents.
“I think it will work,” Sanders said. “I may bring my mom back home.”
City property agent Gary L. Ransom said the sale appears to be the first time City Hall has conveyed a crime-ridden parcel to a private owner with a viable plan for attacking the problem.
“You have to find someone there who can afford to buy the property and fix it up.” Ransom said.
The buyer, Bruce Mintzer, said his tenants sorely need the parking space and security. Afraid of vandalism in the city-owned lot next door, apartment residents have crammed more than two dozen vehicles into the courtyard of the complex.
It took almost two years to put this together because it hadn’t been done before,” Mintzer said. “It’s to the credit of the city that they were able to see through the problems and help us solve an overall neighborhood problem.”
Mintzer said he would erect a fence next month blocking access to the lot from the street and Johnston Park. Using the site for tenant parking will free the courtyard for landscape improvements. Residents and officials expect the changes to dislodge criminals who have held sway over an isolated stretch of Grove Avenue. The lot is flanked by Sanders’ home and the apartments, which are cut off from the rest of the densely populated neighborhood by drainage canals, vacant lots and Johnston Park.
Hidden from most traffic, the city-owned property became hangout for “gambling and activities associated with that,” including gangs, vandals, drugs and shootings, Sacramento Police Lt. Gary Youngblood said.
Hoodlums from outside the community mocked the street signs that mark a “gun- and drug-free zone.” Neighbors said youths also drank beer, raced cars, hid stolen vehicles and ran from police through the lot.
A climate of fear descended on the adjacent, low-income apartments where most of the tenants Laotian immigrants who speak little English, manager Somboune Rasaphangthong said.
Residents stay indoors at night. Although Johnston Park beckons, children play only in the bleak, concrete courtyard.
“The parents won’t let the kids go out, Rasaphangthong said, “Almost every night there are cars speeding, drinking, gunshots. I call the police, but when they get here they (the troublemakers) are gone.”
With his neighbors intimidated by criminals and unable to communicate effectively with police, the task of watchdog fell to Sanders, a janitor who works grave yard hours.
“I must have called the police 25 or 30 times,” he said.
The criminals retaliated, breaking into Sanders’ house five times and stealing his television set, radios and phone. Troublemakers urinated in his yard and tossed used hypodermic needles over a chain-link fence onto his lawn.
Two months ago, Sanders chased off youths who were threatening his dog and puppies in the back yard. That night, as he strummed a guitar on the couch, a fusillade of bullets riddled his home, lodging in a bedroom wall on the opposite side of the house.
Sanders refused to give in.
“I don’t want to let them scare me off,” he said. “I’m buying this place. It’s gonna be mine.”