Ramona Gardens

Ramona Gardens is a public housing development in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles, California.

Currently and historically Latino, it is also the home of the Big Hazard street gang, connected to the Mexican Mafia, and has been the center of the illegal drug market in Southern California.

It was used as a training school by education students at California State University, Los Angeles and by the Head Start Program.

Residents agreed to participate after receiving promises they would be given to families, not "the stereotypical single men who live on Skid Row.

[21] The housing contains public murals that were created by the residents of Ramona Gardens between 1973 and 1977, with the assistance of the Mechiano Arts Center.

They used tools and paint from the Housing Authority and sponsored by the East Los Angeles Community Development Project.

Both dealers and customers were often from outside of the projects but came to Ramona Gardens for the large and open marketplace, called a "24-hour drive-through drug market" by a police officer.

A tenants' association was formed, as well as a group called Mothers Against PCP and the federally funded Narcotics Prevention Project.

Two teenagers were shot and stabbed to death while attending a baby shower in January 1974, less than a month after another gang-related shooting fatality.

The Los Angeles Sentinel said the scene was "an ominous, uneasy silence, like a placid lid resting atop a seething volcano."

Further saying that help was being provided to the blacks by the Symbionese Liberation Army, and that the sides "were at war", with only the "strong presence of police officers who live in daily and nightly fear of snipers.