That's Oscar de la Torre, not Oscar de la Hoya

When Oscar de la Torre was a kid, a Santa Monica police officer gave him a $10 ticket for getting a ride on the handlebars of a bike.

“We were poor. Not everybody had a bike. So we traveled on handlebars,” De la Torre remembers. “The police officer told me, ‘This will teach you to not break the law.’ My dad couldn’t believe it. That was my first experience with local government through law enforcement.”

As a resident of the Pico Neighborhood, the son of Mexican immigrants passed through some unpleasant experiences that were formative to his outlook as school board member and potential candidate for city council.

De la Torre and his wife, Maria Loya, won in February a lawsuit in Superior Court to force Santa Monica to abandon citywide elections in favor of voting districts, a change he says will end a decades-long domination by candidates of certain races and from certain parts of town.

“We’ve never had a person of color elected from the Pico Neighborhood. Not one,” he says. “The lack of real political representation has led to real harm, real death, that emanated from the social neglect of our city government. Not having someone that can relate to the social conditions of the Pico Neighborhood, that deficit in representation led to the social neglect, led to the lack of attention.”

The de facto segregation of the 50s and 60s made his neighborhood the place of choice for every noisy, smelly, and polluting city project: the dump, the recycling center, the I-10 and most recently the MetroLink, he says.

Now, the Pico Neighborhood is experiencing a new brunt: gentrification that is slowly depriving the area’s poor of affordable housing, he says.

De la Torre seeks to bring representation to a zone that Judge Yvette Palazuelos determined in court to have been neglected and discriminated against by city leaders. A July 2 election date was scheduled to undo the current council and re-form it based on voting districts. De la Torre said he would run to represent the Pico Neighborhood.

But the city council -- at risk to owing accrued opposing attorney’s fees of up to an estimated $22 million-- voted to appeal the Superior Court’s decision. The July 2 vote is postponed until the dust settles in courts.

Along with seven siblings, De la Torre grew up Delaware Ave. and 16th St. His parents remained married, and the household stability helped him resist the temptations to join the gang life that swirled around them, he says.

“We had a bunch of kids. We had a population density. There were a bunch of apartments. There was not one white family living on my block,” he reminisces. “The experience was one of racial segregation living on my block.”

During the 80s and 90s, the neighborhood was awash with crack cocaine and gangs, and De la Torre had to navigate carefully between gang members and cops -- either one could shoot or hurt an innocent bystander whose only guilt was his neighborhood, not membership to a gang, he says.

“The police came in with a lot of anger and distrust,” he says. A certain officer with a K-9 unit “kicked my friend to the ground face-first while he was handcuffed and commanded the dog to attack him,” he says.

In all his years, never did a city council member go door to door asking for votes or promising help if elected, he says.

When he attended Santa Monica High School, De la Torre played on the football team. One night, he and a friend were headed to the pier when they saw the gate open to the school and decided to take a shortcut across the field.

In the darkness, they heard a dog bark. A police was there unseen dealing with someone breaking bottles. “When we heard the dog bark, it startled us and we ran,” he remembers.

De la Torre was arrested and spent a night in jail, though he was never charged, he says.

“For walking through MY school at night, I was thrown in a jail cell -- trespassing,” he deadpans sardonically. “The police officer got mad that we ran from him, but we didn’t know it was a cop. We just heard the dog barking.”

These experiences convinced De la Torre that racial profiling was a reality that needed to be confronted and terminated. He vowed to help his neighborhood and went off to college to earn a Master’s Degree in public administration in 1998.

In 2002, he founded the Pico Youth & Family Center, of which is currently executive director (contrary to report in Patch that he resigned). The center provides 100s of youth a free recording studio, a computer lab, case management, counseling and job placement, he says.

In that same year, he ran for the Santa Monica Malibu Unified School District board and won a seat, which he has retained. His current term ends in 2022. He has served as the board’s president.

In 2005, De la Torre found himself embroiled in controversy when he attempt to defuse racial violence at SaMoHi. He brought mentors to dialogue with the edgy youth, but police on the scene accused them of inciting more violence. By his estimation, De la Torre has not endeared himself to the police department because of his role as an reform-seeking agitator.

“I brought individuals on the campus that could talk to the youth. I brought counselors. I brought business people, people that can share their story about why violence is wrong,” De la Torre says. “When (the police) saw the tattoos, they assumed the individuals with me were gang members.”

His name and reputation got bedraggled in the press.

“They made sh*t up,” De la Torre says. “I’ve had to endure many character assassination episodes. People are not accustomed to Mexicans being leaders. The image of the Mexican is the nanny or the gardener. When people see someone like me, they associate all of these negative things to my work.

“If I was white doing the same thing, if I could bring 'shot-calling gang members' to talk peace to students, then I’d be Father Greg Boyle of the West Side. I’d have gotten an award. I’d be Beto O’Rourke.”

But De la Torre doesn’t have rocks and bottles for the police department. He has award ribbons, he says.

Through the intervening decades, the police department has made great strides forward in terms of diversifying and hiring cops with higher levels of education, he says.

“We’re on the right track. I wouldn’t continue to support all the good that’s happening right now in terms of transparency and accountability -- cameras on uniforms and cameras in car,” he says. “There’s been a lot of progress. I’ve seen the police go from violent to more professional.”

De la Torre married another community advocate, Maria Loya, and the couple has two children who attend schools in Santa Monica. Loya ran for city council and lost in the citywide elections process in 2004, despite winning every precinct in the Pico Neighborhood.

Loya’s loss was the prompt for the lawsuit to change Santa Monica to voting districts under the California Voting Rights Act.

De la Torre wants to see businesses hire more local workers and give them “liveable” wages. He wants to foster youth development programs to complement law enforcement’s bid to preserve safety and order in the community, he says. He wants to provide more affordable housing for the people who grew up in Santa Monica.

De la Torre pledges to continue the fight for his neighborhood and people. If he gets the chance to run for city council in a voting district, he promises to come out swinging like his similarly named Latino, Oscar de la Hoya.

“I’ve never had the chance to meet Oscar de la Hoya,” says the Pico Neighborhood resident. “I’ve always looked up to him. He’s an excellent fighter.”

Michael Ashcraft teaches journalism at the Lighthouse Christian Academyin Santa Monica.