Verge of Bankruptcy

SAN FRANCISCO — Salvador Cervantes was about to set up a jewelry booth with other vendors at the Stockton Flea Market when two gunmen demanded his car keys. One fired a shot, Salvador said, and he dropped the keys. The men sped off in his SUV, leaving his 74-year-old father, Ignacio, bleeding to death on the ground from a gunshot wound.

The killing was one of 29 homicides in Stockton this year, following a record 58 in 2011, as the city’s slide toward insolvency cut police strength.

Ignacio Cervantes was No. 25.

And for Salvador Cervantes, it was the fifth robbery at gunpoint in 31⁄2 years.

“The first time that it happened, I wanted to just move out of here,” Cervantes, 42, said as he recounted the holdup outside his mother’s house, where a framed photo of his father in a brown cowboy hat is the center of a small shrine. “At this point, I’m used to it. It’s a fact of life.”

Stockton, a city of 292,000 about 80 miles east of San Francisco, is poised to become the largest city in U.S. history to seek bankruptcy protection. Three months of talks between the city and creditors draw to a close Monday. If the talks don’t yield concessions, the city faces a $26 million deficit for the fiscal year beginning July 1 because of declining tax revenue, escalating retiree health-care costs and accounting errors.

As the city cut services and staff to stay afloat, the police force shrank 26 percent in four years. Murders more than doubled, from 24 in 2008. In the decade that ended last year, robberies were up 28 percent and burglaries rose 44 percent. Police no longer respond to non-injury traffic accidents or send officers to keep the peace in civil disputes.

“As we’ve had a reduction of officers in our community and couldn’t be as proactive as before, we’ve noticed violent crime, such as homicides, has gone up,” said Joe Silva, a police spokesman.

Ignacio Cervantes’s funeral was arranged by Cano Funeral Home, where services have increased to at least one a day this year from about four a week in 2004, said Pablo Cano, who has owned the Stockton mortuary for almost 15 years.

“We’re seeing a lot more crime, definitely,” Cano, 70, said. “The shortage in the police is leaving everything wide open to where people feel they can get away with anything.

“It’s very hard on my staff because they try to get a few hours of sleep,” said Cano, who has seven employees and is looking for more. “Right now, it’s hard to take a break.”

Stockton’s unemployment rate was 15.4 percent in April, almost twice the national average of 8.1 percent that month, according to Labor Department data. In May, one in every 195 homes in the metropolitan area received a foreclosure filing, the nation’s fifth-highest rate, according to RealtyTrac, an Irvine, Calif.-based provider of default data.

“People are struggling to find any kind of work,” Mayor Ann Johnston said. “They’re struggling to keep their homes. And then they’re having to deal with an escalating crime rate in our community where they question their own safety.”

Budget cuts have forced the elimination of the narcotics, park patrol and downtown bicycling units, Police Chief Eric Jones, 40, said. Most homicides last year were gun- and gang-related, Jones said.

“There seems to be an emboldened criminal element out there that feel very comfortable carrying and using firearms,” said Jones, who has worked for the department since 1993 and became chief in March. “We’ve seen some very brazen activity.”

Stockton is the county seat, and the mayor says the San Joaquin County Jail is full.

“Every day, people who should be spending time in the county jail are released back into the community, waiting for a trial date or something,” Johnston said. “That adds to the criminal element on the street at any one time.”

Barbara Booth’s son, Ryan, 20, an aspiring rapper who called himself Rolo Da Prince, was homicide No. 6 — shot Feb. 10 as he left a market where he’d bought orange juice. He died the next day, she said.

“Stockton is no good for nobody, especially men,” said Booth, 60. “These young folks don’t have jobs. All they know how to do is just go out there, be with each other and do whatever. It’s bad.”

Her older son, Sonny, 31, who survived a 2007 shooting, has tattoos honoring his brother: “RIP Rolo Da Prince” is across his cheeks; Ryan’s is on his right shoulder.

“I want to get out of here because if I don’t, he’s going to get killed next,” Barbara Booth said.

In a city office, Ruben Sepulveda, 60, watches six screens on the wall in front of him for signs of criminal activity.

About 200 video cameras are perched across Stockton. A monitoring program, which closed for lack of funding, is being reinstated, employing 15 retired police officers. The cameras can monitor drug and criminal activity; help officers determine the response needed; and record evidence, including a car fleeing the scene of a crime.

“This is a great tool,” said Sepulveda, a detective who retired in 2002 after 30 years. “But we need the numbers.”

He referred to the number of police on the street, such as Sgt. Kathryn Nance, part of the newly formed community response team.

Nance, 37, who has four children, has had her salary reduced about 23 percent since 2010, she said.

The city has asked “to cut pay to a point that it’s kind of beyond repair and beyond people’s ability to live,” she said. “The compensation package is lower than a lot of other agencies, and then you add the negative publicity of the bankruptcy and the issues that we’re having, and we don’t get people of that (experienced) caliber applying anymore.”

Early on May 4, Kari Webb recalled, she was dropping off her husband, Alex, 38, at the truck he drove when they spotted two men siphoning fuel from the vehicle to another drawn up alongside.

Alex, 38, confronted one man and a fight began, she said. Alex climbed onto the passenger side of the truck, which the second man began driving off. As the truck picked up speed, Alex fell and was run over.

He was No. 23.

“We had planned this year to move to Linden before my oldest son starts high school because of the homicides this year,” Kari, 36, said as her two sons watched television behind her. The silver cross she wears on a chain around her neck contains some of Alex’s ashes, she said.

“It’s scary,” said Kari, tears welling in her eyes. “We wanted to move, and Stockton took his life.”