ANAHEIM – This was the Anaheim that the world saw in recent weeks: Protesters streaming by the hundreds down city streets. Police officers dressed in black-padded body armor wielding batons and beanbag shotguns. Store windows shattered. Dumpsters on fire.

The protests laid bare years of growing resentment and deep division in a city best known as the home of the Happiest Place on Earth. They tapped into anger over politics and power, over crime and police – over the very direction of Orange County’s biggest city.

Interviews with protesters, political leaders, police and residents of Anaheim show that the recent unrest was never just about the police shootings that first sent people into the streets. The groundwork had been laid for Anaheim to explode.

The shootings just lit the fuse.

POLITICS AND POWER

Manuel Diaz bolted when he saw police on the afternoon of July 21, racing down an alleyway and across the front yard of a threadbare apartment complex. What happened next brought television news vans and outside protesters to a part of the city that has seldom seen the spotlight.

Police shot and killed Diaz in the home neighborhood of a gang they describe as one of the city’s oldest and most violent. Diaz’s death was the first of two back-to-back police shootings last month that helped set off nights of protest.

The neighborhood, Anna Drive, was once a temporary first stop for the families who moved to Anaheim as part of the boom that followed the opening of Disneyland in 1955. Today, the neighborhood is mostly Latino and overwhelmingly poor, with families crowded into the same buildings that served as short-term rental housing in 1960.

Latinos have become the majority in Anaheim, as people from Mexico to South America settled here, joining Latino families who have been in Anaheim for generations. In the 2010 census, Hispanics accounted for 53 percent of Anaheim’s population, up from 9 percent in 1970.

Many believe that Latinos are underrepresented, even ignored, in city government. As city services and resources go to other parts of Anaheim – particularly to the wealthier Anaheim Hills area and the resort district near Disneyland – tensions in Latino communities have simmered.

Indeed, the demographics of Anaheim hint at two, distinct cities. Anaheim Hills is 58 percent white and 19 percent Latino, whereas central and southern Anaheim are 20 percent white and 67 percent Latino. At least some city services are different too, with Anaheim Hills having 11.6 parks per 50,000 people vs. a ratio of 7.7 parks per 50,000 people in south and central Anaheim, according to a recent report.

Anaheim Hills is also home to four of the city’s five council members, including Mayor Tom Tait. The fifth, Councilwoman Gail Eastman, lives in a historic enclave known as the Colony. None are Latino except for Councilwoman Lorri Galloway, who is half-Latina and half-Filipina.

Taken together, the Hills and the Colony also account for the majority of lower-level commissioners – the minor leagues of local politics.

Money also is a factor. The four council members from Anaheim Hills each raised more than $100,000 for their last elections, outspending their opponents by tens of thousands of dollars. Eastman raised much less, but won the endorsement of the city’s Chamber of Commerce.

In January, the council voted 3-2 to approve a tax subsidy worth as much as $158 million for a developer to build two luxury hotels near Disneyland. To many in the Latino community, it was a slap in the face.

They had been asking for small improvements – after-school hours at a library in the low-income Ponderosa neighborhood near Disneyland, for example. They were told there was no money in the budget. And yet as they saw it, millions were now going to a private developer.

Business leaders and others said the subsidy would create jobs by spurring development during tough economic times. The money, they said, would come from revenue generated from the new hotels, if they were built – not at the expense of any neighborhood projects.

In June – a month before the most recent shootings and subsequent protests – three Latino leaders filed suit against the city, demanding changes in city government. Their lawsuit, backed by the American Civil Liberties Union, calls for council members to be elected by districts rather than at-large; a change they believe would break up the Anaheim Hills’ political dominance and encourage more people from more neighborhoods to run for office.

One of the leaders who filed suit, Jose Moreno, 42, a trustee of the Anaheim City School District and president of the group Los Amigos, said the city and its Police Department have work to do to improve relations with Latinos.

“Police don’t do their work in a vacuum,” he said. “For them to rebuild relationships in our communities, we need to feel like part of the political system – like we are sharing in the resources of this city.

“In the same way, kids don’t decide to join gangs in a vacuum. Those city resources aren’t coming to us.”

‘AFRAID TO COME OUT’

Police estimate that 2,500 documented gang members claim turf in Anaheim. They belong to some 35 active gangs – all, police say, are Latino except for one African American gang.

By comparison, the police force arrayed against them is overwhelmingly white. The department has 363 officers; 82 are Hispanic and 249 are white.

The relationship between Anaheim’s police force and its Latino communities has long been strained.

For example, in the late 1990s, prominent activist Amin David sued the city after he learned police had compiled a dossier on him. But David and other Latino leaders said the relationship had seemed to be improving in recent years, especially with the hiring of Chief John Welter in 2004.

Welter brought a focus on community policing – officers walking the streets, talking face-to-face with residents, not just chasing crime calls. He also changed department policy to prohibit background checks on residents not suspected of a crime. David once called the changes under Welter a renaissance.

But in hard-hit neighborhoods like Anna Drive, where Diaz was shot, resentment and suspicion of police still run deep. The department has stepped up its gang-enforcement efforts in the past few years, responding to a jump in some violent crimes and gang activity – sending more officers into neighborhoods where they are not universally welcomed.

“There’s far more of the law-abiding residents in those neighborhoods,” said Kerry Condon, the president of the Anaheim Police Association and a longtime officer. “They’re just afraid to come out.”

Police point to Anna Drive as an example of what Condon is talking about. When an explosion ripped through an apartment there not long ago, nobody called the police – nobody until the landlord got word 12 hours later.

Police say that around 5,000 people live in that small neighborhood and are scared into silence by the 100 or so members of a notorious gang that claims it as home turf. “That neighborhood has gotten the most attention from us than any other neighborhood in recent years because of the level of violence and activity,” said Sgt. Juan Reveles, who supervises the gang unit.

Nora Moscosa lives just down the street from Anna Drive and has called Anaheim her home for 19 years. The problem as she sees it: “There is not that same respect that there was before. Before, the police respected the people and the people respected the police. Nowadays, you don’t see that.

“But these are problems that have been around for so long,” she added. “It’s difficult to fix just with words.”

Theresa Smith has stood every Sunday outside the Anaheim Police Department, a mother’s protest against the death of her son. In 2009, Caesar Cruz was shot and killed by officers. Police said he accelerated through a parking lot when they tried to stop him. Smith calls it excessive force and a wrongful death.

She’s been joined in her quiet dissent by families of other men, most of them Latino, who have been shot and killed in recent years by Anaheim police. Their protests escalated in March, when an officer shot and killed a 21-year-old father. Police said he was a known gang member and was with a group of young men, at least one of whom had a weapon.

More than 100 people packed a meeting with police later that month and demanded justice. As pressure grew in the community, the city agreed in June to launch an independent investigation into “major police incidents,” including past officer-involved shootings.

“I’ve waited a long time,” Smith said at the time.

Barely a month later, on the afternoon of July 21, officers on a gang-enforcement patrol in the Anna Drive neighborhood pulled up to a small group of men. By all accounts, Manuel Diaz, 25 and a convicted gang member, ran.

Officers gave chase down an alley and into the front yard of an apartment house. People nearby heard two gunshots. The police association later said officers saw Diaz pull something from his waistband and turn. Diaz’s mother says he was shot in the back of the legs and the back of the head and has sued the city for $50 million. Diaz was found to be unarmed.

Many residents who knew Diaz from the neighborhood said police overreacted. On the afternoon of the shooting, they gathered near the shooting site, yelling at officers and demanding answers. Officers fired beanbag rounds and pepper balls into the crowd at close range; a police dog charged into the crowd, toppling a baby stroller and biting one person on the arm.

Welter later apologized, saying the police dog broke loose from its handler.

The next night, as protests flared in the Anna Drive neighborhood, a gang investigator tried to pull over a stolen car a few miles away, then chased a man who got out and fled. Police said the man, later identified as Joel Mathew Acevedo, also a convicted gang member, fired at officers during the foot chase; the investigator shot back, killing him. A police photograph later showed a handgun lying near his body.

Two days. Two fatal shootings.

‘NOBODY SPEAKS FOR ME’

As night fell on July 24 – the fourth night of protests – police ordered a crowd of about 1,000 people to disperse. Some had come from the neighborhoods to again push for change from the City Council; others had come from the Occupy movement, Kelly’s Army, socialist groups and By Any Means Necessary – outside groups who had come to Anaheim to protest police brutality.

The crowd greeted the police order with jeers. Minutes later, officers in black riot gear answered with the pop-pop of pepper balls fired at close range, followed by the boom of beanbag rounds. The crowd scattered; some marched north, where a few protesters smashed windows.

About 200 protesters took to the streets again July 29, some banging on drums and chanting over bullhorns. They came from Occupy movements around Southern California, the Brown Berets, By Any Means Necessary and self-identified Communist groups. Members of Occupy San Diego organized a caravan to Anaheim.

“The system won’t change unless we keep the pressure up,” said Adam Lerman, 42, of By Any Means Necessary, who drove from Los Angeles after hearing about the Diaz shooting. “These people need answers, and this is all of our fight.”

Orange County’s Occupy movement held an emergency meeting on the morning of the protests. Its members agreed to take to the streets as well – but as peacekeepers, pleading with those who used the Occupy name to remain peaceful, media liaison George Olivio said. “We tell them, please respect the families. The families want this to be done appropriately.”

The loud protest did not include many of the Latino leaders and residents who, for years, had been asking for change from the City Council. On July 29, they marched in silence outside City Hall with a group calling itself Somos Anaheim, or We Are Anaheim.

The Anna Drive neighborhood also distanced itself from the outside protesters. When members of a Los Angeles-based group arrived at the neighborhood for an evening march last week, residents asked them to leave.

And in a city as large as Anaheim, the loudest voices don’t always speak for everyone.

“I am an American Mexican, and nobody speaks for me,” said Paul Gonzalez, 52, who lives in West Anaheim. “I think with the economy the way it is, people all across this city are suffering. Resources are limited, no matter what your background is.

“I think our cops are doing a fine job dealing with some really tough problems, including gangs. Parents and their kids need to take personal responsibility to improve their lives.”

Some protesters have indicated that they plan to continue their demonstrations.

“If we don’t protest, we’re saying it’s OK,” said Olin Tezcatlipoca, director of the Los Angeles-based Mexica Movement, which plans to protest peacefully in front of Disneyland every weekend.

The group Anonymous called for a worldwide boycott of Anaheim and urged residents: “Stand up to the police, and do not accept their brutality any longer.”

The City Council in recent weeks has taken up the idea of electing council members from districts spread throughout the city rather than from the city as a whole. It has discussed sending the idea to a citizens committee for more study or sending it to the ballot for a vote – but has yet to make a decision.

The council also will hold a special meeting on Wednesday to hear from residents. The meeting will take place in the sprawling auditorium of Anaheim High School to ensure there is room for a crowd.

“We’re trying to get everybody to come together – the education community, nonprofits, faith-based groups and the arts community,” Mayor Tom Tait said. “The goal is to create a plan so the people of all of our neighborhoods, at the end of the day, have hope.”

Contact the writer: 714-704-3777 or dirving@ocregister.com