Fed-up Venice residents hire ex-MS-13 gangbangers to take back homeless war zone

Fed-up residents of an exclusive Venice Beach enclave have hired ex-MS-13 gangbangers to do what the woke-addled, cash-strapped city can’t — battle back against a “war zone’’ of homelessness.“I don’t know what we would do without them,” Venice apartment owner Rick Swinger told the California Post of the former gangster enforcements.Swinger is one of about 250 disgusted locals and a slew of businesses among the iconic California region’s multimillion-dollar beachside homes who have been paying the unconventional “Ghost Town Consultants’’ firm monthly to curb the local chaos caused by massive sprawling homeless encampments.“We were in a war zone,” said Swinger of life before the private security showed up, mainly targeting the vagrant-choked main thoroughfare Rose Avenue.“We saw everything,’’ he said of the lawless havoc, where up to 200 vagrants had been setting up a tent city so large that the road was soon dubbed “Skid Rose” — and even overwhelmed parts of the LA County beach’s world-famous Boardwalk.“I got hurt, my wife got threatened.We called for help — no one showed up,’’ said Swinger — who would sometimes openly wear a full HazMat suit complete with helmet during weekly attempted city cleanups to mimic the hapless municipal workers there and make a point to county officials.“It just kept getting worse,” the husband said of the situation.So he and dozens of other homeowners and businesses now pony up a monthly fee starting around $300 a pop to pay for the security patrols — a group of roughly 12 people including founders Bobby Luna and Ricky Myers — to check their properties through the day, photograph conditions and send owners regular updates.Luna is a reformed alcoholic with deep Venice ties, and Ricky Myers was homeless at 15 and once involved with the notorious MS-13 gang in the Oakwood neighborhood of Venice.When asked if there were other former gang members working for Ghost Town, the pair w...