Broad Anti-Gang Plan Nears OK

By ANDREA FORD

Oct. 8, 1996 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

After years of pouring millions of dollars into anti-gang programs whose success is largely unmeasurable, city officials are expected to approve, perhaps as early as this week, a new approach that experts hope will be more effective than anything tried in the past.

The proposal, called L.A. Bridges, would cost $9.1 million annually and will be considered by the City Council on Wednesday.

If approved, it would for the first time require competitive bidding for groups seeking city money to attack gang problems, hold all such groups to the same general standards, coordinate their efforts and require them to show results to gain continued financing. The program would more than double the amount the city spends on gang programs and would be in place for four years.

Ultimately, all the city-funded gang programs would fall under L.A. Bridges, which would be overseen by a new administrator and seven staff members.

Community oversight panels would design anti-gang strategies tailored to the needs of specific areas of the city.

Some cite what they say are shortcomings in the plan, such as insufficient funding and failure to address joblessness in areas where gang activity is pervasive.

Still, even those who raise concerns applaud its innovations.

“I haven’t seen a program like this ever,” said Michael Genelin, longtime head of the Los Angeles County district attorney office’s hard-core gang unit.

“We have had programs that have been repeatedly funded, and there has never been any assessment of their effectiveness,” Genelin said. “Those programs have goals and objectives but we have no idea if they have been met.”

Genelin praised the “community-based” approach, noting that it recognizes the different character--and different problems--of Los Angeles’ diverse neighborhoods.

L.A. Bridges has tentatively targeted 18 of the city’s 52 middle schools, those with the highest levels of violent crime in surrounding neighborhoods. Middle schools were chosen because youths ages 10 to 14 were deemed to be those most at risk for gang involvement. The schools currently on the list could change during council deliberations.

In addition to nonprofit, grass-roots anti-gang groups, the program also will draw on the resources of the schools, parents, businesses and libraries in the neighborhoods, police and other government agencies.

If the program is successful and more money is available at the end of the funding period, other schools would be included.

L.A. Bridges would undergo ongoing evaluations and a thorough review by an outside consultant at the end of the four years.

The principals of the schools targeted did not learn of their proposed involvement in the program until last month, when L.A. Bridges was first announced and they were contacted by reporters.

Some said they did not have extensive or overt gang activity on their campuses, but welcomed programs to keep it that way. Those who were interviewed acknowledged that gangs operated in the neighborhoods around their schools. Some said they probably had gang members in their classrooms.

“I hope they use [the program] to do some work with parents,” said Carolyn R. Baker, principal at Sutter Middle School in Winnetka in the west San Fernando Valley. “Parents need to understand the consequences of their children’s involvement in gangs.”

Willard Love, principal at Gompers Middle School in South-Central Los Angeles, said he would welcome “anything that could help” beef up school programming to steer youngsters away from gangs.

The City Council is expected to approve the program, and even if changes are made it is scheduled to be operating by July 1.

All city funding for current programs is set to end Jan. 31, but the city is looking for ways to continue funding the more than two dozen groups during the five-month gap.

Some may cease to exist. Community Youth Gang Services, year after year, had received a sizable chunk of city money--$1.2 million in 1995-96 alone. But the agency’s volunteer interim director, Eleanor Montano, said the city does not intend to fund it under L.A. Bridges.

The 15-year-old agency tried to stem the escalation of gang violence through the intervention of streetwise workers--in some cases former gang members. It was closed after county funding also dried up, Montano said.

City officials and others attributed the agency’s loss of funding to a lack of accountability and long-standing internal management problems.

Montano, who also is president of a group called Mothers and Men Against Gang Violence, took over the agency last month for just long enough to shut it down. She was on the 21-member committee whose hearings over the last year led to the creation of L.A. Bridges by the city Community Development Department.

The City Council created the committee, made up of council members, academics, community activists and law enforcement representatives, after the September 1995 shooting death of 3-year-old Stephanie Kuhen. The girl was killed by suspected gang members in Cypress Park.

Last month, the committee unanimously approved the L.A. Bridges proposal, but some members raised concerns about aspects that they felt the plan did not adequately address.

Lou Negrete, a professor at Cal State L.A., complained that $9.1 million a year was not enough to deal with one of the city’s most intractable social problems.

Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas concurred, but said little could be done about that. “I agree about the money,” he said, “but we are dealing with finite resources.”

He noted that the $9.1 million that will be devoted to L.A. Bridges over each of the next four years is double what the city has been allotting annually to anti-gang programs.

Malcolm Klein, a professor of sociology at USC and a well-known expert on gangs, said he too would like to see more money for L.A. Bridges, but pointed out that $9.1 million was “a major infusion.”

Other concerns also have surfaced.

Montano worried that with the demise of Community Youth Gang Services, the needs of youths already deeply involved in gangs would be ignored.

Councilman Mike Hernandez and Father Gregory Boyle, a Catholic priest who has worked extensively with Eastside gangs, complained about a lack of attention to job training for gang members who want to leave criminality behind.

Ridley-Thomas denied that L.A. Bridges emphasizes prevention of youths’ involvement in gang activity at the expense of intervention. “Some would argue that prevention is intervention,” he said.

Others believe that programs explicitly aimed at intervention will be possible under L.A. Bridges.

Also, Hernandez said he will push for adding a job training component to L.A. Bridges when the City Council takes up the proposal.

Ridley-Thomas was not concerned that the current L.A. Bridges proposal does not address unemployment. Indeed, many agreed with Genelin of the district attorney’s office that L.A. Bridges is better than any such program proposed in the past.

V. G. Guinses, who has operated a gang-prevention program in South Los Angeles for 16 years, put it this way: “I look at the problem of gangs as a car with four flat tires,” he said. “You fix one tire and the car might not run like it should, but at least you get the car moving. . . . Maybe someone else will come along and fix the other flat tires.”

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Targeted Schools

The $9.1-million annual anti-gang effort initially would target 18 Los Angeles middle schools:

* John Adams

* Audubon

* Hubert Howe Bancroft

* Berendo

* Mary McCleod Bethune

* Luther Burbank

* George Washington Carver

* Richard Henry Dana

* James A. Foshay