Pomona to Study Ways to Combat Gangs

The city of Pomona, where a 16-year-old boy randomly killed a California Highway Patrol officer last year to impress the group he wanted to join, has approved $100,000 for a long-term gang-prevention program.

The program will train city employees and community leaders, as well as commission a report to draw up prevention strategies and identify funding sources for future programs.

The unanimous City Council vote Monday followed the recommendations of the mayor’s gang task force and was prompted by the April 21 shooting of CHP Officer Thomas Steiner. Valentino Mitchell Arenas Jr. pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in December, admitting that he aspired to join the 12th Street gang, one of the area’s largest and most ruthless. A Superior Court judge will decide March 10 whether to sentence Arenas to 50 years to life in prison or life without parole.

The city’s plan is still in its beginning stages and may create a database to track the progress of youths receiving public services, Councilman Dan Rodriguez said. If approved, the database would follow a case-management model and may contain information such as a young person’s academic standing, family history and criminal record. The information could then be accessed by school district employees, law enforcement officers and health professionals.

“We don’t know what somebody’s problem is until we’ve clearly identified what’s going on in that person’s house, what’s going on in that person’s school. That’s what this will accomplish,” Rodriguez said.

Pomona Mayor Edward Cortez said the city, which will seek competitive bids from companies specializing in youth crime-prevention efforts in the next two weeks, is modeling their plan after those used in Claremont and San Diego. Although Claremont’s gang problem is minor, city officials said its prevention plan, approved in 1995, has yielded palpable results, including a 7% decrease in teen suicide attempts from 1994 to 2001. The Claremont plan relied on data from student surveys and used it to reorganize and strengthen its youth programs.

“We’ve seen improvement in the number of kids who say they have a caring adult they can turn to, in the number of kids who are not home alone,” said Dick Guthrie, Claremont’s director of human resources.

Pomona, a city of 160,000 about 30 miles east of Los Angeles, has a history of gang problems that have included violent initiation rituals and fierce turf wars. The 12th Street Pomona gang, also known as the Sharkys, has about 1,000 active members, with several hundred more in jail or prison, authorities said.

Homicides have dropped in the past decade, but police say the gang problem is far from over. “We think [gang members] are doing whatever time they do in custody and coming right back out with the same problem [they had when] they went in,” Pomona Police Chief James M. Lewis said.