Job Project Keeps Gang Members Busy : It Beats Streets, Say Youths From S.E. San Diego

Last year, 17-year-old Rochelle Shelby spent the summer of an idle teen-ager’s dream, watching soap operas and “hanging out.”

This summer Shelby is spending her days clearing brush from canyons around Lake Hodges and on other city-owned property.

Shelby and her 33 co-workers are involved in a program that provides street gang members from Southeast San Diego with a summer job and spending money, and keeps them off the streets.

“These kids are too tired to run the streets at night,” said Herman Collins, project consultant for the Triple Crown Youth Coalition, a community group in Southeast San Diego.

The teen-agers work six-hour days at $3.35 an hour. Besides the tedious work, they also have to contend with rattlesnakes, rats and scorpions. But participants are glad to have a job.

“This gives me something to do instead of running the streets,” Shelby said. “Besides, I like making the money so I can help my grandmother pay her bills.”

The gang employment program was proposed in May by the San Diego Crime Commission and the Triple Crown Youth Coalition. The embattled program was all but scrapped last week when the San Diego City Council killed funding for the project, citing the high cost of liability insurance.

However, the next day the council reversed its decision and altered a policy requiring the project’s organizers to obtain liability protection, which carried a price tag of as much as $25,000 for the two-month program. The city assumed liability in case of an accident.

Members of the California Conservation Corps trained the youths for the project last week. Participants started work at Lake Hodges last Friday.

The federal Regional Employment and Training Consortium is funding salaries for the youths. The City Council allocated $23,000 to the program to pay the five adult supervisors and provide the youngsters with uniforms.

Although rival gang members work together, membership is made clear during the lunch break when the youths wearing red bandannas separate from youths wearing blue bandannas. The reds are the Crips and the blues are the Piru.

“This is hard work,” said 15-year-old Herman Thompson. “But we haven’t had any problems getting along.”

Shelby said the temporary peace between the gangs during work doesn’t necessarily carry over to the streets.

Supervisor Ray Smith quickly halted the dissension among the youths when they complained about the work and wanted to extend the lunch break by 30 minutes.

“You came to work, and you are going to work,” Smith said.

“We often have to do a lot of screaming and hollering,” Collins said.

Collins said that an additional 14 youths will start work next week, and that the program may extend into the fall.

“We are hoping that we can convince the city to implement the program throughout the year with the city’s brush management program,” he said.

“This program gives the kids a chance to be successful,” Collins said. “The kids have to overcome their feelings of not wanting to participate and their fear of failure. The only way they can overcome that is by trying and trying.”