War on Gangs, Being Lost on Streets, Shifts to New Arena : School May Be Where Hearts and Minds Are Won

In the war against gang violence in the harbor area, police are losing.

Consider:

During the first eight months of this year, 349 violent gang-related crimes were reported in the Harbor Division of the Los Angeles Police Department, a 29% increase over the same period last year;

Five gang-related murders occurred in the division--which includes San Pedro, Wilmington, Harbor City and southern Harbor Gateway--during the same period, and a fatal shooting at the Normont Terrace housing project in Harbor City last weekend may have been the sixth, police said. There were six for all of last year, according to police statistics.

Eleven times this year, gang members have riddled homes with bullets in drive-by shootings, compared to four times in the same period last year. So far this year, gang members have been involved in 15 rapes, compared to five last year, and eight attempted murders, compared to three.

For the second year in a row, the harbor area ranks fourth in gang violence among 18 police divisions in the city, climbing past the Hollenbeck Division in East Los Angeles and surpassed only by three traditionally high-crime divisions in Watts and South-Central Los Angeles.

Gang membership has been exploding as fast, if not faster, than gang-related crimes. Police know of 1,800 gang members in the harbor area, up 156% from three years ago. They expect the growth to continue.

Frustrated by a seemingly insurmountable enforcement task, police and others who deal with gangs are beginning to look for new ways to combat gang crime--particularly in places away from the streets where the violence reigns. Following the example of drug prevention programs, authorities, social workers and educators now agree that the key to stemming gang violence is to get to potential members--and their families--before the gangs do.

“We have tried the enforcement aspect of this for years, and so far we don’t seem to have made any great headway,” said Police Lt. Mike Markulis of the Harbor Division. “Harbor is not a Sleepy Hollow when it relates to gang activity. We have a serious problem.”

In a move that reflects the philosophical shift from enforcement to prevention, two instructors this week will begin meeting with hundreds of fifth-graders at eight harbor-area elementary schools to persuade them not to join gangs. And at night, the same counselors will target the youths’ parents, encouraging them to find ways to keep their children off the streets.

The 15-week program begins Monday morning at Wilmington Park Elementary School, an overcrowded school in an impoverished, predominantly Latino neighborhood on the edge of Wilmington’s industrial core. It continues Tuesday night in the school’s auditorium when counselors will lay out the fundamentals of the program for parents.

‘Facts About Harsh Life’

“It is important that the children know the facts about the harsh life of gang violence,” said Maria Figueroa, one of two instructors who will lead the program. “A gang is not a social club, like some people pretend it to be. It is really a violent group, and once they join the gang, they will end up in prison--or dead in the cemetery.”

The program, the first in the Los Angeles Unified School District, is modeled after a heralded gang-prevention program introduced three years ago in elementary schools in the Paramount Unified School District. Officials there say that interviews with students who participated showed that none had joined gangs after leaving the fifth grade.

The harbor effort, called the Gang Alternatives Program, has been financed for one year with a $98,000 grant from the United Way and has been set up with the cooperation of the police and school, city and county officials. Figueroa and Hector Galindo, the two instructors, were hired by United Way.

The program was conceived by the San Pedro/Harbor Round Table, a 25-member advisory board of community leaders set up by United Way to find ways to combat youth violence. Similar boards were established in South-Central Los Angeles, where a gang-prevention program is expected to begin in schools next month, and in the Pasadena-Altadena area, where a similar program has begun.

Avoiding Collisions

In announcing the harbor program last week, Angie Papadakis, who chaired the local round table, likened the effort to building barriers on freeways:

“What we are doing . . . is launching a program that will put cement dividers between children and violence. We want to keep them from collisions with gangs and drugs and guns.”

John Greenwood, the Los Angeles Unifed School District trustee who represents the harbor area, said the long-term goal of the program is to eliminate gangs, a sentiment echoed by other educators and police.

“We are looking at this as a kind of pilot program, and I would hope that we would be able to extend it throughout the district,” Greenwood said. “Our goal is to eliminate gangs through education.”

Figueroa and Galindo will meet with about 1,500 fifth-graders from Wilmington Park, Broad Avenue, Fries Avenue, Gulf Avenue and Hawaiian Avenue schools in Wilmington, Normont Terrace School in Harbor City and Bandini Street and Barton Hills schools in San Pedro. The sessions will last about 45 minutes and will be held weekly for three months.

Emphasizing the Worst

The curriculum includes puppet shows, videos, slide shows, readings and lectures on gangs and how they have ruined lives. Classes will emphasize how gang violence tears apart families, endangers relatives’ lives, leads to drug and alcohol abuse and almost certainly guarantees members a life in the ghetto--or in prison.

The instructors will have several meetings with teachers and administrators at the eight schools to encourage their involvement in the program, as well as monthly sessions with parents from each school. The parent sessions are designed to educate families about alternatives to gangs, explain what will happen if children join gangs and give parents clues about how to detect that they have become involved with gangs.

The program also stresses the role of graffiti in promoting gang identity and attracting new members--and how important it is to remove graffiti as soon as it appears. Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores, who represents the harbor area, has provided 300 gallons of paint and a truck donated by the city for the battle against graffiti.

Beginning this week, residents and merchants who want graffiti removed from their property can call the Graffiti Hotline (547-9441) at San Pedro City Hall. The California Conservation Corps, which has a branch at Angels Gate Park, will field the phone calls and dispatch the truck to remove the graffiti, free.

Frustrate the Painters

Flores said the hot line is the first in Los Angeles and that workers will respond to repeat calls, particularly near the eight elementary schools, even if gangs return and spray-paint the property over and over again.

“It is going to take a while, but the people putting it (graffiti) up hopefully are going to get frustrated,” she said.

Police who work with gangs say a consistent--and persistent--graffiti removal campaign is crucial for the gang-prevention program to succeed. Graffiti serves as free advertising for gangs and is their primary form of identification. Eliminate graffiti, police say, and the gangs lose an important source of prestige in the community.

“You can’t go into the fifth grade and tell the kids that gangs are bad and then have them leave the school and see all of this graffiti which glorifies the gang life style,” said Lt. Markulis, who participated in the harbor-area round table. “We have to work with the kids from both ends: Get the kids to come up with it in their own minds that gangs are bad, and then have them walk outside into a clean environment with nothing that identifies gangs.”

‘Clean’ Role Models

While social agencies and private foundations work with gang members on the streets and in government-subsidized housing projects in the harbor area, organizers of the Gang Alternatives Program say their program is different in that it targets youths who have not joined gangs and uses young adults who never belonged to gangs as role models.

“In many other programs, we have reformed drug addicts and reformed gang members, but here we have positive role models--people who have never belonged to a gang,” said Robert Vernon, assistant police chief. “We believe this program is going to do the job.”

Markulis, who has worked with gang members, said anti-gang programs that feature former gang members as counselors often backfire because youths sometimes see the counselors as successful--rather than remorseful--former gang members.

“You are paying ex-members to do a job and giving them status for having been a gang member,” Markulis said.

Finding Alternatives

Both Figueroa, who was born in Ecuador and grew up in the Wilshire area, and Galindo, who was born in Mexico and grew up in Pacoima, said they never joined gangs. Galindo said many youths in his lower-class Latino neighborhood became involved in gangs, but he said he was able to resist the temptation because he had alternatives.

“I was really sports-minded, some teachers took an interest in me, and I started playing basketball,” said Galindo, who is 32 and lives in Playa del Rey. “I had things to fill my time, and my parents encouraged me to participate in sports and keep going to school.”

Added Figueroa: “Education was always the key. I was the first in my family to go through college in this country. It is a matter of determination and looking for the opportunities.”

As Latinos and native Spanish speakers, Figueroa and Galindo said they hope Latino children who might otherwise look to the street for role models will instead turn to them as Latinos who “made it.” Police say the vast majority of gang members in the harbor area are Latinos.

Spanish an Asset

The two counselors (Figueroa was a counselor at California State University, Dominguez Hills, and Galindo worked for a job training program for Latinos) hope their Latino roots will also help them gain the trust of parents. Last week, Figueroa, 25, was busily translating materials and lectures from English to Spanish. She said she originally intended to make all her presentations to parents in English but discovered at a meeting with parents at Wilmington Park School that much of her audience spoke only Spanish.

“I started my speech to them in English and ended up giving it in Spanish,” she said. “The parents welcomed me when I spoke Spanish. They feel very comfortable with it, and it shows them that I am not an intruder.”

Figueroa said all programs for the fifth-graders, however, will be in English, except for a students who speak only Spanish. She said she also intends to encourage parents to learn English.

“It is essential for their children’s education,” she said.

Papadakis, of the United Way, said the agency has committed itself to just one year of funding for the program. But Greenwood of the school board and others said they are searching for long-term sources of funding.

Thomas B. Williams, an executive at Union Oil in Wilmington and chairman of an advisory board set up by the United Way to oversee the program, predicted it will become a fixture in harbor-area schools.

“We are confident we will be able to find a way to continue funding,” he said.

At Wilmington Park School last week, Figueroa and Galindo made a quick stop at a fifth-grade class to let the students know the program begins this week. Figueroa had visited the class several days earlier, and judging by her reception, she apparently had made headway.

Figueroa asked, “Who remembers what a gang is?” All 30 children raised their hands, their bodies stretched from their seats.

“They murder people,” one girl answered.