Haven From Gangs Lost to Fire

Three days ago, Gwen Hubbard took her boys to Will Rogers Memorial Park and signed them up for a youth basketball league. That night the gym was destroyed by fire.

Having just moved to Watts from West Los Angeles, she thought the league would allow her boys to make new friends in their new neighborhood. Now she doesn’t know what they’re going to do.

Like Hubbard’s boys, Gevon, 10, and Gino, 7, others who used the gymnasium with its fine wood floor, fiberglass backboards and lighted stage may be without a place to play and socialize for a long time. The fire, believed to be arson, gutted the brick building, causing about $200,000 damage.

But this gym was more than a brick-encased basketball court. It served as a positive magnetic field--one that lured kids away from gangs, drugs and the streets to a healthier, safer environment.

“This was the chill spot . . . a neutral area,” said recreation supervisor Al Morgan. “It was the only thing this community has where you could go knowing you didn’t have to sweat it. You were safe here.”

The park does seem to be a haven from a prevalent gang problem. Unlike many parks in Los Angeles, this county-run facility, which also has two playgrounds, a baseball field and swimming pool, is remarkably clean and free of graffiti.

Morgan said the gym attracts 40 to 60 people a day, including the nearly 100 youths who participate in basketball leagues. He will try to continue the leagues, he said, holding practices on a weather-beaten outdoor court and games in other gyms.

“There’s no other place these kids can go,” Morgan said. “It’s not like they can just walk to another gym. (The closest ones) are about five miles away.

Like Morgan, Hubbard fears that local youths will become bored, making them easy targets for gangs--and trouble.

“What are these kids going to do now?” Hubbard asked. “Now there’s nothing they can do except gang-bang.”

Carl Monk, 19, has been playing in a league for older teens for three years. He, too, has experienced the gang pressure but said the gym helped him to stay out of “the wrong crowd.”

“On days when there was nothing to do but hang out and get in trouble, I used to come down here and play ball,” he said, adding that now that the gym is gone he thinks “things will start heating up.”

“I noticed that on days when the gym was closed for some kind of program, the gangs would come down . . . looking for trouble,” Monk said. “But when the gym was open, there was no problem. Now they might be pushing people again.”

Morgan agreed that gangs might begin to exert more influence in the neighborhood but said that the problem is controllable and its growth can be prevented.

“Gangs are a lot of kids with nothing to do,” he said. “There’s only trouble when they are in packs. But one on one, they’re nothing.

“But if you can pull them away, give them something good to do, they’re going to come back and play. And they’re not going to come back with their gang friends.”

According to Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy Ron Ablott, the fire started in a seldom used area behind the stage. No flammable liquids or explosive devices have been discovered, but Ablott said the blaze was probably touched off by a match or lighter.

“I just hope they can get the building open by summer,” Morgan said. “I wish we could just . . . cut through all the red tape and start building it now.”