Gives Them Jobs, Discipline : Tough Boss Shows Gang Members New Way of Life

Baxter Sinclair, the owner of a gas pipeline construction business, had a problem a few years back. He had taken a job at Nickerson Gardens, a huge, cramped, street gang-infested housing project in South Los Angeles, and he was worried that his equipment would be ripped off.

He had an idea. He offered $6-an-hour security jobs to about 10 gang members. It worked. He didn’t lose a shovel. But a funny thing happened. Gang members began walking up to Sinclair and asking him for real jobs--pipeline work, the $15- and $20-an-hour stuff.

This surprised Sinclair, who was born in Jamaica and had come to the United States two decades earlier. He had assumed what a lot of people assume: that gang members would rather support themselves by selling drugs or pulling robberies than by working.

One by one, Sinclair began hiring gang members, extending opportunities to young men who, because of their criminal records, couldn’t find work or, in many cases, didn’t care about working until the 49-year-old boss pestered them into going straight.

Today, about 20 of the 100 men in Sinclair’s Compton-based work crew are former gang members.

For every gang member who has stuck with Sinclair, another has soon quit or was fired and drifted back into a life of crime, drugs or death. Nevertheless, in the big asphalt equipment yard of Sinclair Corp. on Santa Fe Avenue, there is unusual rapport and respect between Sinclair and the men who often feel that he has, in effect, saved their lives.

“The man is the best man I ever ran into,” said Richard Castellano, 34, of Wilmington, who had just gotten out of state prison last year when he saw a Sinclair construction crew, asked Sinclair for a job on the spot and--to his amazement--was given a chance to work as a laborer.

“You wouldn’t meet nobody like Sinclair--some man who wanted to help me whether I wanted it or not, who would make me do it,” said John Allen Black, 30, of Compton. Black--by choice--rarely had worked until Sinclair hired him to guard equipment at Nickerson Gardens in 1984, and then put him on the permanent payroll.

Sinclair’s contempt for street gang members has evolved into heartfelt empathy over the years he has known people like Black.

‘Could Turn Around’

“The streets are full of kids who, if somebody gave them a chance to do something, could turn around,” he said. “I never knew there were so many people who wanted a job. I used to just put them down. I thought they just didn’t want to work. Somebody better take a look at a work program for these guys. The penitentiary is no answer. It costs too much, and they only get harder.”

Sinclair is not just another bleeding heart. He has seen enough to know that some gang members are beyond salvation. “Some of these people just don’t give a damn; they are cold-blooded killers,” he said.

He looks for the ones who might be reclaimed and doesn’t worry about the odds. At work he plays the tough guy who does not tolerate tardiness, sloppiness or, least of all, drug use. He has nagged gang members who missed a day’s work, calling their mothers or wives to prod them. He has gone to court to plead for a lenient sentence for a worker accused of a probation violation. He has called workers into his office on Monday to chew them out after he saw them standing on a street corner Friday night with their old gang pals.

“This man is . . . well, he’s a son of a bitch,” said Sinclair’s office manager, Arthur Ray, a Vietnam veteran who said he was plagued by readjustment problems until he began working for Sinclair.

Firm ‘Is Home for Us’

“To the person who has been in the Army, he’s his drill sergeant. To a person who’s been locked down, he’s his jailer. To a person who never had no discipline in their home or no father, he’s their father. To the person who never had a spirit or believed in God, he’s their preacher. This (company) is home for us. And we will fight you, and anybody else out here, to keep it that way.”

Hearing the description, Sinclair, whose office is decorated with numerous photographs of himself greeting prominent Republican politicians, nodded.

“I am hard with them,” he said. “But if they need to pay their house note, their car note, I help them. If they’re looking for a house and a real estate agent is working against them, I’ve got some of the best attorneys, and I make my attorney look into it. I feel like it’s their home here and somebody gives a damn.” He paused. “And, boy, do they work.”

Like Leonard Frank. Last year Frank was an 18-year-old member of the Lime Street gang in Compton. His idols included people like John Black--not because Black had a job, but because Black had been one of the oldest members of the Lime Street gang. Frank had already spent time in youth camps for attempted murder and “little knickknacks like that,” and was devoting himself to a favorite, all-encompassing activity of gang members: hanging out.

‘Kicking With My Friends’

He was hanging out on a street near his home one day nine months ago when Sinclair drove by to pick up some employees.

“He saw me and asked me what I was doing,” Frank said, still shaking his head good-naturedly over the incident. “I said I was kicking with my friends. He said, ‘Is this all you do every day?’ I said yeah. I told him, I know my life was gonna be kinda hard because of my record, but all I know is gang-banging. So he told me to come on down to his office and have a talk with him.

“He got a heart. To me he’s like a father. If he hadn’t come by the street, I’d probably be in jail or dead. Two of my buddies, a couple hours after I went with Sinclair, they got killed.

“My homeboys, now they say, ‘Man, you don’t got time for me, you don’t hang out with me, you can’t miss a day of work to kick with me?’ I got a nice ’79 El Camino now, money in my pocket, bank account, got my own place, (compared to) guys 20, 30 years old still living with their parents.”

Black was an older, rougher case when he began working for Sinclair. He was 26, used to working a few days and then abandoning a job.

‘Showed Me a Better Way’

“I thought I was on top of the mountain,” he said in a baritone voice. “Like a godfather. I’d mastered the gang-banging life. I took it to the hilt. I hung out right here on Atlantic and Rosecrans at the park, all I did every day was gang-bang--wake up in the morning, go hang out with my homeboys, sell some weed, somebody come over and invade, we go invade them. Did that from the time I was 13. What Sinclair did, he showed me there was a better way.”

Black, who now supervises laborers for Sinclair and is Sinclair’s informal counselor on the ways of gang members, said he was impressed by Sinclair’s toughness and refusal to be conned.

“You can’t run that street stuff on him. He was different from anybody else. He didn’t let no gang-banger come in here and try to run him. He let you know where he stood from the jump. He’s the only person who stuck with me. He put his foot down. He told me: ‘You go back on the street, I’m gonna keep pestering you.’ ”