Shifting Focus

So far, Los Angeles’ answer to drug-driven gang violence has focused on a crude cure, mostly in the form of police sweeps. For a secure future, the focus must switch to prevention, to keeping youngsters off drugs and out of gangs. On Monday Mayor Tom Bradley asked the experts where to start and what would work. With those questions answered, he can turn to city business leaders to ask where the money will come from.

The mayor posed his first questions to 200 educators, ministers, lawyers, health administrators, community workers, cops and block club leaders at a gang-and-drug-prevention conference. What emerged most clearly from the standing-room-only sessions was that programs must focus on the most vulnerable children, the minority who get into trouble and stay there.

The advisers urged the mayor to aim high. If a youngster needs help of any kind at home or in school, he should have it. Sports and music should be available, complete with uniforms. Counseling, training and jobs should be at hand.

The participants also recommended more classes in drug prevention, gang prevention and nonviolence at all grade levels; more aggressive drop-out counselors and truant officers to get children to school and to keep them there; more special attention for the average children who don’t get into trouble; more adult literacy programs; more teen pregnancy programs; more residential drug-treatment programs; more research; more sanctions on parents who allow their children to sell drugs; more jobs; more housing; more cops; more jails, more dollars. Nothing less will result in a less drugged, less violent society.

There is some extra government money available, but not nearly enough. The mayor and the Los Angeles City Council, at the urging of members Bob Farrell and Richard Alatorre, have approved $2.1 million for gang-prevention activities. The Community Redevelopment Agency has approved $2 million for a pilot after-school day-care program at 10 elementary schools, beginning in September.

Congress may provide additional support. The House has approved the Juvenile Justice Act, which includes a proposal by Rep. Augustus F. Hawkins (D-Los Angeles) to authorize $10 million for gang-prevention and -treatment programs in cities like Los Angeles where the need is greatest.

Much more money is needed. Because government in California is strapped by a decade’s accumulation of anti-spending laws, the mayor must take his case to corporations and other donors. He must lead an effort to persuade the city’s business leaders to join forces as they seldom have done in recent years to produce something that is as crucial to their own well-being as it is to the young people whose lives would be saved: a serious, functioning drug- and gang-prevention program. It is the only way to give thousands of young people a drug-free, educated and involved future. It is the only way to guarantee a vibrant future for Los Angeles.