Fighting Off Gangs’ Allure : Recreation: Boys in a gang-ridden area of Los Angeles are learning boxing skills--and discipline--in a police station basement.

Seventy pounds isn’t much to swagger with, but Rudy Aparicio was doing it, and doing it well.

His small feet danced lightly in thin, flat shoes as he settled a rubber mouthpiece over his teeth and fixed his gaze on the contender across the ring. With a push from his trainer--his father--in the corner, he headed straight for his target.

And then--BAM. It was a left hook that would have made Mike Tyson proud. Maybe even a little nervous.

“Tirale abajo,” his father cried from behind the ropes. “Hit him low.”

A hulking police officer stood nearby, nodding approvingly.

This was simple sparring practice for 10-year-old Aparicio, who had his steely gaze set on a more important contest: a national championship.

The fifth-grader is one of two boys who on Wednesday left his Northeast Los Angeles neighborhood to fight in Marshalltown, Iowa, today through Sunday in the American Boxing Federation’s Silver Gloves tournament.

He and Gus Oliveros, 13, recently battled through state and regional competitions for the opportunity. But they and others beat heavier odds, some say, when they joined the boxing club at the Los Angeles Police Department’s Northeast Division Station.

“We’ve got a bunch of kids who are ex-gang members and current gang members. I’ve arrested a few of them,” said Officer Tony Ramirez, a competitive weightlifter and the coordinator of the free program, officially called the Northeast Police Youth Athletic League.

“The chances of them coming out of their neighborhoods OK is pretty dim. They usually compete to get a place at dinner. Now they’re competing in the ring, and some are shooting at a national championship.”

In the basement of the police station on San Fernando Road, where a boxing ring and weightlifting equipment take up most of a small room, about 30 to 40 boys spend each afternoon learning discipline and gaining strength.

Volunteers who run the nearly 2-year-old club say the participants, ranging in age from 8 to 20, have much in common: Most are Latino teen-agers who live in crime- and drug-infested neighborhoods in Northeast Los Angeles. Many are often invited to join gangs; some do. Many come from poor or troubled homes and don’t do well in school.

It is a shot at local, state and national championships--and a future in professional boxing, clean of crime or drugs--that separate them from their peers on the street, said Frank Razo, a volunteer trainer who helped start the program.

“It’s these kinds of success stories that will keep these kids in here and off the streets,” said Razo, a 32-year-old police officer candidate, referring to Aparicio and Oliveros. The boys in the program are the ones most at risk of becoming criminals, he said. “Some people say, ‘Isn’t boxing going to make them meaner?’ I don’t think so. It turns them away from anger and into discipline.”

The location of the gym, though, has made police officers in the station jittery, Ramirez said. Graffiti has been found in the hallway outside the room, which is just down the hall from the CRASH program--Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums.

Volunteers said they were looking for a new location to accommodate more boys and more equipment, but that funding for the program had almost run dry.

The officers sometimes have misgivings about locating the gym in the station.

“It’s tough enough to deal with gang members out on the street,” Ramirez said. “But then you come back here and see kids you’ve arrested and kids you know are bad here in the station. It’s like you arrest a burglar in someone else’s house, and now he’s here as a guest in your house.”

But strict rules keep most participants in line, Razo said. Boxers are not allowed to wear gang attire, such as khaki cutoff shorts or headbands while training, Razo said. They are instructed to enter the gym only through the back door of the police station.

On a recent Friday, about a dozen boys were using the gym, some punching speed bags, some jumping rope, some milling about Razo. A few looked in the mirrors on the walls, then glanced enviously at Ramirez, who stood near the ring with his arms folded and his muscles bulging.

Aparicio was sparring with Jimmy Gomez, another 10-year-old who won a junior division state championship but lost in the regionals. Aparicio’s father, also named Rudy, who said he was once a flyweight champion in Mexico, called out instructions to his son in Spanish.

Later, Henry Gomez, Jimmy’s father and another ex-boxer, arrived to help Razo instruct the kids. The elder Gomez, a construction worker from Mexico, recruited not only his son, but other boys in his neighborhood for the program, he said.

“It’s a gangs area, but almost all the kids are here now,” said Gomez, happily describing his Elysian Valley neighborhood as he replaced a sweaty T-shirt with a fresh sweat shirt. “From my own experience, I tell them that the street’s no good. It’s better to be here. When they start to learn to fight, they want to fight anywhere or anybody. But later on, they learn to be disciplined.”

A few minutes later, Oliveros took a break from training and sat on a bench near the gym’s boxing ring. He, like most of the boxers, learned about the club from friends, he said. For the past year he has come for two hours every day from his home on Drew Street--cited by police as one of the heaviest drug-trafficking neighborhoods in the area.

“Before this I was on the streets in the afternoons, hanging around with a group of kids,” said Oliveros, a soft-spoken, shy boy outside the boxing ring. “They tried to get me in a gang. I backed out of it a lot of times, but I still hung out with them. I didn’t like it. I just did it to stay away from home.”

Oliveros, an eighth-grader at Irving Junior High School, said that in the past he was suspended frequently for fighting. Now he throws his punches only in the ring. He used to be offered drugs by neighborhood dealers and friends. Now he only “does” apple vinegar--to stop nosebleeds during a fight.

“I know a lot of gang members who come here to stay out of trouble. But here, they have to be friends. We’re like a team. We help each other out.”

“Yeah,” piped up Juan Sotomayor, 14, another Drew Street resident who resumed boxing about three weeks ago after healing a broken hand. He broke it, he said, while fighting to protect his brother from a gang member.

“Some guys come in here and say, ‘Where are you from?’ Sotomayor said, the standard gang affiliation inquiry that often leads to fights. “And we say, ‘Take it outside,’ because we don’t want any problems in here.”

Which, according to some of the boxers, is exactly what they do. Some boys leave the gym, and, out of sight of any trainers and officers, fight without rules or discipline, they said.

“It’s hard to change them. We know the realities. Some of these kids come here only because they have no place else to go,” Ramirez said. “You can do everything you want--cram books down these kids’ heads, teach them about drugs and gangs. But most of them don’t have anything else after school. Most of them don’t even have families that care.”

“It’s just a matter of having somebody there to guide you,” he continued, “and a matter of having programs like this available.”