SANTA ANA : Parents Get Tips in Battle Against Gangs

About 100 parents of junior high school students gathered this week to learn about the early signs of gang activity in children and how to prevent them from joining one of the estimated 70 gangs in Santa Ana.

Greg Rankin, principal of Lathrop Intermediate School, said 90% of the school’s 1,350 students are Latino and most live in south-central Santa Ana, where gang activity is prevalent.

“We want to see these children grow up to be strong, healthy and successful,” Rankin said at the Wednesday night meeting. “We want to prevent them from ever getting into trouble instead of having to help them after they’re in trouble.”

Rankin said students who have strong parental support are less likely to join a gang. He said parents need to make sure their children attend school and are involved in school activities that keep them off the streets.

That message was not lost on Yolanda Reyes, PTA president at Lathrop. She said she lives in an area where many children have succumbed to peer pressure and become one of about 7,000 gang members in the city.

“My children have grown up with many of these kids who have gone wrong,” Reyes said. “The parents have a lot to do with whether or not their kids get involved in gangs. We have ours involved in football and baseball and keep them busy. If parents got more involved and knew where their kids were, this wouldn’t be happening.”

Rankin and other speakers told parents to pay attention to the way their children dress. If they insist on dressing a certain way, it could be a signal that they are beginning to associate with a gang. Parents were also told to know their children’s friends and to keep track of where the children are throughout the day.

“You yourselves are going to have to say you’ve had enough with the gangs,” said Anthony Borbon, program director of Turning Point, a Garden Grove-based gang prevention and intervention program.

“You have to start doing something about this problem because the gang members are out there looking to recruit your children,” Borbon said. “Drugs and gangs have been in Orange County for 40 years. . . . What’s new is the violence within the gangs--the shootings, the deaths, and the funerals. How many people have to die?”

Terry Zlatteff, one of four full-time gang investigators with the Santa Ana Police Department, told the parents that by the time he sees their children, they’ve “either been shot, stabbed or robbed or they’ve shot, stabbed or robbed someone.”

He said if junior high school students are involved in gangs, they are probably not yet full-fledged members because of their age.

“These are the people we can keep away from gangs,” Zlatteff said.