Lives in Jeopardy : Pilot LAPD Program Tries to Get to Youngsters Before Gang Members Do

Like some morbid wallpaper, the yellow ID cards that cover the walls of the office illustrate the grim cycle of life and death for many young men in the northeast San Fernando Valley.

Faded and curled with age, the cards picture some 40 gang members who have died at the hands of others. The simple notes in red ink provide only a hint of the violence with which they met their ends.

“Killed by inmates in Wayside Honor Rancho.”

“Killed in San Quentin.”

“Deceased: Shot by homeboy.”

The gallery is the introduction Los Angeles Police Officers Isaac Galvan and Richard Stocks give teen-agers to a side of gang life they may have never seen.

As coordinators of Jeopardy, a pilot gang-intervention program being tested in the Los Angeles Police Department’s Foothill Division, Galvan and Stocks try to prevent youths from joining a street gang by describing the consequences and providing a glimpse of life outside the barrios of the northeast Valley.

About 100 young people are currently involved in the program, but it is growing by about 50 a month.

Unlike other police anti-gang programs that have been tested and discontinued, Jeopardy targets girls and boys before they become heavily involved in gang activity. It heads off youngsters identified by school officials, family members or officers on patrol as being at risk and puts them immediately into a structured program of family counseling, close supervision and regular recreational activities such as sports and outings.

“What we’re trying to do is build self-confidence, self-discipline and self-reliance--all the things these kids don’t have,” said Stocks, a former high school assistant principal who joined the department 10 years ago.

In the year since the program began, Stocks and Galvan have organized a girls’ softball league, found sponsors for an after-school karate program, subsidized participation in Pop Warner football and arranged trips for youths who are trying to resist the pressure of joining a gang.

“We want to give them something to do besides just hanging out,” said Galvan, who grew up in the housing projects of Pacoima. “What saved me was Little League and football.”

Gang experts said the program has worked well so far, largely because it attempts to address the roots of the gang problem and involves parents and schools to create an environment in which teen-agers are constantly reminded that they can decide what their future will be. Stocks and Galvan regularly visit the teen-agers in their program to check their progress, and parents are closely involved from the beginning.

In the past, most Los Angeles police anti-gang efforts focused on current gang members, either by hauling them en masse to jail or by trying to persuade them to drop their affiliation. Neither strategy proved successful in substantially reducing the number of gang members. Always there were plenty of youths to take the places of gang members either incarcerated or interred.

“Once a kid is in a gang, it’s almost impossible to get him out,” Galvan said. “He’s either going to outgrow it or get arrested or get killed.”

But “when you catch them at the ‘wanna-be’ stage and you can rally enough resources, then they won’t join gangs at all,” said Ed Turley, an area manager for the Community Youth Gang Service Project based in East Los Angeles.

Galvan and Stocks said they look for youths who appear to be heading toward life in a gang--either through who they associate with, how they dress or how they act at school and home--but have not yet made a commitment to join.

The officers then call the youth and parents to arrange a meeting where the consequences of gang activity are outlined. After the initial meeting, families often are referred to counseling and parents are encouraged to allow their children more freedom if the youth improves school grades or stays out of trouble.

According to Stocks and Galvan:

About 90% of gang members are arrested by age 18. To give youths an idea of what incarceration is like, the officers take them through the Foothill station jail, showing them the public showers, flimsy mattresses, scratchy blankets and tiny cells.

Only 5% of gang members finish high school. Galvan and Stocks make regular visits to schools to check on the academic progress of students involved in the program.

And 60% are either dead or in prison by age 20.

So far this year, at least 11 people have died in gang-related violence in the Foothill Division. That’s three more than died in all of 1990.

David Pacheco does not plan on adding his life to that number.

A 13-year-old eighth-grader at Olive Vista Junior High in Sylmar, David said he used to think the gang members he saw at school and in his neighborhood were cool, tough guys. He emulated their walk and their attitude. His father, Jay, feared that David might end up actually becoming a gang member, instead of just acting like one.

So he introduced David to Stocks and Galvan, who gave him the introductory tour of the jail and let him look at the gallery on their office wall. Pacheco said his son did not seem upset initially, but he gradually noticed David trying to distance himself from the gang culture.

He got involved in karate, changed the way he talked to his parents and teachers. And, David said, he is learning to respect himself. He wants to be an undercover police officer.

“It’s changed me a lot,” David said. “When I was little, I used to think those guys were cool. But they’re punks. They’re lowlifes.”

But for every youth like David, there are several who find themselves sucked into the dangerous life of gang culture. And Galvan and Stocks speculated the problem may get worse before it gets better. It may take several years for the results of their work to show in dwindling gang membership and declining homicide rates.

Foothill Capt. Tim McBride said he will continue the program beyond the two-year pilot program. Even so, funding is hard to find. The program grant pays only the two officers’ salaries. Galvan uses his own word processor to type letters and requests for grants.

The tiny treasury, funded by community groups and local businesses, pays for programs month to month.

The officers themselves seem uniquely suited to the job.

Galvan grew up in the housing projects of Pacoima, and it was in part through his contact with police officers that he saw a world beyond the barrio. After graduating from CSUN and a stint in the Army, he joined the Los Angeles Police Department nearly 10 years ago. Much of that time was spent on patrol, sometimes arresting the men who were boys with him in the projects.

“I know how these kids feel,” Galvan said. “I understand them.”

Talking to kids, Galvan sometimes is more confrontational than his partner, and his voice carries tones of both disgust and compassion when he talks to teen-agers failing in their promises. At one house, for instance, a 15-year-old eighth-grader had missed his third day of school and after twice lying about why he had stayed home, Galvan seemed angry.

“What are you going to do?” Galvan asked, apparently frustrated and leaning slightly toward the boy with his back against the stucco wall of his Arleta home. The boy looked down, then up, his eyes glassy, not quite teary.

Stocks took a different approach. He talks with the voice of an efficient school administrator, letting the teen-agers tell their stories, then explaining how he sees things. For the truant 15-year-old, Stocks suggested that he and his partner come pick the boy up for school every morning.

Of course, that would mean riding, cuffed, in the back of an unmarked police cruiser.

“That wouldn’t look too cool,” he said.

But neither would having a yellow card tacked to the officers’ wall.