Ex-Convicts Help Steer Juvenile Offenders in a New Direction : Rehabilitation: A police program mixes traditional crime suppression with community relations, youth counseling and neighborhood beautification.

A variation of the television documentary “Scared Straight” was enacted Saturday in a parking lot on San Fernando Road.

In the riveting film, young delinquents were taken to prison for a day. In this version, five ex-convicts came from a halfway house to verbally assail a group of juveniles assembled behind the Los Angeles Police Department’s Northeast Division station.

There were 24 boys in the class. The group included graffiti writers, burglars, gang members and those who were simply incorrigible.

Under a wilting sun, they lined up in two rows and struck a slouchy pose in imitation of standing at attention. Some put on hardened faces, but only succeeded in drawing their instructors’ notice.

“You from Little Valley?” growled Michael Martinez, referring to a piece of gang turf as he leaned almost into a boy with zig-zag cuts in his hair.

Turning into a wild-eyed, arm-waving drill instructor, Martinez told him about the life of gangsters in prison.

“How many neighborhoods don’t like you, man?” he snapped. “How many neighborhoods you got against your neighborhood? Quite a few? Soon as you walk in there, you ain’t going to have no homeboys in the cell with you.”

The session was part of a new policing enterprise that mixes traditional crime suppression with community relations, neighborhood beautification and youth counseling.

Started last fall by Officer Frank DiPaola, the Graffiti Abatement Investigation and Juvenile Rehabilitation program has been transformed into a effort to steer juvenile offenders in a new direction before they go too far astray.

Saturday’s session with the halfway house residents was just the latest of DiPaola’s innovations in a program that started out as an effort to combat graffiti. “Basically . . . I got sick of looking at graffiti,” he said.

DiPaola persuaded the Northeast Division’s officers who work with juveniles to assign graffiti writers charged for the first time to him instead of sending them to Juvenile Hall. After getting the youths to agree to perform 100 hours of community service in return for not being prosecuted, he would take them to the Northeast area’s worst graffiti spots. There, he would stand over them as they took out five-gallon paint cans and rollers and covered over the graffiti they and their friends had put up.

As time went on, DiPaola found ways to enlarge his group. He began using gang cross-reference lists to track down graffiti writers by the names they put on the walls. He’d then go to their homes and ask their parents to turn them over for community service. Some parents, after hearing about the program, asked him to take charge of their incorrigible children.

More recently, a diversion program for first-time offenders at the Northeast Juvenile Justice Center began assigning DiPaola more serious offenders.

“Probation got word of it,” DiPaola said. “Now I have a multitude of probation officers sending me kids as well.”

Today, 40 are enrolled and 20 have completed their 100 hours.

DiPaola and Officer Dominick Colenzo, who has been assigned to the program, take groups out three days a week, including Saturdays.

They try to be both disciplinarian and friend.

“We try to break them, just like a wild horse, then rehabilitate,” DiPaola said. “Then, once we see they are starting to come around, we start giving them a little responsibility.”

The ones who are ready may, for example, supervise others in a specific task, such as painting a bridge.

“Instead of everybody always putting them down and criticizing everything they do, we give them responsibility,” DiPaola said. “Then we start getting respect back.”

Some of the graduates asked if they could keep coming back. A $1,750 grant from the discretionary fund of Los Angeles City Councilman John Ferraro has allowed DiPaola to begin paying them $10 a day.

Although the effects of the anti-graffiti programs are hard to measure, DiPaola’s has proved popular with community groups that are especially pleased to see both police and street youths involved.

The program has gained diverse sponsors. Three fast-food franchises now provide meals for the youths at the end of each workday. Ferraro deputy Bill Garcia used his knowledge of City Hall to acquire a surplus vehicle from another city agency for the program.

“He’s a good guy,” Garcia said, referring to DiPaola. “He has a lot of innovative programs.”

DiPaola’s program is also being studied by the Police Department’s Central Bureau for duplication in other areas as part of a policy requiring every police division to begin anti-graffiti work.

Meanwhile, DiPaola continues to improvise. The idea for Saturday’s “Scared Straight” session came to him when he heard reformed car thief Mike Scott speak at a morning roll call. DiPaola persuaded Scott to talk to the kids and found that he made an impression. He next approached the Orion Halfway House in Van Nuys and got five volunteers for the Saturday session.

The students, already splattered with paint from four hours of work, were brought to the station during lunch break, without a bite to eat.

For the next hour, the five parolees put on various postures, some haranguing with abusive language and threats, some talking of God and of their love for the rag-tag group of dispirited youths.

When it was over, the students clambered into a collection of police cars and vans and were driven to the Los Angeles River, where a quarter-mile stretch of graffiti awaited.

When the job was done, the food was brought at last.