Anti-Gang Efforts and City Hall Delays

It’s interesting that Mayor Tom Bradley should face a controversy over anti-gang programs just as he is preparing to announce whether he will run for a sixth term.

Not that his battle with Cardinal Roger Mahony and other religious leaders over the Hope in Youth Program is expected to figure in the announcement he will make at the New Otani hotel Thursday afternoon.

What makes it relevant at this particular time is that no recent issue better illustrates the good and bad of Bradley’s 19-year-old Administration than the intense fight over how to stop gang violence.

As the sages chew over the many Bradley years this week, they’re being served up fresh meat in the form of Hope in Youth.

*

Hope in Youth is a program conceived by religious leaders and community organizations from areas afflicted by gangs. This is how it would work:

About 160 four-person teams would fan out through gang neighborhoods, counseling in homes and schools in an effort to stop the flow of young people into gangs. The effort is not cheap. Salaries and other support for the teams would cost $20 million a year.

Eighty per cent of the money is supposed to come from an all-but-bankrupt government. Bradley, citing the budget crisis, balked at Hope in Youth’s request for $2.5 million in city funds. He also said the plan “has never been subjected to the kind of rigorous evaluation that successful anti-gang efforts must receive.”

That’s Bradley’s cautious side. It’s tempting to treat procedure-bound bureaucrats with contempt. Journalists are particularly quick to heap scorn on them. But let some shady or careless person slip through the screening process with a few bucks of public money, we’re just as quick to complain.

By invoking the phrase “rigorous evaluation,” the mayor showed the caution of a careful administrator. This caution is a good thing. Nobody knows whether the Hope in Youth concept--sending counseling teams into homes--will work, Deputy Mayor Mark Fabiani told me. “So much of a program like this depends on the quality of people you have,” he said.

Fabiani sent Mahony’s request to Parker Anderson, general manager of the Community Development Department, which distributes government funds to many social service agencies.

“The general purpose and mission of this group is commendable,” replied Anderson in a preliminary recommendation to Fabiani. “Unfortunately there are no funds available which could be used to fund any component of this program.”

*

While negotiations over Hope in Youth poke along, gang violence, which killed 771 in Los Angeles County last year, increases its death toll every week.

That’s the bad side of the Bradley Administration. It lacks a sense of urgency. This particular program may not be the best. But why isn’t the mayor leading a City Hall charge against gang killings?

After his preliminary response, Anderson continued making recommendations that were masterpieces of bureaucratic obfuscation. In one he enclosed six pages from the Federal Register containing incomprehensible instructions on how to apply for a federal substance-abuse prevention grant.

New obstacles were raised. Noting the presence of sponsoring churches and synagogues, Anderson said, “They would need to ensure there is a clear separation of church and state.”

Fabiani himself questioned the heavy involvement of the Catholic Church in Hope in Youth. The program, Fabiani told me, “might be a very potent organizing tool for the church, UNO and SCOC.” Those are acronyms for the United Neighborhood Organization of East Los Angeles and the Southern California Organizing Committee of South L.A., two powerful church-based, grass-roots groups that have often taken on the mayor. Both are involved in Hope in Youth.

Hope in Youth leaders wondered if the real problem was that a network of anti-gang projects was already in place, competing for scarce funds. Many of these organizations have staff or board members with connections in the Administration or the City Council. Hope in Youth was born outside the City Hall loop. Control of the organization--and the many counseling jobs it promises--also would be outside the loop.

The delays are frustrating to Episcopal Bishop Frederick H. Borsch, a leader in the Hope in Youth campaign.

“Going to houses, seeing broken families, houses with bullet holes, you can’t help getting mad about it,” he said. “We’re trying to give a voice to these people. The only time people pay attention to them is when they have a riot.”

Perhaps if the mayor had gotten mad early in his 19-year Administration, Bishop Borsch, Cardinal Mahony and the others wouldn’t have been forced to bang on his door today. The city might have confronted the gangs earlier, along with some of the other troubles that led to the riot.