La Habra Tries to Steal Babes from Mouth of Gangs

When the 8-year-old boy stomped up to Erica, held his fist in her face and called her names, Erica looked him straight in the eye. “I don’t like what you’re saying to me, please stop,” Erica said calmly. Of course, the bully did not stop taunting Erica, but each time he hurled an insult, Erica responded with the maddening refrain. “I don’t like what you’re saying to me, please stop.”

Erica’s method of dealing with the playground bully is called “broken record,” repeating a phrase over and over until the bully tires of the game. She could have tried “fogging” her aggressor, by pretending to agree with him: “You could be right.”

Broken record and fogging are taught in Erica’s third grade La Habra classroom, along with reading and writing. And although today’s confrontation with the playground bully is only make believe, the underlying message is deadly serious.

Erica is being taught how to say no to gangs.

In La Habra--as in other Orange County cities--gang violence is a growing problem, according to Joan Mallard, gang prevention coordinator for the La Habra City School District. To deal with that problem, the district has incorporated an anti-gang violence program into all its third- and seventh-grade classes.

“Gangs aren’t new to Southern California, and they certainly aren’t new to La Habra,” says Mallard, a La Habra native. “Gangs have been in La Habra for 40 or 50 years, but today we have a whole different style of gangs than we had 50 years ago.

“They are more territorial and moving into drug trafficking. And in the last five years, they have escalated, really escalated in La Habra and Santa Ana.”

In addition, gangs are recruiting children at a much younger age, Mallard says. “We are finding that gangs are not just in middle school and high school levels,” she says. “One reason gangs are recruiting kids earlier is because the way the law reads--juveniles commit crimes and the sentence is light.”

Younger kids also join gangs to prove themselves and to be accepted, Mallard says. Therefore, if insecure children are bullied on the playground, they may be lured into gang activities just to prove themselves.

“It is a form of acceptance, a form of family and they approach them that way,” Mallard says. “I’m talking from as early as fifth grade. Most likely their brothers and sisters are in a gang. We have a real girl gang problem here in La Habra.”

Ana Gutierrez, who teaches La Habra’s anti-gang classes, says that many of her lessons involve self-esteem. “Last week we did (a segment) on choosing the right kind of friends,” Gutierrez says. “A lot of kids are looking for a family, and with gangs recruiting really young, you need to catch them when they are really young.”

The anti-gang curriculum Gutierrez uses is called YES (Yes to Education and Skills) and was developed by the Orange County Department of Education. The La Habra City School District began using it last year, according to Mallard, who taught the original classes.

“We knew we had to have it, but I didn’t have enough time to do it,” says Mallard, who also coordinates the district’s drug education program.

Fortunately, this year the district received a portion of a grant from the California Office of Criminal Justice Planning. The grant “allows us to have a teacher like Ana come in and teach the YES Project and work one-on-one with the kids,” Mallard says. In addition, the grant will enable the school district to offer a summer sports program this year at three different locations in the city.

“We’ll also be training more teachers to teach our anti-gang curriculum,” Mallard says. “In La Habra we are doing a lot of things (to fight gangs). We have a grass-roots group that is very active. People are very community-minded and they want to work in the system and make it happen.”

In an effort to combat the threat of gang violence, this year the district adopted a voluntary dress code for pupils in kindergarten through fifth grade, Mallard points out. Students are asked to wear white and navy so that there will be no problems with gang colors, according to the new guidelines. Gang-related attire, such as bandannas, hair nets, over-sized khaki work pants and high-top combat boots also are strictly forbidden.

Although the YES program does not cover gang colors, Mallard points out that the subject of appropriate clothing is covered in a letter that goes out to every parent in the district. “My mother never had to worry about what colors I wore to school,” Mallard says. “Or if I happened to say the wrong thing.”

But today, teaching children what to say to gang members is important, according to Gutierrez, who includes a segment called “words and actions” in her gang-prevention classes. “What you’re trying to do,” she tells a group of third-graders at Walnut Elementary School, “is not to get someone mad and aggravated and become their victim.”

Through role-playing, children in the class are taught a variety of ways to respond when approached by gang members. “It’s kind of scary when someone puts a fist in your face, isn’t it?” Gutierrez asks. “Or when someone teases you, ‘Oh, you’re a scaredy-cat, a chicken.’ But what can you do? You can walk away.”

If the bully just can’t be ignored, Gutierrez suggests that the children use the broken record approach. When 8-year-old Erica tried that method during a role-playing session, her tormentor eventually got tired and gave up.

“You can keep it up until the person stops,” says Gutierrez, a gang specialist who says she grew up around gangs but did not become a member. “I feel like I’m a prime role model for these kids because I know what they are going through.”