NORTHRIDGE : Former Gang Members Address Forum

A tattoo across his chest and bullet scars are the price Clemente Arrizon said he paid for a childhood with too many idle hours.

Arrizon, 22, a former gang member from Buena Park, said memories of his own youth were what prompted him to major in leisure studies and recreation when he enrolled at Cal State Northridge.

“A lot of people don’t understand the importance of recreation,” Arrizon said. “People say, ‘What are you doing? Basket weaving?’ . . . But with recreation we could solve 80% of our gang problems.”

Arrizon was one of four former gang members who participated in a panel discussion with parks officials at CSUN on Thursday as part of a forum called “Youth, Gangs, Riots or Recreation” sponsored by the California Parks and Recreation Society and its offshoot, the California Ethnic Minority Assn.

Arrizon told an audience of about 40 youth outreach workers and CSUN students that doing well in school wasn’t enough to keep him from joining a street gang in his early teen-age years. Athletic or educational programs after school were what he needed, he said.

“I felt like I was living two lives,” Arrizon said after the program. “I would go to school, but I’d come home to drive-by shootings,” he said, rolling up the sleeve of his shirt to show where a bullet once passed through his forearm.

Two other former gang members, Leon Gullett and Charles Rachal, who participated in last year’s gang truce and were invited to attend President Clinton’s inaugural dinner earlier this year, told similar stories.

Rachal, 28, said opportunities to play Ping-Pong or lift weights never came his way as a child. Instead, his only recreation was “hanging out on a street corner,” he said.

“Eighty percent of gang members are not into negative activity,” agreed Gullett, Rachal’s friend and former gang rival. “They are just sitting around in parks waiting for something to do.”

Involving rather than excluding gang members in parks and sports programs was emphasized by parks officials who spoke against “recreational apartheid” at the all-day forum.