BELL : Anti-Gang Effort to Use Student Mentors

Javier Morales says he knows little about gang life. But the Bell High School student says he is likes the idea of getting to know gang members.

Morales’ aspirations are not to join a gang, but to join a program under which student leaders would act as mentors to gang members and at-risk youth.

“You have to get the barriers down so they can see another part of life,” Morales said.

Morales, 15, and other Bell High Student Council members met last week with Adrian Punderson, a Bell police officer who works with the Metro Gang Task Force in Bell, South Gate, Maywood and Huntington Park and has proposed the peer mentoring program. Punderson said he hopes to start a test program at the school this summer.

“The thought behind this is that it’s hard to get kids to look at the police as role models in this day and age,” Punderson said. “So what I thought was that (students) could be mentors.”

Under Punderson’s proposal, mentors would receive training, and students with whom they are paired would receive counseling if needed. Eventually, they would all attend a one-week retreat at Lake Mead.

Punderson said he is talking with a Nevada recreation company that has offered to pay transportation costs for the mentors, and additional funding is hoped to come from local businesses. He estimates that the first trip will cost about $6,000 to send 10 mentors and 10 at-risk teens to the retreat.

Punderson said he has been mulling a peer mentoring program since he first began working with gangs seven years ago. However, he said some of the idea came from his own background.

“I was very poor when I was growing up and I received a lot of support from friends and adults,” he said. “I saw what a difference it makes when someone your own age and adults take time for you, not because they necessarily know you, but because you’re another human being.”

Police estimate that there are about 8,000 gang members in Bell, South Gate, Maywood and Huntington Park, ranging in age from 12 to 23.