As Gangs Take Hold, Pittsburgh Fights to Put City’s Youth Back on Track : Crime: Police act more like social workers, and black role models donate their time. But no one is sure what will work.

A police detective hassles suspected gang members one evening and hands out free hamburgers at neighborhood hangouts the next.

A high school rap group mocks drug-dealing students, and a juvenile probation officer gets a job for a young gangster.

These and scores of other people are working to prevent Pittsburgh’s embryonic gangs from becoming as monstrous as the gangs in Los Angeles, Detroit or Chicago.

But nobody knows for sure how to turn young people away from gangs.

“Gang members have told us, ‘If you don’t spend time with them, they’re ours,’ ” said police Detective Chris Cuestas from the street gang unit in Tucson, Ariz.

Headline-grabbing gang crime is new to this city of about 370,000. Its relatively low crime rate helped push it to most-livable-city status in 1985 in Rand McNally’s Places Rated Almanac. The neighborhood rivalry that feeds gangs was discouraged by simple topography: Pittsburgh’s residential areas are divided by mountains and rivers.

Then came movies and rap songs glorifying gangs and an economic slump that wiped out more inner-city jobs. Finally, a Detroit drug dealer visited in 1989 and found Pittsburgh a nice place to expand his crack cocaine business.

Now, gangs and drive-by shootings--once a novelty--are commonplace.

City police estimate about 1,500 teen-agers and young adults have grouped into 20 to 40 gangs.

At 15, Kilo of Westinghouse High School has been in and out of juvenile detention. He’s on probation after he and four female gang members beat up a boy who apparently trespassed into their neighborhood.

“It’s called ‘putting in work,’ ” said Kilo, a nickname. “You do something for your ‘hood. Like, somebody drives by who’s not from your ‘hood, you shoot at him.”

Kilo seems unimpressed by adults who concern themselves with his future.

“When we grow up--we don’t think about that right now,” he said.

You can bet the rest of the community is thinking about it.

“If we move now, it’s easier to break them down, to disassemble them, because they’re real loose,” said police Detective Mark Leonard, part of an anti-gang task force.

Many gangsters are tough only when they’re with the group.

“You catch some of these kids alone, they’re like kittens,” Leonard said.

The detective refused to talk about arrests of individual gang members, saying he didn’t want them to enjoy media attention.

But he led the way to a graffiti wall near the border between two rival gangs--the Hoodtown Niggas and the Brighton Place Crips--to show what the city is up against. (“Nigga” is slang for a strong, defiant black.)

Most chilling is a contract written on somebody’s life.

“Wanted,” the message said, followed by a blotted-out name and the words, “300.00. Collect down Brighton.” Leonard believes the contract was fulfilled.

In an alley across town, Leonard and three narcotics officers stopped two teen-age boys in an area claimed by the Larimer Street Hoods. One was asked if he is a gang member; he denied it.

“He’s not a Hood,” Leonard said with sarcasm.

“I ain’t a cop,” said police Detective Carl Robinson.

They released the boys and Leonard called after them, “Be watching you, cuz.”

This is what Leonard calls impacting, visiting gang-infested areas to check for weapons and drugs and to keep the pressure on.

Sometimes, though, the detective just buys a bag of fast food and hands out fried chicken or hamburgers at corners where teen-agers hang out.

At best, he may break down the barriers between youth and police. At worst, he’s fed a growing child. Sometimes, he’s more social worker than police officer.

Keith Robb, Kilo’s juvenile probation officer, sometimes feels more policeman than social worker.

His clients push him into that ill-fitting mold. So loyal are they to fellow gang members that everyone else is a foe, especially somebody linked to the court system.

Robb uses what tools he has to try to reach Kilo. One tool is economic: He has referred the boy to the city’s summer jobs program, where Kilo probably will scrub graffiti.

Kilo is not blase enough to pass up a summer job, Robb said. After all, earning money is the reason gangs deal crack. It isn’t to get high.

The boy and his friends have watched grown-ups wither to skeletons from smoking crack, a drug he avoids. “Nobody wants to be cracked out,” Kilo said. They do smoke marijuana and drink beer.

At least one of Robb’s other clients is afraid to go to school because he has to cross gang territory to get there.

“It’s almost like they have a refugee-type mentality,” Robb said. “They’re constantly on guard. It’s hard to tell a kid, ‘You have a good chance of making it in society,’ when they can’t go to school.”

A probation officer for four years, Robb has seen young people turn away from crime at age 18, when they face jail instead of juvenile hall.

He knows a former auto thief who has a football scholarship at a junior college. Another, who before age 17 committed five armed robberies, studies criminal justice at a state college.

“I try to be optimistic in my position, because that’s all I can be,” Robb said.

Of all the weapons against gangs, peer pressure may prove the most potent.

The East Side Wrecking Squad is a rap group with lyrics criticizing the gang mentality that members of the group encounter in school. They dream of riding their musical ability to success.

One Squad song, “Make the Right Choice,” exhorts, “Get an education,” and taunts student drug dealers:

“You’re doubting education, but it’s making you weaker.

“And then you have the sense (nerve) to go and carry a beeper.”

They record with Kolor Blind Productions, a name signifying an indifference to gang colors, or identifying clothing.

One of the five, Duane Green, 15, wears a black-and-white scarf symbolizing the lack of gang colors in his life.

“Going around killing people for a color. What sense does that make?” he said at a studio rehearsal.

The five are cemented by the same yearning for acceptance that drives other teens to gangs.

“Everybody here is like family. I can trust them,” Green said.

Monroe Miller, a juvenile psychologist and associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh, said youngsters form gangs because they want to belong and because threatening violence makes them feel important.

“They’re really seeking an answer to the question, ‘Who am I and what am I going to be?’ ” he said.

“This banding together gives them the muscle to dabble in illegal activities. . . . It gives them a sense of identity. It gives them a status. They get to wear expensive sneakers.”

Because the roots of gangs are both social and economic, solutions have to be too, Miller said.

Among the methods Detective Cuestas has seen work on young gangsters in Tucson are boot camp or shock incarceration, in which inmates tell juvenile delinquents the horrors of prison life.

What doesn’t work, he said, are stopping, searching and pestering suspected gang members. Leonard calls it impacting; Cuestas calls it suppression, which he said fuels animosity toward police and pushes gangs into new territory.

Most effective of all is personal involvement by police, social workers and volunteers, Cuestas said, and that means working some evenings.

“Gang members are nocturnal. They’re not 8-to-4 people,” said Cuestas, who studies gangs and has written numerous articles about them.

Gangs also excel at networking, he said, which anti-gang forces are just learning.

In Pittsburgh, one anti-gang program doesn’t always know what the other anti-gang program is doing. The city is trying to create a network, but the community’s efforts still are scattershot.

A former gang member preaches for Operation Nehemiah, a street ministry. Black male professionals volunteer their time as role models for black teen-age boys. A social service agency provides after-school Ping-Pong and tutors and organizes late-night bowling trips for teens.

Operation Nehemiah didn’t see any advantage in discussing its efforts. And officials of a YMCA in one gang-plagued neighborhood didn’t want to talk because they didn’t want their program identified as anti-gang.

Another social service agency, Focus on Renewal, takes a fresh approach in the housing projects of McKees Rocks, which adjoins Pittsburgh. Focus goes after the hearts and minds of children as young as preschool.

It invites parents and children to its Saturday morning drop-in workshops, where every age group learns how to resolve conflict without using violence, said agency director Diane Perkins.

Hands are for helping, not for hurting, the preschoolers are taught, and they use puppets to talk about anger.

Meantime, mothers and fathers discuss nonviolent methods of discipline, teen-agers role play, and 6- to 10-year-olds make lists of what riles them and the appropriate responses.

One 8-year-old boy said he doesn’t want to fight because he doesn’t want to get shot, which in his neighborhood is a possibility.

About 16 parents and 28 children gathered for one recent session.

“When the level of violence in the surrounding community is so bad that they’re frightened, then they’re willing to take action,” Perkins said.

A federal grant funds the intervention project, designed to reduce adolescent deaths.

“This is like spitting in the wind, because the problem is so large,” Perkins said.

But, he added, “I kind of feel you have to start somewhere.”