Countywide : $10,000 OKd for Anti-Gang Program

The County Board of Supervisors this week approved $10,000 to start a nationally hailed anti-gang program that organizes community residents.

For Midway City resident Michael Hutton, that may mean a greater distance between his family and potential violence.

Hutton and his neighbors organized last year on their own when their quiet streets were marred by gunshots and graffiti. Their efforts to get police and politicians to curb the seeping gang elements succeeded.

“We got our homes back,” he said. Now, as the county sets up a local branch of the Safe Streets Now! program, Hutton and his group are among those selected to lead the pilot effort.

“Since we had already been successful, the county thought we might be the right people to work with this,” said Hutton, a Huntington Beach city employee. “We were living in fear in our own homes when the gangs moved in, but then we just got frustrated and fought back.”

Fighting back is the core theme of the Safe Streets program, which teaches residents ways to recognize drug houses and dealers, document their activities and eliminate them. It shows them how to build coalitions, negotiate with landlords to rid their property of criminals and use the civil court to pressure those landowners if they do not cooperate.

The nonprofit program’s tactics reflect the methods used by its founder, then-Berkeley resident Molly J. Wetzel, and her neighbors in 1987 to shut down a drug house that had sprung up in their community.

When police efforts failed them, each member of Wetzel’s group sued the owners of the house for creating a public nuisance. The group won, and Wetzel’s method moved on to troubled Oakland, where the program to date has been credited with training more than 3,500 residents and shutting down more than 250 drug houses, a group spokeswoman said.

The Safe Streets program has since sprung up in dozens of communities across the country. County Supervisor Roger R. Stanton, who represents the district encompassing Midway City, said he is pleased to see Orange County added to that list.

“This is not meant as a substitute for police work, but it’s certainly proven itself to be an effective complement to the official arm of government,” Stanton said. “It’s a way for these people to take back their community and their streets.”

A dozen community leaders, including Hutton, from the Midway City area--and possibly Santa Ana--will meet with Safe Streets instructors for a workshop in the upcoming months to learn how to set up the program locally, county redevelopment director Dongchai Pusavat said.

The $10,000 will cover the costs of that training, learning materials and follow-up consultation services, Pusavat said. If Santa Ana residents do participate, the city will share the county’s cost, he said. The program will expand to other areas in the county if it succeeds here, Pusavat said.

Hutton and his neighbors used code enforcement--such as requesting the county to add no-parking curbs that dissuaded loitering in cars--and close contact with police to clean up their area. Despite that success, he said he was excited to add Wetzel’s proven methods to their arsenal.

“Things are quiet now, but we want to make sure they stay that way,” said Hutton, who added that the day he had his life threatened for clearing away gang graffiti seems distant now. “Things were so bad before and we want to keep the cap on it. We like it quiet around here.”