Countywide : Guest Lecturer Has a Tough Audience

George Morales stood before a classroom of teen-age gang members warming up to his favorite topic: life on the streets.

Morales, an ex-gang member known as a veterano , and an ex-con, drew on his personal history to deliver his anti-gang message Thursday at a juvenile court school in Orange.

Unlike other former gang members who try to scare young people out of gang life, Morales asked this group to think about the consequences of their actions, and the innocent victims.

“How would you feel if you killed a little kid (by mistake)?” Morales asked, painting the image of a toddler on a Big Wheel killed by a stray bullet.

“I wouldn’t be able to sleep for a long time,” said one Anaheim gang member, squirming in his seat.

“How do you feel when you see your mother cry because of you?” Two gang members said it made them feel terrible, and the rest nodded.

Dressed in black jeans, black shirt and yellow construction boots, Morales continued to tell the group of high school students about his own life and what it’s like to be a gang-banger, get stabbed eight times, go to prison--and to leave that lifestyle.

“I don’t think my experiences are anything to be proud of. I was a fool,” the Santa Ana resident said of his membership in the F-Troop gang and of his cocaine addiction. He served 15 months of a two-year sentence in the California Rehabilitation Center for selling PCP, known as angel dust, and was released nearly four years ago.

Now the 34-year-old Rancho Santiago College liberal arts major has made it his career to reach out to young people. He is coordinator of the Safe Haven gang program in Santa Ana and conducts “gang members-only” workshops where he tells youths why “prison and death,” are the inevitable consequences of gang membership.

“What George does is get them to think through and see how others will be impacted by their behavior,” said Bill Brooks, director of juvenile supervision for the county Probation Department. Brooks sat through Morales’ workshop for the first time Thursday morning at the Glassell Community School in Orange and said he hopes Morales will speak to more gang members throughout the county.

While most of the nine gang members in the workshop said they’ve heard others try to scare them straight, they said they believed Morales was honest.

“He’s pretty good. He’s been on the streets. There’s been a lot of guys coming down from Los Angeles, (but) at least he’s from Orange County and knows what’s going on down here,” said one Anaheim youth who preferred to remain anonymous.

Even though some of the gang members agreed with Morales, they also said they were not ready to leave their gangs.

“It’s a lot of friends. It’s family. That’s what it’s all about,” said one four-year gang member from Anaheim.

Three of the nine said they felt stuck because of unwritten rules of the streets. Getting out of a gang can be a dangerous proposition, they said.

“It’s the fear of walking away,” said Jose, a 17-year-old gang member from Santa Ana who would not give his last name. He said he would be beaten if he tried to leave the gang he joined eight years ago.

“I’d rather not deal with it,” he said.