Rude Introduction : At-Risk Students Get an Earful at Juvenile Prison

They already suspected it was a bad idea.

And after being frisked by guards, eyeballed by inmates and hustled into a cellblock at the juvenile prison to be yelled at by a hard-eyed convicted killer, these Oxnard teen-agers were absolutely sure of it.

Joining gangs is a really bad idea.

A recent three-hour tour of the California Youth Authority’s Ventura School in Camarillo convinced 13 Oxnard High School freshmen.

The students, chosen because low grades and poor attendance put them at risk of dropping out of school and into gangs, got an intimate lesson on hard time in the 54-acre compound rimmed with razor wire that awaits them if they mess up.

The first face they saw--after being scanned with metal detectors and locked in--was Eddie Cue’s.

Cue, a CYA gang information officer, has ushered 3,000 at-risk Ventura County teen-agers through the Ventura School. The program began a year ago after he finally convinced officials on both sides of its 18-foot-high fence that the program could turn kids away from gangs.

Inside, Cue warned the nine boys and four girls: Gang members lose control of their lives.

“We tell you what you’re going to eat, when you’re going to eat, what you can wear, what kind of makeup you can wear,” said Cue, perched on a cafeteria table, his voice barely audible over the crackling chorus of guards’ walkie-talkies.

“When you step through that door you’re no longer in Ventura County, you’re no longer part of the homeboys or whatever,” he said. “You’re in the Ventura School.”

If you are cocky, he warned, you risk being hurt by other inmates.

“It takes about a minute and a half for security to respond to an incident in this institution,” Cue said. “But when you’re the one being pounded on, that minute and a half seems like an eternity.”

He told them of strip searches, tiny cells and hard beds. He told them about inmates wielding sharpened toothbrushes, and he pointed out the high fence rigged with concertina wire, cameras and tripwires.

Then he took them all the way inside.

Marching them double-file, mouths shut, hands in pockets, Cue led them into a cellblock and shut the door.

They faced two murderers.

“I came to jail when I was a teen-ager like you,” said Martin Luevano, 24, handsome and calm. “I was 16 years old, into the fast life, partying and like that. I made a wrong decision when I took someone’s life. I took something special. That person could have been President, and I took that away.”

Luevano warned them: “This is a reality check for you. You guys don’t open up your minds and your eyes, this is what’s going to happen to you.”

Homeboys and home girls will drift away. No one will care but family. Other inmates will make your life miserable. And you still have to attend classes and do homework, he said, looking each teen-ager in the eye.

Then, almost tenderly, Luevano added, “When the bullet bites you, it’s gonna bite you hard, eh?”

Then up stepped Raul Aguilar.

“I’ve been in here since I was 15. I’m 23 now. I’m in here for gang banging,” he said flatly. “I’ve been in here 7 1/2 years going on eight, waiting to go home. Any of you gang banging now?”

Face-to-face behind bars with a murderer, the visitors were smart enough to shut up and listen.

But one.

Fourteen and husky, the buzz-cut boy with a fuzzy mustache raised his hand and proudly claimed membership in one of Oxnard’s La Colonia gangs.

Aguilar’s eyes locked onto him.

“Why you gang bangin’, man?”

“Cause that’s where I’m from,” the boy replied.

“Oh, so you gotta be down for the hood. Why you down?”

“Cause all my relatives are.”

“You claim Sur?”

“Yeah.”

“You know about Sur? What you think Sur means?”

“Southern.”

“Sur is one of the meanest prison gangs in California, man. Sur means if I send you on a mission, you got to do it. What do you wanna be when you grow up?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do they call you in your neighborhood?”

And so went the grilling. Five minutes stretched to 10. Aguilar leaned forward intensely, foot on a chair, his voice rising and switching to obscene street talk.

“Who’s your enemy, El Rio?”

“I don’t know.”

” You’re . . . claiming Oxnard and you don’t even know who your enemy is? You want to get killed? You want that for your family?”

“No.”

“See that’s what I’m talking about,” Aguilar confided to the others, who sat stock still, barely glancing at him now. “You don’t even know what you’re gang banging for. Let me tell you something. I’ve never been to a high school dance. I even forget what it’s like to have a girlfriend.”

Pressed further, the boy admitted he is “a follower,” seeking revenge for the gang-related deaths of his father and brother. That cut no ice with the killer.

“My brother was taken out too,” Aguilar said. “I’m the only vato left in my family.”

And the lecture continued, the hardened inmate hammering away at the stubborn kid.

Finally, Aguilar threw up his hands.

“Pffft. You wanna be a follower, then be a follower,” he said. “End up in here, if you’re not dead. . . . You know, you’re only 14, man. When you gonna get your (act) together?”

“Sooner or later,” the boy replied, a little less defiantly.

Cue moved the group on to the school’s chapel, where three girls perched on the rail.

“The stuff that goes on in here is stuff you wouldn’t want to see--girls get gang-raped here,” said inmate Leah Whitaker, 21. “There was a 14-year-old girl in here, and four girls gang-raped her with a broom. And the guys. . . . They treat you like a piece of meat.”

There is no privacy, warned Whitaker, serving time for kidnaping. Your cellmate sees just about everything you do, she said, and the guards can peer through the glass window in each cell door whenever they choose.

“You got to change?” she said. “They don’t care. You’re sitting on the toilet, they’re standing there talking to you.”

Then another inmate told of being locked up since she was 13--four years ago--for manslaughter.

“The little things that you guys get to do, we don’t,” the inmate said. “Getting up and going to the kitchen to get a soda on a commercial, we don’t get to do that.”

Those who misbehave are locked into their cells on Saturdays for 23 hours, she said.

Then, again, the 14-year-old boy dared to admit his gang membership, and again he was dressed down--this time by two furious girls.

After they calmed down, Cue switched on a video--a montage of prison scenes narrated by actors reading actual letters from juvenile inmates.

Then he took them outside and let even more inmates confront the teen-agers in groups--without guards or adults hovering over them.

The girls clustered with the girls, listening to tales from the inside. Here and there, boys paired off with individual inmates. But one group clustered around the self-proclaimed gang member, and two of his classmates looked on.

“You don’t listen to people out there, you’ll come in here and you’ll listen to cops and you’ll listen to us,” said Tracy Usry, 21.

Now, the boy’s facade was breaking down a bit.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“I’m busted for murder. I got 31 to life, homie.”

“How’s that feel?”

“It feels (screwed) up. I got two kids,” Usry replied.

“You seem like you’re paying attention,” he added. “Go home and think about it one night.”

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the kid nodded.

Not every gang member or potential gang member is swayed from gang life by visiting the Ventura School, said Lou Flores, head of security for Oxnard High.

Inside, they listen, “but when they get back to the element of school, they slide back into their routine,” he said. Three out of a dozen teen-agers, maybe a dozen out of every 40, will stay away from gangs, he said.

Cue said, “If we can at least reach one, we’re looking good.”

The day afterward, three of the young visitors said the tour convinced them that they were right to resist pressure to join their neighborhood gangs.

“Sometimes I do think of joining them . . . I’d think that it’s fun joining them,” said one 14-year-old boy. But he walked away with a lesson: “Think about it before you do it. . . . I should listen to my mom, listen to my family.”

Recalling the 17-year-old girl who had killed, a 15-year-old Oxnard High student said, “I was shocked.”

“The thing that scared me the most was going and talking to them face to face,” he added. “In there, you gotta watch your back. . . . Like they said, who’d you rather take orders from--those guards, those guys or your mom?”