Marshaling Hearts

The donated classroom can barely contain the 50 karate students stretched wall to wall in three attentive lines. Some of the 8-year-olds are small enough to be mistaken for kindergartners. Some of the teenagers look like adults.

“Everybody sign in?” kajukenbo black-belt Marty Hester barks in his best drill instructor voice.

“Yes, sir, Sifu Marty, yes sir!” they yell back in unison, addressing Hester with the Japanese title for instructor.

In this South-Central Los Angeles neighborhood, where police officers assigned to the 77th Street station were forced to retreat by rioters in 1992, a Los Angeles Police Department program is building new bonds between the men and women in blue and youngsters in black kajukenbo uniforms. (Kajukenbo is a karate style. The word is a combination of karate, judo, kenpo and [kick] boxing).

The program, called Jeopardy, is aimed at giving youngsters an alternative to gangs and crime. If the martial arts classes are any indication, the strategy is working.

Inside the 75th Street School, where the 77th Street station operates its program, the atmosphere resembles that of a boot camp (these are the martial arts).

“I like the discipline, doing push-ups and sit-ups,” Treyveon Beasley, 9, said during a break. “Karate helps me work harder on my schoolwork. And the sifu teaches me about not fighting [in school] and stuff.”

Twice a week at the school, three instructors--including one officer--put their young charges through a grueling, hourlong routine of sweat-popping physical conditioning before beginning the karate drills.

Despite the grimaces and strains to do just one more set of sit-ups, most of the youngsters say they can’t wait to get to class.

Los Angeles Police Officer Richard Dixon, one of the school’s black-belt instructors, is assigned full time to the 77th Street station’s Jeopardy program.

He said martial arts classes that began with about 30 students two years ago now have more than 300 youngsters between 8 and 17 in the LAPD’s South Bureau. And his bulging waiting list continues to swell as the department seeks more financial support to expand the program.

Jeopardy also offers counseling, tutoring and classes in drama and dance. But for many youngsters, karate is the carrot.

“We get kids who can’t read and write,” Dixon said. “So we have tutoring. In the first martial arts class, they learn to read and write. Then they go to the second class.”

On Sunday, several will compete in the huge Law Enforcement Youth Martial Arts Tournament at the Los Angeles Sports Arena, with about 1,000 contestants from other law enforcement programs.

“They will be competing against some kids who pay up to $80 a month for karate,” Dixon said. “We want our kids to have a chance to show off.”

Jeopardy is privately sponsored by different organizations. Students receive free uniforms and gear but must maintain their grades and stay out of trouble in school to remain eligible.

When the program was launched, some officers assigned to patrol openly questioned it, Dixon said, wondering if Dixon and his instructors were training tough kids to do combat with police officers. But those skeptics have been won over, for the most part, Dixon said, and he doesn’t get reports from patrol officers about Jeopardy youngsters getting into trouble.

Parents have embraced the program as a way of keeping their children out of trouble.

Diana Guzman said her son Carlos, 9, “used to act real bad at home and at school. Before he got into Jeopardy, he used to fight a lot.”

Carlos had to be practically forced to stay in the program, said Lee Proctor, another kajukenbo black belt who teaches at 75th Street School.

“We made him work out; we made him fight,” Proctor said. “He stuck it out, and we told him: ‘Good job.’ ”

Proctor said he and the other karate instructors rediscover a basic truth about youngsters at every class: “A kid knows when you really care and when you’re fake,” he said. And when adults care, he said, little miracles begin to take place.

Tammie Thomas has seen her niece and three nephews change in the program. “Instead of hanging out on the streets, they are more into practicing their karate skills,” she said. “And they know they have to maintain their grades.”

Dixon has also seen other changes, such as in the brash, young boys who drop their macho facades when they find out that some girls in the class can outfight them. Or the youngster who shows up with the reputation as a neighborhood bully, only to be exposed in the karate ring as someone who can’t fight, Dixon said.

The swaggerer and the bully learn self-control, self-respect and respect for others, Dixon said. And the payoff from the lessons, while sometimes hard to measure, continue over a lifetime, he said.

Keiry Santos discovered self-esteem that surprised her instructors.

“When she first came into the program, she didn’t even want to fight,” said Proctor. “We almost had to force her.”

Last month, after only seven months of studying karate, Santos, 14, took first place in a prestigious international karate tournament in Long Beach--the first tournament she had ever entered.

“Karate has made a difference,” said Santos, a freshman at Belmont High School. “I have a hobby now, something that I like and that I’m good at. I didn’t expect to win at my very first tournament.”

Proctor, 32, sees the progress Keiry has made and worries about how many like her are stuck on the Jeopardy waiting list.

“I’m a sucker for kids,” he said. “It’s hard for me to look a kid in the face, know he wants to try, and not let him in the program.”

Proctor remembers growing up in Compton and wrestling with the same choices his students are weighing. “Most of my kids are right on the borderline,” he said. “They will either idolize the big, tough gangbanger or a big, cool martial artist. I was hanging around the wrong people in Compton. My mom stuck me in karate class. The older kids there seemed a little cooler than the gangbangers I knew.”