Council Resolves Dispute by Approving Expanded Anti-Gang Program

The Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday narrowly approved a new anti-gang program targeting middle school students, settling a cross-town tug of war over which campuses would be included by pumping an additional $2 million into the project and expanding it to as many as 25 schools.

Lawmakers from the Eastside, West Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley complained that the criteria used to select the original 18 middle schools--primarily, the number of violent crimes reported in the schools’ neighborhoods--were too narrow and should be overhauled to select a new set of schools.

Although that criticism had broad support, enthusiasm for the concept of the new program overcame it and the council voted 8 to 6 to approve the original list of 18 schools and come up with five to seven more sites by the end of the month.

Named L.A. Bridges, the new program would emphasize prevention of gang problems and, under Wednesday’s council action, receive $11.3 million annually for four years, up from the $9.1 million originally envisioned for the program and more than double the $5 million earmarked for anti-gang efforts in this year’s budget.

“It’s taken us so painfully long to move forward with any substantive solutions to serious problems, it’s frightening,” Councilwoman Laura Chick said after an hour of debate, urging her colleagues to approve the program Wednesday rather than delay it because of disagreements over the list of schools. “We can argue forever over the criteria. If this goes back and we come up with a new list, all of us know deep in our hearts that it’ll be [another] tug of war.”

L.A. Bridges is the brainchild of the council’s Ad Hoc Committee on Gangs and Juvenile Justice, which was formed a year ago after the drive-by slaying of 3-year-old Stephanie Kuhen in Cypress Park.

Run by the city’s Community Development Department, L.A. Bridges would employ local nonprofit agencies to run programs at each school ranging from parenting classes to homework centers, after-school sports, intergenerational bonding and conflict resolution seminars. It focuses on middle school children because experts believe they would benefit most from intervention, and it is scheduled to be launched in July.

The original list of 18 schools, selected because their surrounding neighborhoods each had more than 200 violent crimes reported from Jan. 1 to Aug. 31, 1996, included 11 campuses downtown and in South Los Angeles, clustered in three of the 15 council districts. Several council members suggested Wednesday that data on gang crimes in the neighborhoods or crimes reported on the campuses would be better criteria for an anti-gang program; others called for a complex formula weighing a variety of factors, including poverty, dropout rates and test scores.

“The philosophical question we have before us is whether to spend whatever money is available across the whole city, and lower the goals of the program, or to concentrate funds in some hard-pressed areas and leave some areas out altogether,” Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg said. “We do not have enough money to go everywhere we need to go. If we spread it all a mile wide and an inch deep then we won’t make an impact.”

Of the 18 schools already selected, three would not have made the cut if the criteria had been either on-campus crime or neighborhood gang activity; six others would have stayed on the list with one of those criteria but not the other. Three schools--Hollenbeck, El Sereno and Nightingale--would make the top 18 on grounds of both on-campus crime and gang activity, but miss the cut using the broader neighborhood violent crime category. Seven other schools qualify in one of the alternative criteria.

“Anybody who’s been in the school district a long time will look at this and say, ‘What? How is it that Hollenbeck is not on the list?’ ” said Goldberg. “There are obvious shortcomings.”

During the discussion, members suggested scrapping the list and starting again, but that motion never got voted upon because the motion approving the original list and expanding on it passed first. Voting against the acceptance of the 18 schools were council members Richard Alarcon, Hal Bernson, Marvin Braude, Ruth Galanter, Mike Hernandez and Joel Wachs. Alarcon, Hernandez, Braude and Wachs also voted against the whole L.A. Bridges program because of the dispute.

“This criterion was selected because it covered the widest area of the city,” Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, who heads the gang committee, said after the meeting. “This is the culmination of very serious work. . . . It will give us a more uniform and accountable program to deal with youth at risk--we don’t have that right now.”