City Seeks Bids for Anti-Gang Program

One day after Los Angeles County supervisors voted to launch a new coordinated anti-gang plan, the L.A. City Council on Wednesday agreed to invite bids from community groups to help run its own recently overhauled prevention and intervention program.

Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, the architect of the city’s $11.2-million L.A. Bridges program, pledged Wednesday that it would make an impact on the massive 18th Street gang, which was profiled this month in a Times series.

“This is a broader net, a more coordinated net, and there’s a higher level of accountability,” Ridley-Thomas said. “There’s less places where people can hide. If you ask who’s responsible for the 18th Street situation, you can nail it down.”

Rather than funnel more resources into law enforcement gang suppression activities, L.A. Bridges asks a consortium of government, nonprofit and private sector groups to set up shop at or near 26 middle school campuses and run prevention and intervention programs ranging from homework seminars to parenting workshops and intergenerational mentoring by senior citizens.

Hoping that the county’s efforts will dovetail with the Bridges concept, Ridley-Thomas sent letters and a packet of information describing the new program to each of the five supervisors Wednesday. But in response to The Times series’ revelations about 18th Street’s estimated 20,000 members throughout Southern California and beyond, county officials say they want to focus significant attention on suppression, and are unlikely to be satisfied with Bridges’ near single-minded emphasis on persuading youngsters not to join gangs in the first place.

“For anybody who believes that just dealing with the root social causes is the answer, go talk to the street merchant at 7th and Alvarado who is paying rent for the sidewalk to some sleaze-bucket gang member,” Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said. “We can’t be so Pollyannaish about it to think we can just do one [prevention] and not the other [suppression]. It’s got to be a multi-pronged approach.

“You’ve got to have a carrot and a stick,” he added. “If L.A. Bridges can be successful in being one of the carrots in this process, that would be a real plus.”

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Yaroslavsky invited Ridley-Thomas, other council members and Mayor Richard Riordan to join the county’s effort.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Genelin, who helped design L.A. Bridges and will also play a key role in the county effort, agreed with Yaroslavsky that law enforcement must play a high-profile role in any project targeting youths at risk.

“I do not believe [the supervisors] should necessarily adopt the city’s program whole cloth. What they should do is examine it in relationship to the county’s needs,” Genelin said. “Certainly they should examine the work that’s been done and all the material that’s been gathered, and it can guide them.”

Even as the council voted unanimously to request proposals from social services agencies, with bids due Feb. 19, some lawmakers remained concerned that L.A. Bridges will operate in less than half the city’s middle schools--those in neighborhoods with the highest crime rates.

“Gangs, they don’t know about areas getting funding and areas not getting funding,” said Councilman Richard Alarcon. “They just kill each other and their battles cross district lines.”

Fighting among the council members over which schools would be involved in Bridges’ pilot expanded the program from 15 schools to 26, reducing the amount of funds each neighborhood will get.

“I don’t really believe that in a large urban megalopolis like Los Angeles there is any school where children aren’t at risk,” said Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg, a former teacher. “But you have to start somewhere. I won’t be happy until every school in the city is serviced.”