Strategy on Gangs Divides Board

The Board of Supervisors squabbled Tuesday over how to deal with the intractable gang problems in Los Angeles County, ultimately voting to divvy up more than $1.4 million in gang funds equally among their districts when they could not decide how else to spend it.

The 3-2 decision came despite concerns expressed by several supervisors that they were settling for a fragmented gang-fighting policy instead of the coordinated approach needed to address a growing problem that does not confine itself to a particular supervisorial district.

The supervisors were deliberating on how to spend about $600,000 in funds that had been allocated to the now defunct Community Youth Gang Services program this year, and $850,000 in the next fiscal year, which starts July 1. That agency was disbanded because of serious problems in the way it administered anti-gang programs and funds.

Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke argued that the county’s Interagency Gang Task Force should be given the chance to spend the money on countywide efforts.

But conservative newcomer Don Knabe proposed giving each of the supervisors a share of the money to spend as they see fit. He and his aides said in interviews that the task force has dropped the ball in proposing “concrete” solutions to tackling the gang problem countywide.

Knabe prevailed, but only after agreeing to reallocate next year’s funds if the task force can come up with good ideas in the next two months.

Knabe, who was supported by Supervisors Mike Antonovich and Zev Yaroslavsky, said spending the money on programs within each district that have a proven track record is the best option available.

“You have a system that wasn’t working,” Knabe said of the Community Youth Gang Services agency. “And we have programs within our own districts that are very successful that can be enhanced to become even more successful. Some . . . even have the potential to go countywide.”

Despite his colleagues’ insistence that a coordinated approach is needed, Knabe said no such panacea exists.

“I don’t know that you can find one program that fits every community’s needs,” he said. “Some of these gangs are so specific and so local . . . you have to break the cycle [locally].

“In the ideal world you’d love to find one program that works and say here’s the money, take care of the problem. But it doesn’t work that way,” Knabe said. “This way we are funding programs that we know are successful, and that have had an impact.”

Burke vehemently opposed Knabe’s proposal, saying her district, which includes gang-infested South-Central Los Angeles, has benefited from coordinated gang intervention efforts. “If you want to spend money efficiently, you don’t split it up five ways and have five separate administrative costs,” Burke said.

Burke’s opposition was shared by Supervisor Gloria Molina, whose East Los Angeles district also has been hard hit by gang problems.

Molina said a report issued by the task force several months ago was “absolutely useless,” and said holding the money until a coordinated solution could be found was far better than merely dividing it.

“If you split it up five ways you will be just going back to the parochial ways of the board,” she said. “We should hold it and do some collective strategizing, and wait until next year instead of just saying, ‘Give me my share and let me spend it as I see fit.’ ”

After the vote, Molina said, “I think it was a foolish decision.”

The report by the task force, which was supervised by the Countywide Criminal Justice Coordinating Committee, could not devise coordinated solutions to the gang problem.

“It is the consensus of the [task force] that no single countywide anti-gang strategy or program can service the needs of our diverse communities,” it concluded in a report released in September.

Some anti-gang outreach experts criticized the supervisors’ decision.

“You need a holistic approach,” said Ed Turley of the Central Recovery and Development Project, which has run anti-gang programs in South-Central for more than a decade. Gang problems, he said, “don’t stop at city limits, or even county limits.”

Fernando Hernandez, former chairman of the board of Community Youth Gang Services, agreed. He said fundamental problems that are causing the gang crisis--such as the lack of good jobs, education and recreational opportunities for inner-city youths--will never be solved until the county coordinates its efforts not only among the supervisors but with surrounding governmental bodies such as the city of Los Angeles.

“When you begin fracturing it and cutting up the pie . . . there is no overall strategy that everyone is following. No one knows what part of the problem they are supposed to be tackling,” said Hernandez, an education professor at Cal State Los Angeles.

He said his group’s efforts to coordinate anti-gang services were hampered by meddling and selfish county supervisors and their deputies who wanted to protect services in their districts at any cost.

“What I’ve found is that the gang thing is just a big political football,” Hernandez said. “Who is going to save the kids? No one is out there advocating for the kids.”