Panel Advice on Gangs: Get Involved With Kids

From the mayor, the college chancellor, the cop and the ex-gang member, the advice at a Friday night panel discussion on gangs was the same: To keep kids out of trouble, get involved.

“It starts with you,” said Edward Hernandez, chancellor of Rancho Santiago Community College District. “It starts with everybody in this room. If you care about people, then behave in a caring way. That’s how you can make a difference. It’s not what you say; it’s what you do.”

For an hour at Martinez Books & Art, five panelists, moderated by attorney Alfredo Amezcua, shared their thoughts on a problem that has plagued Santa Ana and other urban centers for more than a decade: violent, sometimes deadly, gang activity.

The occasion was the release of a book by Santa Ana Police Officer Mona Ruiz, co-authored by Times staff writer Geoff Boucher, on her evolution from gang member to gang diversion officer.

“I stand here, I’m still alive and I’m an example of someone who is willing to try their hardest to help,” Ruiz said. “There is a future for these kids, but we have to help them find the way.”

*

Ruiz, who joined the notorious F-Troop gang out of “curiosity and boredom,” said there are at least 1,000 gang members in Santa Ana today. In Orange County, more than 100 gangs operate, she said.

She was joined on the panel by Mayor Miguel A. Pulido Jr., former gang member Jesse Soto and Rosa Zermeno, who said she was close to joining a gang when volunteers and recreation workers helped her find a better direction.

Zermeno now works as a senior leader for the Santa Ana Recreation Center.

“I want to give back some of what community leaders did for me,” she said.

Soto said he had been in and out of jails and on drugs for years before he left the gang life 11 years ago. He now works for Santa Ana, making presentations at elementary and middle schools to discourage children from joining gangs.

“I show them the results of gang activity--pictures of kids in wheelchairs, bodies left by drive-by shootings,” he said. “I tell them, ‘If you do it, then this is your future.’ All of a sudden, they don’t think it’s so cool anymore.”

*

Panelists repeatedly returned to the same theme, saying that everyone must get involved in helping young, at-risk people to combat gangs.

“It’s our problem, and solutions have to be multifaceted,” Pulido said.

The mayor mentioned several city-sponsored programs, including a citywide art contest for young people and efforts to pair corporations with local schools. He said it is essential to have high expectations for young people and to demand that they meet those expectations.

Ruiz works in a police diversion program in which young gang members convicted of minor offenses are sometimes given the option of doing community service rather than going to jail.

She asked critics of the Police Department to have patience.

“We can’t change this overnight. It takes years and years,” she said. “But we also need you to get involved. We can’t do it alone.”

At least 100 people crowded into the room to take in the discussion, including off-duty police officers, teachers and community leaders. Surveying the crowd at the close, Amezcua said, “If each of us would get involved with just one person, just think of the difference we could make.”