Boys & Girls Club Program Honored

A youth gang prevention academy run by the Boys & Girls Club received top state honors recently for its work in steering troubled youth onto the right path.

The Frontline Academy, founded last year, teaches youth about teamwork and shows them the consequences of criminal behavior.

The program was one of six in the state honored in Sacramento last week with the California Crime Prevention Award, presented by the Governor’s Office of Criminal Justice Planning and the Attorney General’s Crime and Violence Prevention Center.

“The goal is to take kids who are at risk of being in a gang, or whose brothers or sisters or parents are in gangs, and to try . . . to get them to resolve conflict, not to be in the gangs,” said Monique Lawee, director of the Westminster Boys & Girls Club.

About 30 to 40 youths between the ages of 11 and 14, most referred by police and school officials, are part of the program’s after-school or summer sessions.

“In this day and age you constantly have to be working on gang prevention,” Police Chief James Cook said. “It’s always going on around us. No matter what city you’re in, there’s a constant appeal to join street gangs.”