New Neighbors Have 2 Views of Gang Life

Father Gregory J. Boyle helps gang members find work. He counsels them and testifies for them in court.

The Los Angeles Police Department’s Hollenbeck gang unit pursues criminals in an area with more than 30 violent gangs. Its detectives arrest and testify against them.

To some, the two seem worlds apart. But as of today they are neighbors on East 1st Street, separated only by a parking lot and funeral home.

The new office for Homeboy Industries, a brick building painted mint green, will provide more space for Boyle’s staff, which is now crammed into a small office. Additional rooms have been created to hold meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous and for tattoo removals, all part of Boyle’s plan to help gang members find a new life.

It will also provide up-close viewing for the Hollenbeck detective unit.

“If those gangsters mess up, said Det. De Waine Fields, “I won’t have to look far.”

It’s ironic, said Det. Daniel Jaramillo, that Boyle’s new office is two doors away, and that the buildings flank a funeral home.

“That’s the only thing that brings us together: the funerals,” Jaramillo said.

It’s just a coincidence that Homeboy’s new location is near the detectives, Boyle said.

Begun in 1988 by Boyle, called “G-Dog” by gang members, Homeboy includes silk-screening, landscaping, graffiti removal and logo merchandising businesses, all run by inactive gang members.

Boyle said that as a priest at Dolores Mission Church, he had buried too many youths in East Los Angeles and wanted to find jobs for gang members to curb the violence.

“These kids are having a hard time imagining the future,” he said. “They are stuck in despair. A job is an immediate infusion of hope. It fills them with a sense of purposeful activity. A job gives them a reason not to gangbang. After that, you can start to deal with other things. At that point the light of hope is on.”

Boyle, the author of articles on gang violence and the subject of a book, “Father Greg and the Homeboys,” sat in his old crammed office amid religious images and framed pictures of young men making gang signs. One shows a boy writing in graffiti: “Bring G-Dog back to L.A.,” in response to Boyle’s being sent on a 1992 retreat, which is required of all Jesuits.

A picture hanging in the Hollenbeck Division also shows young men making a gang sign. But above it are the words “Baby Killers.” These are the gangsters detectives suspect in the Oct. 8 killing of 10-year-old Stephanie Raygoza, who was riding her scooter on Clarence Street when a stray bullet hit her.

Boyle and the Hollenbeck gang detectives say they will be amicable neighbors but say they have very different approaches to the tragedy of gang violence.

Boyle says he tries to use each killing as “an alarm clock” to wake gangs up to the consequences of what they are doing, sometimes getting an immediate reaction. Since the 10-year-old’s killing, “I’ve been flooded with requests by the gangs involved to get jobs, remove tattoos. Heartfelt things,” Boyle said.

But Fields said that while detectives applaud Boyle’s work, they are more skeptical about gang members’ willingness to change.

“I think gangsters lie to both of us. They tell us both what we want to hear. . . . The other day, Boyle helped turn in a gun,” he said. “That’s noble. That’s one less gun on the streets. But . . . when someone pulls a trigger, they are not misguided. It’s not being misguided to kill someone. That’s criminal, and there’s no excuse in the world for it.”