Getting Young Lives Back on Track

Fifteen-year-old Sandra Vega thought she couldn’t take another step after running up three flights of stairs for the seventh time at the Los Angeles Police Department’s Central Division station downtown.

But exercises on the station’s rooftop weren’t quite over for Vega and 14 teenagers enrolled in LAPD’s Juvenile Impact Program (JIP) for at-risk youths. Dressed in soiled gray sweats and dingy white T-shirts, they still had to do 20 push-ups.

That proved too much at the moment for Vega, who lay down on the floor in exhaustion. But it was not enough to sour her on the program, which she and her parents credit with helping get her life back on track.

Vega’s parents sent her to JIP after she got in trouble for skipping school, fighting and hanging out with the wrong crowd. Like many in the program, Vega believes she is becoming a better person.

“It influenced me to go to school, not to do drugs or other bad things,” she said.

Youngsters, between the ages of 9 and 17, are sent to the program by a judge or are recommended by parents after truancy or such crimes as assault and drug possession. About 100 youngsters from Los Angeles County are enrolled each year, and there is a long waiting list.

The 10-year-old course has expanded beyond its original boot camp tactics and now incorporates classes in anger management and creative arts and instruction in such subjects as math and English. Parents also are required to attend classes, to improve their parental skills.

Over 16 weeks, each batch of JIP participants meets Saturdays for three hours of physical exercise and focus groups, in addition to weeknight sessions.

Funded by donations, JIP is staffed by about 20 volunteers and two paid police officers. It is offered at LAPD’s Central and Harbor divisions; Southeast Division recently closed its JIP group because of a redeployment of officers.

Volunteer Dawn Hagerty, the officer who runs the program at Central, said she will admit youngsters from across Los Angeles County because the need is so great.

JIP began as punishment for adolescent graffiti writers, said founder Frank DiPaola, a retired LAPD officer. He offered youth offenders 100 hours of community service instead of serving time in juvenile detention centers.

“Little by little what started happening, many of these kids, once they finished their hundred hours, they started coming back to hang out with the cops,” he said. “Behavioral changes started occurring, where we took the place of the gang members.”

On a recent Saturday, Philip Wilson, an ex-convict, talked to the group about his experiences in prison.

“Any weed smokers?” Wilson asked.

One by one, about half the class members raised their hands.

“Any gangbangers in here?” Wilson asked.

One teenager reluctantly raised his hand.

“Only you can stop hanging out with your homeboys,” Wilson told him. “Your homeboys aren’t going to be there when you get in trouble, when you get arrested. They’re all gonna run then.”

The fight against the gangs and gang-related crimes certainly can use a helping hand, said Lewis Yablonsky, professor emeritus at Cal State Northridge who has written several books about gangs and juvenile delinquency. He said intervention programs, such as JIP, help youths change their behavior.

“A lot of times, kids want to get out of gangs, and a program like this impact program gives them a rationale to tell their homies, ‘The judge told me to do this, and I have to do this, or I’ll have to go to the California Youth Authority,’ ” he said.

Vanessa Gutierrez admitted she was irresponsible and deceitful and had little interest in school two years ago. The then-14-year-old admitted she had been experimenting with drugs and alcohol. After she was picked up for truancy a second time in 1998, her father, Victor Gutierrez, asked a judge to send her to JIP.

So far, it seems to have been the right decision, the father said.

“In missing class, her first year of school ended up a washout. I think she’s realizing now there is some [truth] to [the saying], ‘Every action has a reaction,’ ” Victor Gutierrez said.

Vanessa Gutierrez agrees that JIP has helped her. “It was either finish this program or go to [Juvenile Hall],” she said. “Everything that was going on at that time, I realized I had to change.”

Back on the rooftop at the Central Division police station, Ricardo Sotelo, 17, held his side after having doubled over with stomach cramps from running up and down the stairs. He said he knows he deserves what comes to him because of the poor decisions he has made in the past. It’s another step in his rehabilitation, he said.

“All the pain we have equals out to all the pain you gave your parents,” Sotelo said, gasping.