City Council OKs $2 Million for Youth Jobs

Responding to a recent escalation in gang violence, the Los Angeles City Council on Friday approved spending $2 million over the next month to put 2,000 teenagers to work in the city’s summer jobs program.

“We need to keep certain youngsters from being at risk during the time of the year when they are the most idle,” said Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, who called for the council to nearly double the size of its work program.

The move comes at a time when the city has experienced a sharp increase in homicides, many of them gang-related.

“All of us agree this is a critical thing to do,” Councilman Mike Feuer said. “The most effective antidote to dealing with gang violence is to put jobs in the community.”

City officials hope to have the youngsters put to work as soon as next week in a variety of minimum-wage jobs, including helping with community beautification projects and office work at a number of nonprofit organizations.

Meanwhile, the council in coming weeks is expected to allocate an additional $3 million for gang violence prevention and intervention programs.

“We can’t ignore a crisis when it is staring us in the face,” Ridley-Thomas said.

According to police statistics, violent crime in the city increased 7.5% during the first six months of the year compared with the same period last year. Homicides increased 28%, with gang-related killings accounting for 42% of the 250 reported murders, officials said.

Although nowhere near the levels of violence during the 1980s and early 1990s, those numbers have stirred concern at City Hall and in many Los Angeles communities, particularly those most affected by the violence.

Some activists have suggested that the Rampart corruption scandal has contributed to the problem by forcing the Police Department to restructure its anti-gang units, thus emboldening gang members.

Councilman Joel Wachs has also accused the LAPD of cutting back its enforcement efforts as it prepares to police the Democratic National Convention next month.

LAPD officials deny that the increase in violence is related either to the restructuring of the gang units or to the convention.

“We are working diligently to address the increase of violence in our community,” said Cmdr. David Kalish. “We are conducting a great amount of analysis of crime data and are responding with additional resources to problem locations. However, law enforcement is not the only answer to the problem. We must continue to address the full spectrum of this issue as a community.”

In recent weeks, community leaders have held meetings aimed at understanding the problem. More than 200 people attended the council’s Ad Hoc Committee on Gang Violence and Juvenile Justice last week to express their concerns and urge city lawmakers to allocate additional funds for gang prevention programs.

One of those activists, William “Blinky” Rodriguez, on Friday praised the council’s action.

“Young people need something to do,” said Rodriguez, a Christian lay minister who helped broker a truce among the San Fernando Valley’s Latino gangs in 1993. “They need a way of earning gainful employment.”

However, he said, for the program to be successful, it needs to allow the city to “access the right population of youth. . . . It is going to be interesting to see how the jobs get administered.”

Ridley-Thomas said the city is working with school officials and community organizations, including the YMCA, to reach out to at-risk youths ages 14 to 19. They may apply for the $5.75-an-hour jobs by contacting their school work-study coordinators, he added.