L.A. County Probation Dept. blues

I arrived at Camp Mendenhall in the hills above Palmdale on a cold November day in 1987. I was 17 years old. I had shackles on my legs. And I was about to serve a seven-month sentence after being shot by an LAPD officer during a drug raid. I was selling PCP.

For years, I had been a gangbanger in the Boyle Heights neighborhood on Los Angeles’ Eastside. I knew how to use a shotgun and an assault rifle. I knew how to protect a drug house from rival gangs. I expected to be dead before I was 20.

As the van pulled into the probation camp that fall, I had nothing but contempt for the cops who arrested me and the court that sent me to this Godforsaken place. But that first day, when I was signed over to the camp and dropped off at the director’s office, I experienced something completely new.

Mr. Garrison walked in and looked directly at me. “I don’t care what’s in your file,” this man said to me in a smooth, still voice. “I do care about how you leave here. It won’t be easy at first. But we will guide you.” For the first time in my life, someone was offering to alter my destiny.

From the minute my head was shaved and I was assigned to a camp unit, the regimen was tough. I had to introduce myself to every staff member: Last name: Martinez! Dorm Unit: Yankees! Sentence: Track 2 (Six months to a year)! My first night I was deducted five points for speaking without seeking permission.

Mandatory morning exercise included cleaning my nails, my ears and my wardrobe. I must have cut my face a hundred times before I could master the art of shaving off my few facial hairs.

And I still remember the abuse that Mr. Halsey would hurl at us every day. “You wards of the court are losers! You wards of the court are the reasons I have a nice home!” he would yell, daring us to commit more crime when we got out so his friends in the prison system could keep their jobs.

But in the end, when you were getting ready to leave, Mr. Halsey would quietly tell you that he would gladly trade in his fortune to see you never ever come back to a camp or a prison.

It was that kind of caring ethic that guided most of the people who worked in the probation system back then. Each one had a message for us.

Mr. Palumbo, who used words I couldn’t understand to describe my problems, made it a condition of my release that I learn one new word a day from the dictionary.

In the camp school, Mrs. Love gave me the first “A” I ever received, helping me unlock skills and interests I never knew I had.

And no one did more for me than Mary Ridgway, my street probation officer. Mary, whom I first met on my last day at camp, would become my guardian angel.

When I left Camp Mendenhall on May 24, 1988, and went home, it was Mary who stayed on me to abandon the gang life in Boyle Heights that had gotten me into trouble in the first place. She walked me to the local enrichment program and made sure I finished school.

She visited me at home and took me on field trips to Catholic retirement homes and sit-down restaurants, where she taught me how to read a menu and how to eat with a knife and fork. When I was a fool, she called me a fool. And she didn’t hesitate to report my friends for probation violations and send them back to jail if they kept dealing drugs or if she felt they would be safer in camp than on the street.

Mary, who remained my friend for the next two decades, died tragically last year after a short bout with cancer.

Sadly, I’m afraid the approach to young people that she embodied is withering too.

The Los Angeles County Probation Department is at a crossroads. Fights are roiling the camps and halls where our juvenile offenders are locked up. Corrupt probation officers are lining their own pockets. There is now talk of closing some detention centers.

When I visit the camps — which I do from time to time as a community volunteer — I see probation officers dressed in combat boots and fatigues acting like soldiers, not teachers. No one is talking to the kids. Sometimes, they are left to just sit around doing nothing. Many kids today cycle through the camps so quickly that they don’t get a chance to take a real break from the street and open themselves to another, less destructive path.

These kids may have committed violent crimes. But they aren’t all that different from the gangsters I grew up with. What they need is to be treated like human beings by adults who care about them and want to help them change.

There is a blueprint for doing that. I know. I was once part of this system. And it saved my life.

Sal Martinez works as warehouse supervisor and volunteers as a youth advocate in Boyle Heights. He is married and has two children.