City Leaders Gather to Confront Gang Violence

“We’ve got to have a multi-pronged effort, we’ve got to enforce the law and we’ve also got to be smart,” proclaimed Mayor Villaraigosa in endorsing the widespread commitment among the 13 network cities to combating gang violence through a blend of prevention, intervention and enforcement approaches.

Mayor Villaraigosa, joined at the meeting by fellow Mayors Dennis Donahue of Salinas, Thomas Holden of Oxnard and Bob Blanchard of Santa Rosa, as well as several city council members, agency heads, and school, law enforcement and community partners, also sounded the strong youth development theme that ran throughout the meeting. 

“We’ve got to develop kids, and we’ve got to guide them,” said Villaraigosa. “We can reclaim [young] people.”

To emphasize the need for a balanced approach involving the entire community, both Mayor Villaraigosa and Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton asserted that “we can’t arrest our way out of this problem.”

“I want to be measured on having less crime to respond to,” said Chief Bratton. “We need to find a way to ‘afford the penicillin’” of a comprehensive approach. Bratton discussed the importance of a community policing philosophy in which city leaders and gang intervention workers are all held accountable.

The City of Los Angeles hosted the meeting along with NLC’s Institute for Youth, Education, and Families (YEF Institute) and the National Council for Crime and Delinquency, which co-sponsor the network. Referring to the prior day’s gang-related shooting at a bus stop that seriously wounded eight people, including five middle school students, Rev. Jeff Carr — the city’s director of gang reduction and youth development who works directly out of the mayor’s office — emphasized the urgency of developing effective solutions to gang problems in Los Angeles and many other cities.

An “Endemic Epidemic”
Connie Rice, director of The Advancement Project in Los Angeles, passionately described an “endemic epidemic” in many parts of Los Angeles, characterized by constant but shockingly high rates of gang violence that come to be seen as expected or “normal” in afflicted neighborhoods.  She urged her city and others to provide comprehensive wraparound services, massive coordination of resources and a political commitment to making all communities safe.

A recent Advancement Project report and an analysis by the city controller both called for greater efficiency and effectiveness in the city’s gang prevention efforts through centralization of resources. 

Reflecting on the importance of a comprehensive approach, Rice insisted that “one half of the equation is strategic suppression — you can’t do prevention when children are sleeping in bathtubs because bullets are flying,” and the other half involves prevention and intervention.

“There is a big difference between reducing gang crime and ending the gang culture,” said Rice, calling for homegrown, neighborhood-based strategies that involve public, private, community, faith-based, school, family, media and other stakeholders.

Bobby Arias of Communities in Schools, a key partner of the Los Angeles Police Department in its San Fernando Valley anti-gang efforts, echoed the need for multi-sector approaches. According to Arias, everyone in the community has a role to play: parks and recreation departments can provide enriching afterschool activities, churches can offer places to study, and colleges and universities can supply mentors.

“What’s going to happen if these kids are welcome nowhere?” asked Arias. “Kids who do not have hope are a danger to themselves and to others.”

Network Building
John Calhoun, senior consultant to the YEF Institute and coordinator of the 13-city network, credited the cities at the meeting with “transcending any definition of network that I know. They are vitalized for their communities, for each other, and at the same time ready to move forward as a body toward soon-emerging policy goals that will help communities throughout the state.”

City teams participating in the meeting had opportunities to conduct and discuss a self-assessment of progress during the first year of network activity. Among other topics, city officials expressed a strong interest in broadening and deepening their outreach to an ever-wider variety of stakeholders at the city and neighborhood levels.

Participants also provided input on the network’s emerging state and federal policy agenda by suggesting refinements to policy principles hammered out by the network’s advisory committee in November 2007.

Realizing the essential cross-city learning benefits of the network, small groups met for in-depth discussions of topics such as prisoner reentry, linkages with schools, new enforcement strategies (including cooperation with child welfare agencies), direct outreach to gang members and “wannabes” on city streets, and how best to track the progress of gang reduction initiatives.

A panel of city representatives employing creative grassroots strategies updated the full group on Oxnard’s CityCorps work experience program for youth, Stockton’s revitalized Peacekeeper street outreach effort and San Bernardino’s intensive neighborhood-based Operation Phoenix initiative.

Paul Seave, director of the Governor’s Office of Gang and Youth Violence Policy, addressed the group and within days announced the first $16.5 million in California Gang Reduction, Intervention, and Prevention (CalGRIP) grants to cities and community-based organizations for gang prevention, intervention, enforcement, and job training and education programs.

Details: To learn more about the California Cities Gang Prevention Network, visit www.ccgpn.org or contact Leon Andrews at (202) 626-3039 or andrews@nlc.org. To download the network’s first strategy paper on “Implementing a Citywide Gang Reduction Strategy,” visit www.nlc.org/iyef. To order a copy, please send an e-mail to karpman@nlc.org or call (202) 626-3072.