LA & GANG Intervention: Finding What Works
April 22nd, 2008 by 
Celeste Fremon
When the LA Times snatched David Zahniser from the LA Weekly last summer, it was a very, very smart move. Dave Z is extremely intelligent, savvy and skeptical—particularly about City Hall.
So, after Antonio Villaraigosa delivered his State of the City speech last Monday, I figured I could afford to look on the bright side of AV’s gang plan (which I looked at here and here), because I knew I could count David to mad dog it, so to speak.
Yesterday, his first round of analyses came out in an article that focuses on the main thing that could reduce Antonio’s gang strategy to rubble—-or more accurately to business as usual (and not in a good way).
In a word: Evaluations.
I spoke with David on Friday as he was still wrestling with where he wanted to go with his analysis of the gang plan. (That’s one of the excellent things about him. He’s not afraid to wrestle mightily until he finds the right thread to follow.)
You can find the article that resulted here. Below I’ve excerpted a few relevant clips:
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa made a splash when he announced plans last week for ending L.A. Bridges, an anti-gang initiative under fire since the Riordan administration for failing to demonstrate clear results.
….in dropping the L.A. Bridges programs and shifting the money to his appointed “gang czar,” Villaraigosa put off yet again answering one key question: Are these programs, which last year received $13.2 million, successful in quelling violence and keeping kids out of gangs?
When Villaraigosa’s proposed budget is made public today, it is expected to offer an additional $7.2 million to gang prevention and intervention programs, allowing the same contractors who ran programs under L.A. Bridges the opportunity to apply for even more money.
Because the anti-gang efforts are being redesigned, a full evaluation of those programs won’t be practical until at least 2010, said Deputy Mayor Jeff Carr, the city’s gang czar.
What??? Didn’t the mayor promise he would hold all of his gang programs to a rigorous outcomes-based standard? And now many of the much criticized gang prevention and intervention programs operating under the umbrellas known as LA Bridges I & II, may have the chance to get funded all over again…..with no evaluations for another two years or more????
Among the problems with Bridges is that many City Council members have long had their pet programs within it, and have resisted seeing them too closely scrutinized.
Dave Z details a disheartening history of people who were told—explicitly or implicitly—that they couldn’t evaluate LA Bridges—ranging from former City Controller Rick Tuttle, to today’s Controller Laura Chick, to Connie Rice, to my pal Jorja Leap.
In 2000, the program came under fire from then-City Controller Rick Tuttle, who said it was so poorly run that it should be shut down. The council responded by denouncing Tuttle — and demanding that L.A. Bridges stay put.
“I knew it was a bad idea 10 years ago, the way Bridges was going,” Tuttle said last week, looking back on the fight.
City officials received an evaluation of L.A. Bridges’ intervention programs two years later, which found that one city contractor had taken two teens out of gangs. Meanwhile, gang-prevention contracts were so lax that workers could meet the city’s requirements by taking certain children to a baseball game and a picnic in a 12-month period, Carr said.[SNIP]
“Los Angeles has historically awarded agencies multiple contracts year after year after year without holding them accountable by tying the dollars to proof that the desired results have been achieved,” [Chick] wrote in her report.
Here’s how Jorja lays it out:
Leap said she offered the Community Development Department a free review of L.A. Bridges four years ago and got nowhere. But she voiced hope that results would be measured this time around, using basic questions such as: Has a targeted child stayed in school? What is their attendance record? Were they placed on the state’s gang database?
If the city fails to evaluate its redesigned programs, support for such initiatives will evaporate, Leap added.
“This is it,” she said. “If they blow this, it’s over.”
Look: We want and need the mayor’s program to succeed. And we don’t expect overnight miracles. But we do expect some kind of reasonable accountability and measurability—and we’ll keep demanding it until we get it.
Photo by Gina Ferazzi, LA Times
Posted in Gangs, Antonio Villaraigosa, LA City Council | 
April 22nd, 2008 at 7:24 am
Life goes on as usual in politics.
What are area churches doing to help, or have they been forbidden? Government programs won’t change lives like a spiritual change brings.
April 22nd, 2008 at 8:56 am
I’m with Jorja Leap on this one. I’m all for evaluation but it needs to be the right kind of evaluation. What does it mean when they say one program “took two teens out of gangs”? It’s not like there’s an official membership list. I’m not as immersed as some in this information, but from my limited experience, it seemed to me that gang “membership” is an awfully fluid thing.
Instead of measuring that, like Ms. Leap says, how about evaluating the availability of after-school programs, recreation programs, participation in job training and other community resources, grades in school, high school graduation rates, etc. etc.? If a program isn’t doing *anything*, then yeah, they shouldn’t get any money. But if they’re helping kids with school, with job training, with personal development, with gaining positive friendships and mentors, then they’re helping them find an alternative to gangs.
I hope someone sees the light on this issue, soon.
April 22nd, 2008 at 10:16 am
Any Los Angeles based gang intervention program is not going to have a significant impact on the gang and crime problems of L.A. or Southern California. The state of California has too many poor immigrants constantly sneaking across the border. With this continual growth of poor immigrants, any social program is doomed for failure. We need to stop adding to California’s existing social problems of poverty, uneducated youth, un-employed and new gang recruits before any real change can occur.
The Los Angeles Mayor and City Council are stuck on stupid and can’t see what anybody with common sense can see. The city council and Mayor have opposed any enforcement of immigration laws by INS/ICE. The Mayor and city council try and block any deterrent to illegal immigration, with this mentality any real social change is nothing more than a dream of fools.
April 22nd, 2008 at 12:01 pm
When I was a kid, we started each day in public school on the right foot with the pledge of allegiance to our flag and a bible verse picked by the kids. I wonder, today, if the kids leaning towards joining gangs would be more careful if they knew that God was sitting with them and watching and that He has a greater plan for their lives. I guess that we won’t find out with the direction that the left has taken the schools systems with problems.
So, it falls back on the families, where the efforts and money would do the most good. You can’t change the gangs, but you can change and cut-off their source for new members by helping the parents.
April 22nd, 2008 at 4:53 pm
Animals in the news for bonus points: Woman finds 8-foot alligator in her Florida kitchen - “Sandra Frosti says the gator must have pushed through the back porch screen door and then went inside through an open sliding glass door at her home in Oldsmar, just north of Tampa. It then apparently strolled through the living room, down a hall and into the kitchen.”
Mmmmm. Tastes like chicken.
April 22nd, 2008 at 5:29 pm
Woody, it is true in my experience that many born=agains here an L A, where the evangelical culture isn’t as pervasive as in some other areas, were “reborn” from the deepest despair and being drug addicts, into demonology, and even lives of crime. One guy at a church I used to be very active in as a deacon, someone everyone loved and thought was a great guy, one day gave public testimony about how he used to be a hit man until he found the Lord through a girlfriend… flipped everyone out so much, they couldn’t handle it, and started to cold shoulder him. But in general, it seems that people who’ve been that low need to “shock” themselves into something that gives them the same high, and for many, that’s all-consuming or charismatic religion. So while that’s not my cup of tea, I don’t think it should be scored for P C reasons. Maybe there IS a valid role a pastor like Carr can perform, and I think this sort of “ministry” would resonate well with the Catholic youth. OF course, that’s something the Church should be doing, but they’re too indebted making restitution for their pedophiles, even selling off schools and closing programs.
One irony that rankles me about paying for these gang programs, though (apart from wondering how many of these kids are illegal), is that the city is now charging youth groups like the Boy Scouts, Little League and AYSO soccer to use public parks and school facilities. These are the best and cheapest ways to keep kids involved in positive activities BEFORE they get drawn into the world of gangs, and the volunteer parents involved make good role models, too. It’s irrational to charge these kids and families for doing what families should, while picking up the tab at their expense for kids whose parents have dropped the ball. In fact, the parents of “at risk” youth need to be involved in the process, to be counseled in responsible parenting and maybe be monitored by social workers themselves. Those who can pay for some of the programs, should — they should also be docked for graffiti removal and damage their kids do. Maybe that would make them more responsible for their kids, as middle class parents try to be. I’m tired of society seeing these parents as some sorts of victims, instead of urging them to take more responsibility for their own kids.
April 22nd, 2008 at 7:30 pm
I have a story about a cute animal, a cute grizzly bear ( a movie actor) ironically the bear lives near Big Bear Lake, California.
http://cbs2.com/local/Big.Bear.Attack.2.706168.html
April 22nd, 2008 at 7:35 pm
Lost….. Thanks. I did see that one. (I think, this is thus far the frontrunner for Thursday’s class.) Although I like Woody’s gator.
April 24th, 2008 at 9:44 am
The best way to keep kids out of gangs is to keep them in school. Mayor Tom Bradley started LA’s Best, an afterschool program that was actually evaluated by UCLA and was found to lower dropout rates, improve grades and test scores, and as a bonus, reduced juvenile crime by up to 60 % in the areas around the schools with programs. GAP, another after school program, has had similar results. That’s why I supported expanding these programs as Mayor. Expansion of these two programs to all schools in the city should be a priority before the city funds programs which have had no such evaluation.
April 24th, 2008 at 10:16 am
Welcome, Mr. Mayor.
Good point. Everything I’ve seen anecdotally over the years shows a straight line between school drop out rates and gangs. (I’ll soon be posting an interview with your sister that deals with some of these issues.)
Please come back and comment again.
April 24th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
When you talk to his sister, Janice, ask her why she thinks it’s such a grand idea to keep taxing homeowners, especially at a time when they make up a mere 31% of L A residents today (a figure the socialist Richard Alarcon himself gave in city council yesterday — although his “solution” is to raise the minimum L A “living wage” to twice what it is today, while the city’s tax base is dwindling), and many people have lost upto 24% equity in their homes. Plus just got DWP rate hikes, serious trash fee hikes, and are going to have to pay for sidewalk repair themselves.
Meanwhile, the Mayor even mentioned in his State of the City speech that L A has the smallest middle class of ANY city in the country, and squeezing them with more taxes for less services isn’t going to help.
RonKayeLA.com, the blog of recently retired/fired whatever Daily News Editor Ron Kaye has a poignant piece about this plight of middle class homeowners in his current blog — and as he notes, he’s of retirement age, doesn’t even have the extra burden of kids in school at a time when the local schools are too poorly-performing and full of kids bused in who bring their dysfunctions with them, or if they’re lucky and still have functioning schools, they have to fundraise extensively for maintenance and “extras” like computer teachers and TA’s. (Sondra Singh Loh whom you quote, and more recently Steve Lopez, toughed on that.) Even in LAUSD, admittedly more money goes into the low-performing, ESL schools. As Rutten said in his recent editorial, there are “those who elect,” this dwindling group and the wealthy set, and “thsoe who have needs.” The large uneducated, largely illegal immigrant population, many of whose adults aren’t even fluent enough in English to be educated for the jobs needed to replace retiring boomers. (Yesterday’s Times article, e.g.)
The struggling middle class is already put upon and in a net exodus — why does Janice Hahn think this small group of homeowners should pay for another gang tax? Especially when she admitted recently, there is NO specific program designated, she just asked these put-upon homeowners to “trust us,” that she/ they will find a good use for the “dedicated revenue stream.” Is she just utterly lacking in any ideas other than tax and tax the same people?