There was a time when it seemed that So Cal’s best bet for a forward thinking and comprehensive gang program would be LA County, which planned to completely revamp its existing $105 million gang program—while the City Council and the mayor’s office seemed to do little more than shoot at each other rather than coming up with a coherent strategy to calm the violence in the streets.
But now the city seems to be moving (at least vaguely), even if slowly, in a single direction. Yet the county has done……Zero. Zip. Nada.
Bill Fujioka, the county’s chief executive, and a smart guy whom we generally like, is more than a year late in unveiling even a presentation of a plan—so that the Board of Supervisors might begin to haggle over it.
More on this in the coming weeks, but in the meantime, the LA Times’ Molly Hennessy-Fisk has a fairly thorough listing of some of the vexing issues at play here. (By the way, Hennessy-Fisk was only given the LA County beat this past September, and she has already produced some very nicely reported articles, this one included.)
Here are some clips:
After much infighting, the county plan includes pilot sites in the Florence-Firestone neighborhood north of Watts and in the Pacoima area, where Los Angeles County sheriff’s officials are working with Los Angeles and San Fernando police to combat gangs.
It remains unclear, however, how they will be structured, funded or monitored.
[SNIP]Fujioka and his staff have been tight-lipped about details. The presentation has been pushed back twice this month as they met with Sheriff Lee Baca and his staff and supervisors’ staffers to hash out details.
At next month’s meeting, Fujioka plans to ask for four more months [!!!!!!]to develop the strategy and cost estimates, according to copies of his proposal released this month to supervisors’ staffers.
Central to that draft is a controversial gang emergency operations center proposed by Baca that would allow county staff to waive confidentiality laws and share information about individuals involved with or at risk of becoming involved with gangs.
Uh…. wave confidentiality laws….? File that under a BIG Slippery Slope Alert.
Late last month, Baca made a rare appearance at a supervisors’ staff briefing and spent two hours pushing the center, which he proposed a year ago. He has asked for $3 million in his proposed budget for technology and staff to run the program.
[SNIP]Supervisors’ staffers have been insisting for months that the sheriff cannot waive confidentiality to fight crime. Earlier this month, a shouting match broke out between supervisors’ and sheriff’s staffers at a meeting to consider the latest draft of the strategy.
Fujioka said last week that the sheriff’s proposed center no longer is part of his gang proposal, calling it too costly and unnecessary to the pilot programs.
Anyway, it goes on from there. Fujioka says his office is not at fault, that he’s trying to do more than just tinker around the edges. “”This is not a six-month, two-year program. This is a paradigm shift, changing the culture in the county,” he said.
Well, we hope so.
Or could this be a case of the perfect becoming the enemy of the good?
Hard to say for sure. But it’s beginning to look more and more like the latter.