Yesterday I complained that the city has not given funds to Homeboy Industries despite the fact that the Homeboy programs are in trouble financially, and are regularly serving more people than all the other city gang-violence-reduction programs combined. (More on those numbers next week.)
(And for a brand new development on the Homeboy/mayor’s office issue, please watch for Tim Rutten’s Saturday column.)
So, if the city hasn’t given funds to Homeboy, how is it spending its gang reduction dollars?
On Tuesday, the city’s gang czar, Reverend Jeff Carr (more properly known as the director of Gang Reduction and Youth Development—AKA GRYD, love those acronyms), gave his progress report to the LA City Council detailing how the city’s $24 plus million in gang funds have been spent in the period from January 1 to June 1, 2009, and what we as taxpayers and residents are getting for our money.
During that same meeting, Councilwoman Janet Hahn* said that, given the progress report, now is the time to take another run at a bond measure to fund additional gang programs. A new Measure A, so to speak.
With all respect to Janet, having now read the 67-page report, I think we need to slow down and think this one through a little.
(The LA Times Rob Greene did an opinion piece/blog post on the matter of the proposed bond that is very much worth reading—both for its own sake, and for some additional background.)
Okay, well what about that report?
What exactly has city done thus far in the first six months of 2009? What have we gotten for our gang $$$?
Simple question, but even having marched my way through Jeff Carr’s acronym-infested report twice, I find it tough to answer.
Two things the city has done are easy to list.
1. In May, the mayor’s office along with the LAPD, Ralphs Markets and some other partners, sponsored a citywide gun buy back program that collected 1700 firearms…. This is a nice thing, and symbolically reassuring. As for whether homeboys from this or that gang actually turned in their Tech 9’s in order to get a supermarket gift card. Well, when these programs have been done in the past, in LA and other cities, there has not been any measurable result in terms of gun violence. In other words, the buyback is not a violence reduction strategy as much as it is something of a public perception stunt. But, okay, better to do it than not. Getting guns off the street, even if many of them are old, broken guns, can’t hurt.
2. Number two accomplishment is the fact that the GRYD office, along with Parks and Rec and the LAPD et al, has launched its second Summer Night Lights program, a program of which I am an ardent fan. It consists of forking over the funds necessary to have sixteen parks in some of the city’s most violence prone areas extend their hours until midnight four nights a week (Wednesday — Saturday) during the two month period between July 8 and September 5.
Sure SNL is a small bucket out of the very big ocean known as LA gang violence, but it’s a simple and straightforward program. Each park sponsors additional activities during those later hours, and each hires ten kids from the community to work in the park. That’s 140 more kids who have summer jobs, assuredly a good thing.
When you give kids something fun to do with their time they are less likely to get bored and then get into trouble. Period. Nothing complicated about that.
I DO have a slight problem with SNL being painted as the main reason for a drop in crime in those target areas during those months since I suspect that has more to do with the fact that the 14 areas are flooded with cops during the SNL hours. But okay, why quibble? It’s a small program, but a good one. GO SUMMER NIGHT LIGHTS!
But these are small side programs. As for how the city has spent the main part of our intervention and prevention dollars…..I’ve batted the topic around with quite a few people in the days since Jeff presented his report and am still left with more troubling questions than answers.
…..TO BE CONTINUED NEXT WEEK
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When you get a minute, skim through the report yourself.
In the meantime, I’m heading out to shop for lots of barbecue supplies— now that I’ve reclaimed my backyard patio furniture and the Weber from the black widows. (The spiders were tough, but I was tougher.)
Happy Friday afternoon!
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* NOTE: Earlier I wrote “Jan Perry” when I really and truly meant to write Janice Hahn. Apologies to both Jan and Janet. A brain freeze in the hot weather is the best explanation I can offer.
“I’ve reclaimed my backyard patio furniture and the Weber from the black widows-HA! The spiders were tough, but I was tougher!”
Celeste can kill two stones with one bird!
She destroyed the periodic table, because she only recognizes the element of surprise.
She has been known to cure narcolepsy, just by walking into the room.
She’s a lover, not a fighter, but she’s also a fighter, so don’t get any ideas.
When it is raining, it is because she is sad.
Her skirts never wrinkle.
She is left-handed. And right-handed.
Even if she forgets to put postage on her mail, it gets there.
She once knew a call was a wrong number, even though the person on the other end wouldn’t admit it.
You can see her charisma from space.
The police often question her, just because they find her interesting.
She once punched a magician. That’s right. You heard me.
When she orders a salad, she gets the dressing right there on top of the salad, where it belongs…where there is no turning back.
On every continent in the world, there is a coffee named after her.
She doesn’t believe in using oven mitts, nor potholders.
Her cereal never gets soggy. It sits there, staying crispy, just for her.
Her blogging is years ahead of it’s time.
Respected archaeologists fight over her discarded apple cores.
Yes…Celeste is The Most Interesting Woman In The World.
Forgive me Celeste if I have made you blush, but the world must know.
Funny.
Okay, I know you’re teasing my about my black widow battle but, hey, there were a lot of ’em and they were the size of Humvees.
There was a whole lotta sprayin’ and stompin’ goin’ on for quite some time, I’m tellin’ you!
Hey, I thought I was the most interesting man in the world !!! Que No Don Culo ?
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
http://laeastside.com/2009/07/the-beer-we-drink-on-the-la-eastside/
El Speedy,
Why do you refer to Don Quixote as Don Culo?
“Why do you refer to Don Quixote as Don Culo?”
Mt tio tells me it was a nickname given Don back in the heighborhood when there was contraversy as to whether his culo was bigger than his mouth. The debate lasted for months, and finally it was decided that his ass won out.
Hence Don Culo
Don’t you have the wrong Jan? It’s Hahn (not Perry) who’s making another stab at trying to pass the parcel/property tax (along with Tony Cardenas). Hahn who has her own baggage re: gang programs, of course, although most of it comes from the conservative Fox 11 network and got picked up from there, and is a cause celebre on the talk radio circuit which means I take anything they say with a ton of salt, so who knows.
Celeste,
I appreciate you looking into the matter. The funding discrepancy is shocking, and most people who have the time and energy to sift through technical reports have political interests that prevent real social justice from taking place. But I would trust hearing updates about this from an experienced journalist such as yourself.
Arrrrgghhh. MaLu, Eeek! Thank you for the heads-up. Yes, yes, Hahn, I meant indeed, not Perry.
(NOTE TO SELF: Next time must not run off merrily to shop for barbecue supplies before proofing text twice.
Celeste: …a citywide gun buy back program…collected 1700 firearms…nice thing…symbolically reassuring…not been any measurable result in terms of gun violence…something of a public perception stunt.
But, okay, better to do it than not. Getting guns off the street, even if many of them are old, broken guns, can’t hurt.
What a stupid, stupid waste of limited tax money on symbolism, espcially when those funds could be used for something actually useful.
Do you think that those who turned in guns didn’t already have other ones or quickly got others, probably by stealing them? Many just took a broken gun and got paid for a piece of junk.
How many other symbolic programs are sucking away money that could be used somewhere else? It’s time to quit feeling good and to start becoming responsible and thinking productively.
Maybe Obama could buy back nuclear weapons from Russia. Surely, they wouldn’t keep any or make new ones.
I can’t stand it.
Are the opinions of Gava Joe aka “BITH” of barfinthehat.blogspot.com on Obama race related? Judge for yourself…
(note: “mayate” and “chongo” are Spanglish racist slurs against blacks. Gava Joe aka BITH
using such terms is as puzzling to me as it might be to any of you…)
http://inthehat.blogspot.com/2006/07/la-times-finally-wakes-up.html
Gava Joe said…
HOLLENBECK RESIDENT SAID;
WHO SHOULD THEY REALLY BE MAD AT? BUT ANYWAYS I THINK I JUST BLAH!..BLAH’D!!!! LITTLE TO MUCH…
Good to see you back on the board HR..Your points are all valid. I ca’nt speak to LA like you locals but from my vantage directly in the middle of this country I’m seeing the same bullshit lenience you describe.. This country runs on checks and balances though, and the weight is slowly shifting to the side with the largest voting bloc, that being the Raza vote.
Out here the urban ghettoes, Omaha,Wichita,Topeka,KC, and the outlying areas are growing and beginning to prosper and transform not from the efforts of the lazy mayate whose stagnant open-handed, “gimme-gimme”attitude created them, but from the presence of the “migre nuevo”. That being the somewhat newly arrived Chicanos and MX nationals who are there to do the work the mayates wo’nt..
The pay”checks” are being issued, and the balance is shifting. The faction with the largest earned income will prevail. There’s no credit given for handouts, and face it, the fucking handouts are slowing to a trickle because the upper-crust needs a bigger chunk of the pie..Once again like I always say, this country runs on checks, balances, and special interest greed. Always has..
To all you hardcore gangster types: sorry for the economics lecture, or NOT!!
4:37 AM
……
Gava Joe said…
Let me run this by you. I’ve given some consideration to the prior writer who cited: “White privilege” as a reason for possible lenience to the “plight” of the black man? I respond with: Yo, That boat already sailed, ese… For yrs that attitude may have prevailed but time, observation, and deduction concludes that all that favoritism and assistance has merely created a “needy monster”, a hungry whiney child if you will, and I WILL! Since Abe and the Abolitionists ended slavery the “ex-slave” has tried to instill and nurture that guilt.. You can still hear it in the more liberal media, but its potency is waining at long last.. Good to see the whiners shuffle to the back of the stage, because you know what? The PLANET is in real shitty shape!
I’ve come to the conclusion that the greedy few, the oil companies, the bushes, cheneys, and the balance of the ruling class keep “stirring the racial pot”, keeping your tensions high but CONTAINED! While they continue their plunder we remain stifled in our own bog.. But bottom line, vatos: the long, profitable run by the tinto chongos is about done. They’ve exposed their own laziness and inability to “organize under fire”.. Aftermath of Katrina bears that witness.. The animales who killed those innocents have yet to be caught, but they will.. I’m confident that the amt of favoritism they may have enjoyed is quickly going away. You may as well believe it too. Look around.
………..
Gava Joe said…
Anonymous whined:
So, they should just be cool with the 400 years of slavery and let it go?
You are FUCKING AYE they should let it go, get on with productive, bullshit-free growth OR GET ON THE FUCKING BOAT!!
I said it before, if you ever had the unfortunate chance to live with these stinkin, ignorant cretins with all their wretched fucking hair products fouling the atmosphere, and have to listen to their primitive rants you’d concur (or grab your ankles like the punk you appear to be)… Fuck YOU! There’s a comment Wally wo’nt read HA!
Yup I DO favor a Chicano over some of my own race, but it’s like that everywhere. A man is judged by the content of his character. A solid trait in the vatos I’ve known is LOYALTY.. A mayate will give you up in a hot tick, and piss down his leg when he does for fear he’ll get stuck before he PCs up..
OK foolio?
Hi, there, interesting tid bits,
Thank you for your concern, but this discussion has come up with various commenters over the past year after a few people from In the Hat began showing up at WLA.
Here’s the policy: I don’t care what people did or didn’t say at Wally’s site or elsewhere. It’s all about how they behave in my house. If someone wants to reinvent themselves on this site and contribute to the discussion, they are very much welcome to do so. If not, I spike their comments when they stray over the line.
Also, I’ve given up trying to sort out certain people’s noms de guerre since some people seem to find it amusing to impersonate others, and still others impersonate the impersonators. Or something like that. I don’t find any of that impersonation masa in the least amusing. However, I also don’t care any more. It’s all about the behavior.
In short, fights that started elsewhere have no place here.
PS: Wally and I have exchanged notes about certain personalities when need be.
So it looks like I made the bigtime? You know in the particular forum that was originally written a few years back it stood well. I’m glad to see you didn’t “spike” it here on these pages, Celeste. They were lifted out of the In The Hat archives by an obvious ne’er do well who took umbrage with my rhetoric. I’ve tried to explain to this fool endlessly that my attitude has mellowed and I’ve left that “institutional fire” behind, but he persists. So be it. I won’t raise a foul word to him, and shall stand by my words. They spoke my mind, and Tony Rafael (Wallyfaye) allowed them. Enough said. Thanks Celeste, and thanks Rob Thomas (stillnoscript, etc.) for lifting me out of obscurity albeit unauthorized.
somebody needs to flag that nut stillnoscript-rob thomas, he should not be commenting any where on the internet, you can google that guy he has blogged so much and is on every web site with them same bs from gang blogs,to polictical blogs to local neighbor hood blogs that he has never even stepped foot in playing these same games.
Celeste – Why is this “Interesting tid bits” person bringing up 3 year old comments from another blog ? Somebody needs to get a life.
WC,
Totally with ya on that one.
And Gava Joe, your presence here is enjoyed and welcomed.
I like Gava Joe. I hope that’s not a reason for others to hate him. At least he’s open-minded.
Thanks Woody. Open minds are like fertile fields, anything can grow out of them. Cultivation is at the discretion of the farmer. I appreciate your endorsement, though I think at times you lay a little heavy on the fertilizer, pal.