Turnarounds: November 2007 Archives

Every gangster I've ever met, repentant or otherwise, tells variations on the same story. Usually, they're poor, their parents are either split up or both working and they have no one to look out for them after school lets out. And so, without anyone to fill the void, they hang out with a bunch of other kids, get into trouble and, pretty soon, it's too late to get out of the lifestyle.

Ten years ago, after a particularly sad gang shooting that killed a little girl, the City of Los Angeles tried to step in where parents could not. It funded the Bridges program, a series of after school programs to help kids who might fall in with gangs. Rather than hanging out and getting in trouble, they brushed up on their studies, played sports and went on trips.

There are basically two kinds of stories told about programs like this:
1.) "I could have joined a gang, but instead I joined a team," said a student.
2.) "This is a waste of my taxpayer dollars," complained someone somehow connected to politics.

I joined the long list of chroniclers when I went to Sutter Middle School on Thursday night. I'm not sure where my story fits in the cavalcade of pieces over the years, but I hope it showed that the program got through, at least to some of the 3,000 or so kids who've passed through it over the years.

And I will say this: after a long day at the office, dealing with not-very-cooperative people on the phone, crimes and corporate greed, it was nice to see a bunch of kids having a good time. Will programs like Bridges cut off gangs' recruiting base for the next generation? Probably not all on their own, but it certainly seems like a good start.

Our own Dennis McCarthy today writes a column about former Los Angeles County District Attorney Gil Garcetti, whose passion comes to life in moving photographs of the difficult lives led by women and children in villages of West Africa. Garcetti's photographs are on display at UCLA's Fowler museum at the same time his old nemesis, O.J. Simpson, was ordered to stand trial on kidnapping, armed robbery and other charges in Vegas. Garcetti's not surprised. Go figure. dailynews.com

Jason beat me to the punch in posting this item on Victor Tovar, who traded what he saw as a dead-end life as a gangbanger for a more comfortable future as a firefighter. I wanted to take a couple minutes to expand on it, though.

I heard about Mr. Tovar through Paul Vinetz at a San Fernando Valley Coalition on Gangs meeting a few months ago. It took us awhile to connect, but it was well worth the wait. Vinetz filled me in in advance, then introduced me to Mr. Tovar last week when he spoke in front of a group of kids who'd gotten in trouble.

I've met a lot of guys who cliqued up when they were young, regretted it later, but couldn't pull themselves out. But Mr. Tovar really seems to be something different. He doesn't have the swagger or the gangster's cadence anyore. If he didn't talk about his past, you'd have no idea he came from the lifestyle. But when he talks about the trouble he used to get into, his voice has the deadly serious tone of someone who's known that fear.

We talked for a good amount of time after he addressed the kids and I asked him why kids join gangs. He offered a few thoughts: lack of parental supervision, a breakdown in the traditional family structure, kids who watch too many violent movies. Then he turned it around and asked me my thoughts.

Here's what I told him: anytime people don't have hope, they're gonna start looking at ways to get into trouble. While there's always going to be incorrigible troublemakers who will never go straight, I think most people will play by the rules so long as they believe they'll get treated fairly. It's when they can no longer see a point to going to school, working a job and obeying the law, that's when they'll start reaching for that strap or looking at a bag of meth as a means to pay the rent.

And I told him that guys like him are an important part of that equation. I don't know if he got through to any of those kids in the audience, or anyone who read his story in the newspaper, but if anyone saw themselves in his story and dreamed for something better, then he succeeded. Guys like him show that just because you messed around in your youth, just because you grew up in rough circumstances, doesn't mean you have to live life as a screw-up.

We tell terrible stories all the time, news about death and drugs and ruthless gangs who do rotten things to innocent kids. They're sad, but they're necessary. But we've got to keep looking for the Victor Tovars, too, to remind people that there's a different, better way.