United Communities to Stop Violence "Gangs and Drugs; understanding the issues"

~~~~ .. The Report .. ~~~~

by Bill Murray

A coalition called "United Communities to Stop Violence" sponsored the first in a series of community events, "Gangs and Drugs; understanding the issues," a community policing dialogue held on Saturday, June 1st, at Bravo High School.

The theme of the day was:

Issues OF the community ... Solutions BY the community

As community based policing advocates, we at Los Angeles Community Policing were pleased to play a significant and active role. Bobbie Logan, Mike Mason, Kim Bailey, Everett Littlefield and my daughter, Ashlee Murray, handled much of the logistics at the venue as well as all the registration, and it was my privilege to be asked by the coalition to participate as Master of Ceremonies.

By any measure, the event was a big success. The common community comments at the end of the day included things like, "When's the next one of these dialogues to be held?" and "When are we going to be doing this again?"

The results? A spirited partnership has been created on the Eastside of Los Angeles, one which is engaging a variety of groups which are coming together with the community to find shared solutions ... we're trying to reduce crime and improve the quality of life.

An exciting program with a unique format was devised for this successful community conference. In addition to the agenda, throughout the day community tables were maintained by a variety of organizations.

The event appealed to people of all ages, and from every walk of life. About 100 community members, and numerous representatives from community groups, government entities and LAPD attended.

The format began with an assembly where Fr. Jim Nieblas of St. Mary's Parish gave the opening invocation.

He was followed by our featured keynote speaker, LA Police Commissioner Silvia Saucedo, who spoke eloquently about "Empowering the Community."

Commissioner Saucedo spoke in both Spanish and English. Knowing a significant number of our participants would choose to communicate in Spanish we'd prepared a variety of ways the event would be inclusive so that we could accommodate this important part of our community throughout the day.

Commissioner Saucedo was followed by a community panel. Each of the members briefly discussed his or her perspective on the issues of gangs and drugs.

The panel included:

.	Robert Jiminez .		Director, Estrada Courts Recreation Center, University of California Cooperative Extension
	Alonzo Marshall		Member, LA Unified School District Crisis Team
	Rita Chariz		Community Organizer, Proyecto Pastoral at Dolores Mission
	Joe Rodriguez		Project Director, Family Services Cooperative - SEA
	Juan R. Jimenez		President and CEO, Operation Youth Education Service (Y.E.S.)
.	D.W. Fields and Bill Eagleson .		LAPD Detectives, Hollenbeck specialists in doing anti-gang work and narcotics suppression .

Next, the community members were invited to come forward. Individuals were given an opportunity to make a comment, ask a question of the panel, or express a point of view.

Participants shared a variety of things ... some wished to relate their personal story of a loss related to gang violence ... an impromptu hat was passed for donations for the family of the most recent victim of a homicide (the day before) ... a 10 year old boy assured us he'd not be joining a gang and asked us to see what we could do for the youth.

Then the second and perhaps most exiting part of the day began.

Small professionally facilitated workshops, breakout groups, were held in the classrooms. We held them both in Spanish and English.

The seminars were devoted to engaging all the participants in a dialogue where not only existing programs were discussed, but related community concerns were heard, issues expressed and new ideas shared.

Finally, the attendees reconvened to the cafeteria to have lunch.

At the end of the meal a facilitator and a community member from each of the seminars was asked to come forward to tell the attendees what was discussed their workshop. In this way, everyone who participated learned what had occurred in the other groups.

We discovered the dialogue in the seminars had some things in common, and some things unique.

Here are the combined results ... the issues, concerns and ideas ... expressed to us by participants Maria and Elena, Veronica and Bradley, and May Tse and Celia:

		develop a plan to disseminate information to the community
		have effective communication among police, community and politicians
		develop a plan of action and give services of a mental health nature to families and children
		train parents on laws that apply to families about discipline and other issues
		have more police vigilance in areas of greatest needs and on weekends in particular
		develop a plan of action among the community, police, schools and politicians to have more programs for young children
		have periodic evaluation of the programs developed to reach the objectives of the community
		need to examine the safety of students at schools
		examine how to supervise kids when both parents are working
		there are not enough after school programs
		examine how to keep the "good kids" from being intimidated by the "bad kids"
		need better coordination of community resources and giving information to proper agencies
		need for parenting skills classes - to help the parent recognize warning signs to prevent the problem
		create more employment opportunities for our youth
		need for community policing programs
		help by providing money for proven programs to help with the gang violence who are holding their communities hostage
		adults and parents should set examples to their families and youth by (a) becoming educated in city policies, local governance, and neighborhood action committees and (b) by becoming involved in community and neighborhood awareness and development
		provide a citywide system and website to promote available city services
		provide an inter-departmental task force to (a) address specific community needs and (b) maintain and / or establish dialogue between City and community-based services
		provide mediated dispute resolution between gangs and the community
		develop community / neighborhood watch group programs tailored for each community
		provide more education, intervention and prevention programs regarding gangs, drugs and the community
		establish more citywide dialogue between neighborhoods and communities to develop a better understanding of diversified issues
		need to strongly encourage young at risk adults to mentor and educate other not yet at risk teens and youth about gangs and drugs

Obviously there's a lot to be done. The challenge now will be to select some short and long term goals arising from this, designing meaningful partnered relationships and programs that make sense for the community ... all geared towards reducing violence and improving the quality of life.

Will this mean an end to crime on the Eastside? Of course not. But we have to start somewhere.

This was not a passive event. At every step we'd designed elements that immediately engaged the participants in helping each other find the solutions.

See, and that's the point. Because successful community policing partnerships depend on the active participation of all those who live and work in the area.