Teaser 1: Getting caught in the crossfire
Situated in the heart of gang territory, The Salvation Army’s LA Red Shield Youth Community Center has been saving Pico-Union’s youth from the streets since its humble beginnings in 1929.
Tale of Two Cities: How three decades of police reforms changed gang violence in Pico-Union
In the 1980s and 1990s, gang violence and police corruption were rampant in the city. Presently, gang violence has been reduced drastically.
On a Friday evening at the beginning of December, a group of 20 teenagers were gathered in a rundown brick building at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac in Pico-Union.
Right foot. Left foot. Left hand, grab. Right hand, shake. Stop. Smile. Right foot. Left foot.
One by one, a group of 20 teenagers crossed the stage signaling their graduation from the BreSee Foundation’s Gang Reduction and Youth Development program. Just a year ago, each of them were facing jail time. They had been arrested, and were faced with a decision: jail time or the BreSee Foundation -- a family center where first-time offenders can go to fulfill community service.
They all chose BreSee, though most reluctantly. The lesser of two evils, they said. But now, with their parents and mentors watching from the crowd, these 20 teenagers deemed both “at-risk” and “high risk” by the criminal justice system beamed as they clutched their certificates, with no trace of reluctance in their smiles.
The BreSee Foundation is just one example of the diversion programs that has partnered with the Los Angeles Police Department in recent years. This represents the most recent push to not only implement new procedures, but to radically restructure the way gangs are treated by police.
“The way we would have reacted years ago is through suppression, lots of cops, zero tolerance, take their cars, taskforces called hammer taskforces,” said Jeff Nolte, the LAPD captain of the Rampart Division. “We can’t arrest ourselves out of problems, it just doesn’t work.”
In 1991, the LAPD Rampart Division came under fire for the practices employed by their anti-gang unit. The division was ravaged by corruption charges and cases involving falsifying of evidence as well as police brutality.
For LAPD Rampart Division, this was an inflection point. Nolte, who was just an officer at the time, said it was clear that no small changes would not do, the Rampart Division needed a complete overhaul of the anti-gang unit.
And yet, while the reputation of the Rampart Division crumbled, gang violence continued to spike. Even taking into account the cases that were overturned due to LAPD corruption, LAPD crime data still estimates approximately 120-150 murders per year in the Pico-Union area during the ‘80s and ‘90s.
Starting in the early 2000s and extending into the present, the LAPD began integrating greater community outreach efforts in place of “tough on crime” tactics. This includes both gang prevention and education efforts.
And these tactics seem to be working. Despite a spike in violent crime this past year, overall violent gang-related crime is trending downward. This is due in part to the way officers respond to reports of gang violence.
According to LAPD gang detective Justine Gvirtzman, officers try to curate relationships among gang members so when violence between rival organizations does occur, they have contacts to go to for information.
“The short of it is it happens and it’s great when it does because it helps all parties involved,” Gvirtzman said. “There’s a common goal.”
Gvirtzman said that more than any other crime sect, the majority of gang-related crime is perpetrated by minors, like those referred to the BreSee Foundation.
“What has surprised me the most is how many kids are committing these crimes. The majority of the people we are arresting for gang-related crimes are minors -- they’re still children, they’re teenagers,” Gvirtzman said.
That’s where diversion and interventionist programs like BreSee come in. According to Nolte, these agencies act independently of the LAPD but efforts are coordinated with the end goal of getting kids out of the circle of gang violence.
“The workers in these Gang Reduction & Youth Development programs have the ability to relate to the folks that are either involved or may be at risk or already too late. Once they get that in with someone, it’s really endless,” Nolte said.
Students gather in the BreSee Foundation's study room. Once at-risk teenagers are referred to the foundation they are provided with homework help and college counseling services.
Andy Rodriguez, the GRYD director at BreSee said that he has seen firsthand how kids that are at risk for joining gangs are treated upon their first run in with the law makes a huge impact on the trajectory of their later lives.
“Once you expose the kids to a court system, they’ll be forming an identity, they’ll be forming differently, hence the reason why diversion became such a trend, and it continues to have an impact,” Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez himself was one of those kids -- avoiding jail time in 2001 for a gang-related robbery and being sent to the BreSee Foundation as an alternative. Bearing witness to the policing changes over the past three decades in Los Angeles, Rodriguez said that all he has to do is look around at the students he has worked with, whether smiling at their GRYD graduation or laughing and working together on a book report in the BreSee study rooms, to know that this type of gang intervention works.
“Students like that do find safe havens, and they do get to call places like BreSee home,” Rodriguez said.
LAPD Rampart Division Scandal Timeline
The Los Angeles Police Department came under fire in the 1990s for their anti-gang unit's practices. More than 20 years of investigations, law suits and indictments plagued the department, bringing them to the present day.
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Teaser 2: The connection between music, identity and community
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Teaser 3: Pico Union Religion Cuts Across Gang Lines
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