NOVEMBER 1, 2009

Understanding Dissing for the First Time

I am delighted and honored to be here, sharing thought with you. I direct the 13 California City Gang Prevention Network for the National League of Cities.

You are so fortunate to soon hear from two stunning leaders from two Network cities, Jeff Carr and Mayor Morris.

Why the Network? Cities have been struggling w/ the issue alone. The network provides the opportunity to share vital learnings—successes and challenges , and to engage in a tough, shared mission.

Our six goals:

• Reduce gang-related violence

• Help build communities that don’t produce gangs

• Get beyond fear-based strategies to produce a comprehensive strategy blending prevention, intervention and enforcement

• Create a vibrant, statewide learning network

• Identify and disseminate information on what works, what doesn’t

• Advocate for state and federal policy changes that would abet the on-ground work. After almost three years, what we have learned? There seem to be six building blocks for success:

• First, the mayor and chief of police must be together, leading. This leadership, ideally, combines the moral (“the shooting death of a child will not be tolerated in this community…”), conceptual (being part of the planning) and the bureaucratic (spurring the city to do business in a different way)

• Second, law enforcement and prevention/intervention services must not be seen as antithetical concepts. Each is necessary. Where is doesn’t work is where each caricatures the other: law enforcement caricatured by social services as unfeeling, club-wielding hard hats, and human services caricatured by law enforcement as bleeding hearts, soft-headed. Each is necessary and must be seen as part of a whole. As parents we nurture and we set limits. We must convey both the certainty of consequences and the certainty of help. “We cannot arrest our way out of this” is the oft-heard mantra. Where this is not just rhetoric, the signs are very hopeful.

• Third a comprehensive jurisdiction-wide STRATEGY that blends prevention, intervention and enforcement must be developed. This is difficult. Most feel that a PROGRAM—a Boys and Girls Club, a police sweep—will save us. It will help but it won’t save us. All key civic entities must play a role: police, schools, the faith community, social services, zoning, business, to name a few. If responsibility for the gang issue is limited to one entity, the police, city efforts will fail, for then all are left off the hook—parents, schools, employers, and the social norm which tolerates violence will remain. And the plan must be OWNED by participating entities. In one Network city a plan, brilliant and Toylstoyan in length, was developed by a professor alone. His plan. No one else’s. The city is having great trouble and has returned to the drawing boards.

• Fourth, an entity must be designated or created to track the work once the plan is developed and launched. Accountability is essential. “You the school system said you were going to open three after school programs…status?…You the police department were going to open a precinct in public housing…status?..You the Inter-faith Committee said you were going to provide 200 mentors for school phobic kids…status? “Tracking Entity” examples include the Mayors Gang Prevention Task Forces in San Jose and Santa Rosa and the Gang Commission in San Diego.

• Fifth, an excellent working and policy relationship with the county must be forged. Cities sit atop most of the pain and difficulty. The counties sit atop most of the resources. Those cities that have forged excellent working relationship with key county agencies such as child welfare, probation, workforce investment, public health, etc., fare better than those cities that are disconnected from county-driven policies.

• Sixth—young people must have access to positive role models. Gang members are lured into gangs by other people who ENGAGE in their lives, and who seem to care about them (“I’ve got your back.”) I’ll never, ever forget what a young murderer told me when I was Commissioner of Youth Services in Massachusetts decades ago, “Commissioner, I’d rather be wanted for murder than not wanted at all.” Billy Dupes/Jay Himenez Oakland story, time permitting. About mid-night, near McArthur. So there must be a comprehensive strategy that touches and moves structures, touches lives on the street and moves policy.

Thank you.
Best, Jack