Caring adults are best antidote to gangs

More after-school programs would help. So might requiring students to stay on campus during the academic day, banning cell phones from schools, stricter dress codes and putting cops back in the hallways.

But none of that is going to prevent kids from joining gangs absent relationships with caring adults, said participants Monday at a community forum on gangs in schools.

“When I made the transition and changed, it was because one person cared about me,” said Jose Hernandez, who avoided gang life as a teen and now works with at-risk kids in the Pasco School District. “So what I’m saying is, when I look around here in Spokane, man, y’all got a gold mine here” of adults who could make a difference for kids.

Created last year, the Gangs in Schools Task Force is charged with providing the Legislature with ideas for stopping gang activity in schools and preventing kids from joining gangs. Members came to Spokane to hear locals’ take on the problem and to offer perspective from other communities. It was the third such forum for the task force, which last met in Yakima.

Participants said many Spokane residents underestimate the gang problem here because the community lagged behind bigger cities for gang activity, with the first gang members arriving from California in the 1980s.

Now, police, social workers, school officials and others said, they’re seeing second- and third-generation gang members, some of whom are grooming younger siblings and their grade-school friends. That can make it tough on kids trying to stay out of trouble.

“I get a lot of kids who are afraid when they’re walking around,” said a security officer for Spokane Transit Authority. “They’ll come and ask us to walk them to the bus.”

“It’s affecting the dropout rate significantly,” said Himes Alexander, who deals with the issue both as an employee at Spokane County Juvenile Detention and as an associate minister at Bethel AME Church.

“Ten years ago, we didn’t have drive-by shootings in this city,” said a police officer. “Now, we have them weekly.”

Some who attended Monday’s meeting said they believe the gang problem got worse after city budget cuts in 2004 and 2005 eliminated school resource officers.

Others said it would help if Spokane would close high-school campuses instead of letting students leave during lunch. But Tacoma Public Schools has closed all its campuses and “we still have issues,” said Miguel Villahermosa, director of middle-school support at the Western Washington district.

Nothing that schools can do alone will solve the problem, Villahermosa said, because “it’s more than a school problem. It’s a community problem.”

Locals who attended Monday’s meeting said repeatedly that they fear cracking down on gangs could lead to profiling certain ethnic groups, or kids who fit adults’ notion of how gang members dress.

But task force members said there’s no way to profile a gang member because there are gangs for every ethnic group and both genders. And many are dressing more conservatively to avoid drawing attention to themselves, task force members said.