The Advancement Project — co-founded by prominent civil rights activist and lawyer Connie Rice (right) — will train and certify gang interventionists if a contract is approved Wednesday by the Los Angeles City Council. The contract "will be the basis upon which we can build intervention in the city of Los Angeles,’’ police Chief Charlie Beck (left) said Monday. (Photos by Arin Mikailian and Gary McCarthy)
Story Created:
Dec 14, 2009 at 5:23 PM PST
Story Updated:
Dec 14, 2009 at 5:34 PM PST
A training academy for gang intervention workers moved a step closer Monday to becoming reality.
The City Council’s Public Safety Committee approved a one-year, $200,000 contract with the Advancement Project to run the proposed Los Angeles Violence Intervention Training Academy.
The full City Council is poised to vote on the contract on Wednesday.
“This contract will be the basis upon which we can build intervention in the city of Los Angeles,’’ police Chief Charlie Beck told the committee. “It will allow us to bring stability to intervention, bring oversight, bring standards, bring police officers on board. I truly believe in this.’’
The city spends about $26 million a year to hire gang intervention and gang prevention agencies. The former primarily mediates cease-fires, while the latter offers activities to lure youth away from gangs.
The services are not streamlined — each agency has its own tactics for preventing violence with varying levels of success and little oversight from the city.
Earlier this year, the city terminated a contract with the gang intervention agency Unity T.W.O. for allegedly failing to account for hundreds of millions of dollars in government money.
In August, the executive director of another gang intervention agency, Homies Unidos, was arrested on federal racketeering and conspiracy charges. Last January, a gang intervention worker once praised as model of reform was charged with robbing a well-known rapper at the Universal City Hilton.
Still, Beck credited gang interventionists with helping the city set record lows in gang violence this year.
“On the ground, it works right now,’’ he said. “When I call, and we need some help, they show up, they create peace, they dispel rumors, they do what intervention does, and it’s been successful.’’
The contract for an intervention training academy “takes it to the next level,’’ Beck added. “This makes them not only accountable but institutionalizes them, which is really important because right now, you have a lot of people working out of the goodness of their hearts, trying to do the right thing. We need to give them the ability to make this their career.’’
Guillermo Cespedes, who heads Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s Office of Gang Reduction and Youth Development, said if the contract is approved, his staff will continue to conduct the background checks, fingerprinting and mandatory drug testing of gang interventionists.
The Advancement Project — co-founded by prominent civil rights activist and lawyer Connie Rice — would then train them and certify them to be gang interventionists.
Los Angeles is home to more than 400 gangs with more than 39,000 documented members.
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