Story Created:
Nov 25, 2009 at 2:31 PM PST
Story Updated:
Nov 25, 2009 at 2:53 PM PST
A City Council committee Monday called for the creation of a new department to deal with the city’s gang problem.
At present, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s Gang Reduction and Youth Development Office oversees gang prevention and intervention programs throughout the city.
The City Council’s Ad Hoc Committee on Gang Violence and Youth Development objected to that set-up in its final report, warning about a lack of transparency.
“Currently, the City Council cannot instruct or audit the Mayor’s Office; rather, the City Council, as the legislative body, can only request information or permission to audit [the gang program’s] financial and/or programmatic decisions,” the report said. “Thus it is difficult for the City Council and the community to acquire pertinent information in a timely and efficient manner.”
Councilman Tony Cardenas, who chaired the ad hoc committee for 4 1/2 years until it adjourned for the final time in August, said “transparency is key.”
Cardenas credited Villaraigosa with doing “a really good job” in implementing gang reduction and intervention programs, but said “we need to remind ourselves that there will be another mayor someday with different priorities.”
Villaraigosa’s deputy chief of staff, Matt Szabo, criticized the proposal to create a new department.
“The graduate students who wrote the report deserve an ‘A’ for effort, especially since it marks the end of the committee's five-year-long discussion of the issue,” Szabo said. “But at a time when we need to deliver services more efficiently, creating a new government bureaucracy subject to political meddling is driving the wrong way on a one-way street.”
But Cardenas told City News Service that creating a new department would not cost much more than the $26 million currently budgeted for the Gang Reduction and Youth Development office.
“The mayor has about 30 people working on the city payroll, so basically what we would be looking at is moving all those positions into the new department so that it’s cost-neutral,” Cardenas said.
“There might be some minimal costs like renting space or buying furniture, but when it comes to personnel cost, there’s already money for that in the current system we have today,” he added.
Currently, the Gang Violence and Youth Development office headed by mayoral appointee Guillermo Cespedes works in a dozen targeted zones, each with a gang prevention agency and a gang intervention agency.
Over the past two summers, the Gang Violence and Youth Development office spearheaded the Summer Night Lights program, which was credited with an 86 percent reduction in gang-related homicides in 2008.
The program provided sports and other activities for youths at parks in gang-ridden areas, to keep gang members at at-risk young people out of trouble while school was out.
The ad hoc committee hailed the program, but found the city’s strategy for reducing gang violence should include dealing with economic issues and partnering with community organizations and government agencies.
Otherwise, according to the panel’s report, “the overall effectiveness of [the gang program] will be limited and will not provide the comprehensive approach that the City Council and residents were promised.”
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