Gang Czar Proposal Gets Chilly Response

By Olin Ericksen
Staff Writer

October 7 -- With gang shootings on the rise in Santa Monica and the Westside, School Board member and neighborhood activist Oscar de la Torre is calling on the City to handle youth violence the same way it handles homelessness -- assign one influential person to get the job done.

De la Torre first floated the proposal last weekend -- one day after gang-related gunfire left a man dead near the pier and a day before two teenagers were injured in a drive-by shooting. And he has asked that City leaders and police consider the proposal.

"There has been an escalation of gun violence in Santa Monica and the County of Los Angeles. We should be alarmed," said de la Torre, executive director of the Pico Youth and Family Center, which works with at-risk youth.

"The response I would like to see is an inter-agency youth violence convention coordinator, devoted to finding an inter-agency regional strategy to address the problem of youth violence throughout the Westside of Los Angeles," de la Torre said.

So far, de la Torres’ proposal is being met with a chilly response from City officials, while Santa Monica police -- who remain at the frontline of dealing with youth and gang violence -- bristle at the suggestion.

"There is not a single bit of merit in it," said Police Chief James Butts. "To think one person can make an impact on gang violence is naive at best."

The proposal is a near carbon copy of a plan hatched by City Council member Bobby Shriver and adopted by City officials that creates a $200,000 post to work with other cities to tackle homelessness.

De La Torre said he envisions the City spending between $80,000 to $100,000 a year for the youth and gang violence coordinator, or "gang czar" as some have dubbed it. The post, which would require someone with a background in "law enforcement or juvenile justice," would cost the same as hiring a sergeant in the Santa Monica police force.

"We just want City leaders to make gang violence as important of a priority as homelessness," said de la Torre, noting that current point person on youth and gang violence, City Manager Susan McCarthy, will retire this month.

To Butts, however, the problem of gang violence is fundamentally different from that of homelessness, and, at its heart, a more complex issue.

"With a homeless coordinator, there is a person working with an established network and a people with a finite set of needs," Butts said.

The nature of gang and youth violence is anchored in "poverty, families and education," said Butts, "and unless you have roots in all three of those, you can't fight the problem."

City Council members -- many of whom cited the City's commitment to provide better job and educational opportunities for Santa Monica youths, especially those considered at risk -- said they would listen to the proposal, but refused to endorse the idea outright.

"I'm certainly open to anything to help kids stop from killing each other," said Council member Kevin McKeown.

"It's something we are doing right now with homelessness," he said. "Whether or not it would be the most effective way to deal with gang violence, I think its a little bit premature."

The timing of the proposal also kept Mayor Pam O'Connor from backing the position.

"We don't really even have the homeless person in place, so how do we know it works," said O'Connor. "We have to see first how the test case works before we begin to see if we should extend the idea to other things."

Council members are also concerned the position could encroach on an area traditionally controlled by police.

"I'm wondering why add another layer to the bureaucracy," said Council Member Herb Katz. "What role would the person take on beyond what the police are already doing."

"What I don't want is people doing duplicate roles in the City," Katz said. "That's just likely to bring about a power struggle. If we get someone in to do this, I would want someone who would help police and not get in the way."

De la Torre, an outspoken critic of the model used by police to combat gang violence, known as "community policing," said the gang violence coordinator would work with police, but would focus more intently on making sure first-time, non-violent offenders are steered towards social services, rather than jail.

"If someone commits a felony, then you need to go to jail," de la Torre said. "But for crimes that are not violent, we need to look at a different approach.

"What the police are doing now is suppression, he said."The Santa Monica Police Department is resistant to a true community policing model. We don't need more police and police can't do the job by themselves."

Balancing the needs of police and social service would be difficult line to walk, said McKeown.

"You would have... a person who would have to bridge two very different worlds," said McKeown, who has attended the meetings of a regional gang task force and worried that a coordinator who had access to critical intelligence may pose a threat to civil liberties and compromise ongoing investigations.

For some, it is a question of how Santa Monica prioritizes its problems.

"Throughout the City, gang violence doesn't seem to be as big of a concern as homelessness," said Council member Bob Holbrook. "From my point of view anything that happens there is a citywide problem, but I don't know if folks consider gang violence to be a citywide problem the way they do homeless issues."

Indeed, a City survey published in February that took stock of issues important to Santa Monicans listed the homeless, traffic and parking, before gang violence.

Only 10 percent of the residents polled mentioned "crime/gangs/drugs," but that number shot up in the Pico neighborhood, where much of the violence has erupted in the last decade.

Nearly 25 percent of the respondents in a separate poll of 150 Pico residents mentioned crime as a concern, compared to 8 percent of residents in the citywide poll.

How to measure progress was another concern voiced by Holbrook.

"I'm positive we need someone to handle the homeless issues, but I'm not sure I'm convinced that a gang czar could do the same thing," Holbrook said. "We'd need to talk to some experts and the public to see if the idea would show measurable results in fighting gang violence.

"Now if we don't have a shooting in the next year, then that would be progress, but we can't tell what's actually filtering down and reaching kids now,"he said.

In spite of the questions and criticisms, de la Torre remains firm in his belief that the idea could work, even if it is just one person.

"I think it would make a difference if it were a person who lived and breathed this work... and would assist us as a community to access and profile the problem," de la Torre said.

"If we eliminated one police sergeant position, we would be able to get a lot more out of giving the money to such a coordinator," said de la Torre. "We would need someone who would develop trust and cooperation and we don't have that now."