One way to stop gang violence is to head it off by reaching out to gang members, giving them job training and encouraging them to reform.
The other tactic, which has been the trend in Denver in recent years, is to offer alternatives to young children, even preschoolers, before they ever sport gang tattoos and throw gang signs.
With limited anti-gang dollars available, proponents of the two approaches are weighing in as each seeks to get a share of the funds.
The oldest gang program in Denver, Open Door Youth Gang Alternatives, once was in the thick of interacting with gang members and counseling them. But that program, under the leadership of the Rev. Leon Kelly, has shifted its focus almost completely to working with younger, non-gang children.
“The way of killing gangs is to cut off recruitment,” Kelly said. “It’s easier to mold and build a kid than to fix an adult.”
Other gang-intervention programs have gone by the wayside.
Street Beat, which once counseled gang members in the 1990s, is gone. Operation Reconstruction, which trained gang members in the construction trades, also went out of business after generating controversy when some of those who benefited from the program became involved in homicides.
Some involved in gang programs say the Spot, a place where gang members could bring their conflicts and channel their energy into music-recording studios, lost street credibility when it merged with Urban Peak, which primarily provides services for the homeless.
Kelly once was heavily involved in counseling gang members, but he said he grew disenchanted because he saw too many die or go to prison. Now he offers after- school programs to young, non- gang children and counsels them relentlessly to stay away from gangs in their neighborhoods.
One new group on the scene is the Prodigal Son Initiative, and it has followed Kelly’s shift toward providing alternatives to young children as opposed to intervention with gang members.
“My philosophy is kill it at the root,” said the group’s founder, Terrance Roberts. “Stop them from becoming gang members in the beginning, and maybe this thing would get so old, it would get like bell-bottoms and butterfly collars from the 1970s.”
Now, with the resurrection of the Metro Denver Gang Coalition, a group of younger providers – some of whom are reformed gang members – are pushing for more direct involvement with actual gang members.
100 kids a night in ’90s
City officials also are eyeing the issue as they try to come up with ways to assess the effectiveness of gang programs to ensure that any new money isn’t wasted.
The Gang Rescue and Support Project is one of the few groups still involved in working with actual gang members and helping them transition to a life free of crime. In its heyday in the 1990s, it had as many as 100 gang members show up on a typical night. These days, it counsels about 20 gang members when it meets on Thursdays.
“With intervention, we’re confronting all their problems,” said Cisco Gallardo, who took over as executive director of GRASP in October. “Quite frankly, I think people are afraid of it. People say those kids don’t really want to change, but somebody has to do it is the way I look at it.”
He said he hopes some of the groups that have eliminated their intervention programs will resurrect them, and he wants to enhance his. Currently, his staff is composed of himself and a part-time worker.
He said building support can be hard sometimes, given the look he assumes to get his message over to gang members.
“You have to be edgy a little bit,” said Gallardo, who said his past as a former gang member helps him relate to those he’s trying to redirect. “They want us to be corporate, but what keeps us good is keeping up that grassroots level.”
Doing time for murder
Intervention programs in the past generated controversy. In the 1990s, Orlando Domena, the leader of the Rollin’ 30s Crips gang, served on the board of Operation Reconstruction, the ill- fated attempt to teach gang members a trade by putting them to work on construction jobs. Now he’s serving life in prison for killing a rival gang member.
Officers in the gang unit of the Denver Police Department still grouse about the heyday of intervention work in the 1990s, when then-Police Chief David Michaud handed out his home phone number to gang members when gang violence was in the media spotlight.
The officers say the gang members became so empowered, they resorted to calling the chief at home in hopes of avoiding arrest. Michaud eventually said he believed it would be better to focus anti-gang efforts on young children, perhaps even preschoolers.
Work took its toll
Dave DeForest Stalls, president of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Colorado, was heavily involved in intervention when he ran the Spot, but he eventually moved toward a more prevention-oriented mentoring program because of the toll the work took.
“We buried a number of kids,” he said. “My initial supervisor is doing 72 years in prison, and he was a Park Hill Blood.”
Still, he said, there’s a need for intervention programs to reduce the violence.
“There was still death,” he said of his days in the intervention field. “But … many times I was successful. They did not leave and shoot someone. And I knew they were going to do it. And they knew they were going to do it. But you could sit with them and get through the moment.”
Staff writer Christopher N. Osher can be reached at 303-954-1747 or cosher@denverpost.com.
