The Minoru Yasui municipal building is home to a couple of courtrooms; adult probation; juvenile diversion and probation; and electronic monitoring. Security is parked in the middle of a small lobby, which is drab despite the artwork and the bust of civil-rights champion Yasui, inscribed with his words, “We are all put on this earth to leave it a better place for having been here.”
On the ninth floor of this building Wednesday, an unusual gathering was underway. Unusual in that it marks a sea change in the way this city is trying to deal with gang violence. Unusual in that the effort has been taking shape for several years now, piece by piece, largely under the public radar.
It escapes no one here that as they meet, the trial of an east-side gang member accused of killing Broncos player Darrent Williams is entering its seventh day. Just as it escapes no one that kids were dying in the street before Williams was killed and they have been dying in the street since he was killed. Or that for every dead young man, many more teeter on the edge of violence, threatening to take their families and neighborhoods with them.
The last time I was in this room, it was full of juveniles at various stages of gang membership. I talked to a pretty Latina who said she wanted to leave the life. She said she was ready for her gangster family to beat her down if that’s what it took for them to let her go. She was dressed in a red T-shirt, a color choice that is never accidental. Not among these youth. Not in this building. Still, that’s not what struck me. She brought her baby to the meeting. The child was dressed in red too.
The recollection is apropos of the meeting Wednesday because this is a group about to dive right into the heart of generational gang violence. The pilot project, which will roll out this year in southwest Denver, is called GRID.
It will mean finding families already involved in gang life and reaching out to their youngest children. It will mean a more targeted education and prevention program in Denver schools and more comprehensive attention focused on gang members coming back into the community from prison. It will require, among other strategies, the pairing of outreach, prevention and education with law enforcement, probation and parole.
“We have to get our approaches to work together,” Cisco Gallardo, founder of the Gang Rescue and Support Project, tells me. “And that’s not always easy. You have some people who think of gang outreach as hug-a- thug, and on the other side, we know jail is not a deterrent. It’s part of the culture. We’re trying to change the overall culture.”
So sitting at the table Wednesday were top people from gang outreach, mental-health services, faith-based drug and alcohol rehabilitation. You had the head of the state parole division’s new gang unit, Denver Public Schools, the city’s office of Economic Development, Juvenile Probation, Mile High United Way, the Boys and Girls Club, Denver police, the city’s Crime Prevention and Control Commission. The mayor’s office, the district attorney’s office, adult probation, Denver Human Services, the U.S. Attorney’s Office and City Council are also on board.
“What we’ve been doing all these years isn’t working,” says GRID steering committee co-chair Paul Callanan, Denver juvenile-probation supervisor. “Traditionally, when we look at dealing with gangs, we look at two agencies: law enforcement and outreach. But there are so many others who work with kids, adults, families involved in gangs, and they are just as passionate about changing the lives of people.”
I’d dismiss this effort as more happy talk were it not for a few things. First, this work began several years ago in the Metro Denver Gang Coalition, where crucial relationships were built among community workers and law enforcement. Second, the group has been deliberate. It has taken a full year just to create this team, to move beyond some of the trust issues, the turf battles, the reluctance to subordinate individual visions to the larger one. Third, they’re not starting from scratch. GRID builds upon existing work, eliminating redundancies, figuring out ways to better fit the pieces together within existing budgets.
Finally, it’s targeting families — specifically the children or younger siblings, ages 7 to 14, of gang members. “That’s what makes us unique and what’s most exciting about what we’re doing,” says Patrick Hedrick, head of Denver’s Safe City Office, which is coordinating GRID.
Every GRID strategy will be evaluated on how well it reduces gang crime and recidivism and changes behavior among targeted youth. What works, short and long term, in the southwest Denver pilot will be adapted to other neighborhoods.
For this to succeed, those who have come to the table must remain. The true test will be what happens on the ground.
But if it works, that little baby in red just might grow up healthy and safe, and for one family, a cycle will end.
Tina Griego writes Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Reach her at 303-954-2699 or tgriego@denverpost.com.
