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When Gangs Become Unpopular
| Article
# : |
20636 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
Date : |
10 / 1992 |
1,770 Words |
| Author
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Gerald Leighton
Gerald Leighton is the Washington, D.C., coordinator for
United to Serve America, an organization that networks
volunteer organizations. He has served as dean of the College
of Business and director of graduate programs at Southeastern
University and has taught at Johns Hopkins, George
Washington, and American University. He has directed programs
at the U.S. Departments of Energy and Housing and Urban
Development. |
At first glance, South Gate, California, which borders the now-infamous South-Central Los Angeles, appears to be a typical urban enclave. It is a community of approximately ninety thousand persons living in a rather small geographic area (7.5 square miles). A majority of the citizens are Hispanic (83 percent), and the rest are black, white, and Oriental.
School-aged kids account for about a third of the population. The city is part of Los Angeles Unified school District, and the public schools are large and crowded. South Gate Junior High has forty-one hundred students and is the largest in the nation. More than a thousand students are bused out, as the local schools cannot accommodate them.
South Gate sits adjacent to South-Central Los Angeles, but it has not been caught up in a web of urban unrest and juvenile crime. Although people from the surrounding area frequent South Gate--the city is not an affluent community surrounded by guarded access points--it has countered the negative factors that have so many other cities and swept young people into self-destructive behaviors. South Gate is different.
Brakes were applied in 1989. Since then, the number of gangs in South Gate has been more than cut in half, from seventeen to eight. Crime has gone down: For example, drug-related arrests of juveniles are about a third of what they once were.
Positive records being set in the schools are impressive. The 13 percent dropout rate in the senior high school is well below the 30 percent average of the Los Angeles Unified School District. The junior high school is in the top 2 percent of the district in attendance.
In 1990, South Gate was named All-America City, beating out 120 other cities. The work that South Gate is doing with its young people was instrumental in bringing this recognition. What makes South Gate different? Chief of Police Ron George.
Chief George
Ron George was not recruited from the outside; he started with South Gate Police Department in 1967--he was twenty-one. His advancement has been rapid: He was promoted to sergeant in 1972 and lieutenant in 1974. Four years later he became a captain, and in 1988, chief of police.
George has degrees in public
...
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