Old articles?

Did anyone save any of the older articles we had posted on the first forums?? I'm looking but I cant find them. If yall have any just post them up in here. I have few very old ones that I've posted in each of our previous forums. I'll post them later.

TRUCE: Gang members and neighbors try diplomacy

By David Kelly
The Press-Enterprise
SAN BERNARDINO

The worst of the day's heat was over and the young men with the hard stares began filtering out of the homes and projects throughout their Westside San Bernardino neighborhoods.

They stood in clusters around Little Zion Manor, Dorjil Estates and California Gardens -- wary, edgy, with an eye on the streets and an ear cocked for screeching tires and the pop, pop, pop of gunfire.

But except for the deep boom of rap music throbbing from car stereos, the evening was quiet.

It's been that way ever since a pair of gang members walked up to Bob Fluker's front yard on California Street two months ago and said enough was enough.

They were tired and wanted it stopped -- the shooting, the retaliation, the ambushes. But they didn't know how. Too much blood had passed between the five rival neighborhoods which include Delmann Heights and an area known simply as the Projects.

Fluker, a plain-spoken 74-year-old, was known as someone politically connected, a fixer who could make things happen. He had volunteered for past mayors and campaigned aggressively for Supervisor Jerry Eaves.

"They said, `Could you do something for us, could you set up a meeting?' " recalled Fluker. "I got on the phone with Jerry Eaves and we all met in the supervisor's office. There was the chief of police and eight or nine gang members. They said they wanted to stop the killing."

Meanwhile, Fluker's friend Marvin Johnson piloted his lumbering 1966 Cadillac through some of the toughest Westside neighborhoods, trying to round up gang members to attend the meeting.

And so a quiet, shuttle diplomacy was born, a diplomacy that has temporarily stopped the carnage. In two months there hasn't been a homicide among any of the five gangs whose members may number between 200 and 500 each, according to police and residents.

Just before the peace talks began, a man was killed in a gang-related slaying at Little Zion Manor and there were 12 shootings in May and three in June, not counting all the random gunfire in which no one was actually hit, police said.

"The shooting was coming fast and furious," said Lt. Steven Klettenberg, who has worked for 21 years on the Westside and heads the San Bernardino community policing station there.

Old-timers, like combat veterans, could tell which direction a bullet was coming just by its sound. And the rain of gunfire turned neighborhoods into prisons -- places where many dared not leave for fear of trespassing on someone else's turf.

"You just stay in here, you can't go out because you don't want to be shot," said 19-year-old Lonnie as he rode his bike inside the gates of Dorjil Estates just across from Little Zion Manor. Lonnie said he is not a gang member and refused to give his full name.

Down among the single-story homes in the California Gardens, 17-year-old Dwayne Butler and his friend Ronald Manning, 18 -- who both say they are not gang members -- ventured out for a walk.

"It was rough before," said Butler, looking up and down the road. "You gotta watch every car."

"We've been shot at but never shot," Manning said.

Butler folded his arms and stared down at the cracked driveway.

"One stupid person can mess the whole thing up," he said.

And that's what scares some people, that any declaration of peace will be a tempting target for troublemakers.

"We are sitting on a ticking time bomb," warned LeRoy Baker, an elder at the 16th Street Seventh Day Adventist Church deeply involved with the peace effort. "It could blow at any time and we have to be prepared for it."

Gang members, clergy, neighbors, police and local officials have met each week at neutral locations -- usually churches -- where they have slowly hammered out a truce.

The peace agreement is simple enough -- a commitment to lay down arms, resolve all issues at a neutral location with mediators and discourage all illegal activities and the destructive use of drugs and alcohol.

"This peace treaty will begin as of 7-25-98 and will continue until there is no longer a need for a formal document. It will also continue as a reminder that San Bernardino is actively striving to be seen as a place of peace, tranquility and prosperity," the document says.

Most gang members agreed to the truce by proxy since they did not want to attend meetings with the police. For his part, San Bernardino Police Chief Lee Dean vowed not to run warrant checks on those who showed up but warned anyone guilty of serious crimes to stay away.

The task force also persuaded Omnitrans to reinstate bus service through the Westside which it had suspended out of concern for the violence.

"The significance of this agreement is that it wasn't driven by the police, it was driven by the community," said San Bernardino Mayor Judith Valles. "This is the community and the clergy saying we aren't going to take this anymore."

Baker said the Westside is full of "God-fearing" people with long histories in the city.

"We are in the beginning of a restructuring of the community," he said. "If we don't take it upon ourselves to stop the violence, we are going to destroy ourselves. Actions speak louder than words."

Shortly after the agreement, a picnic was held that produced the surreal sight of Chief Dean serving up hot dogs to gang members in Anne Shirrells Park at Base Line and California Street.

"This is the first time we have been asked to do this," said Dean. "It's sort of odd. I like to think we have established a trust factor with the community over the years. Goodwill and communication, you can't buy that."

Lt. Klettenberg said most residents are law-abiding citizens. A handful cause problems.

"I think we made some real decent headway. It's not a panacea," he said. "If we have a shooting tomorrow night I'll be disappointed but not surprised."

Aaron Smith leans outside the car window.

"Yo, yo! Hey, come here little brother!" he yells, as a pair of stern looking young men walk briskly down the street.

"We'll be back man, we're just going down to get some cigarettes," says one, casting a suspicious eye on a stranger in the car.

"They're not coming back," says Anthony Green, Smith's uncle. Both run after the pair and convince them that the stranger is not a cop.

Green tells them about the truce.

Suddenly the two tattooed, shirtless teens with the baggy jeans grow animated.

"We could stop the gunfire in a minute but if they don't give us good jobs, what's the point?" says the 17-year-old who identified himself as Gene and refused to give his full name.

His 18-year-old friend, `T,' who also refused to give his full name, agrees.

"That's why I'm on the street hustling. If you take a job at McDonalds you make $200 a week. You know what I'll do with that? I'll buy me a bag and sell it."

Green tells them of the task force's plans to start computer classes and offer job training courses. He says he hopes to organize a meeting of rival gang members at a neutral spot to help keep the truce in effect.

"The truce is good if it works but you need everybody individually to agree to it," says T.

"If it gets the cops off our backs then it's good," says Gene.

In the effort to secure peace in the neighborhoods Green, 45, and Smith, 33, operate at ground zero. Both men are lifelong residents of California Gardens, which like the other neighborhoods, is home to many generations of city residents.

They are well connected in all the neighborhoods through friendships, family and respect. Green is tall, thin and walks with a cane while Smith has a chisled face, boxer's build and speaks in a low voice.

When the peace task force wants to know what the gangs are thinking, Green and Smith can usually give them an idea.

Gang leaders often call Smith before each meeting and ask if he's going.

"He is a facilitator. He called me and I came over and he was eating breakfast with representatives from three different neighborhoods," said Baker. "Anthony knows the older members, Aaron knows the younger."

Today Green and Smith are taking the pulse of the streets -- trying to see if the truce is holding and where tensions still exist. Despite the peace, there is still sporadic gunfire. One man was shot and wounded two weeks ago on California Street. Police are still investigating the crime.

"The youngsters are tired of it," said Smith. "They want to see life, too."

Up on Dallas Street, Reggie Williams, 27, is pushing his son in a stroller along the edge of the road.

Williams has "RIP Bubba" tattooed on his chest in honor of his dad who died of colon cancer and another tattoo of a `5X' -- the moniker of the 5 Times gang.

"I know gang-banging is stupid but I guess I'm a part of it. It will be cool if the truce works," he says. "Everything is pretty cool right now, no one has a beef. This is the first summer I've seen without the violence."

His friend Randall Dynes, 26, agrees but he's still nervous.

"I've got kids I can't lose to bullets," he says. "That's why I drive solo."

As the car wends its way through neighborhoods of small, neatly kept homes and monotonous apartment complexes, Green compares the situation of many youth here to warfare.

"These youngsters are not afraid to die; they're not scared to shoot. It's like Vietnam, you go out of the platoon and you might not come back."

Smith said many of the disputes are just personal grudges with no gangs involved. Others revolve around turf and drugs.

Further up the hill through the gates of Little Zion Manor, groups of young men hang out by the curved road in the evening cool. Their icy stares melt as soon as they see Smith and Green. Both men jump out, shake hands and soon everyone is talking about old times.

"Remember when we used to hang out until 5 in the morning?" asks a man calling himself `Scrappy,' who refused to give his real name. "We can't do that no more."

There is a sense of expectation in the air fueled perhaps by the coming weekend or the feeling that at any moment anything can happen. Children toddle across the grass while a man tweaks the bass on his car stereo.

Still, says 46-year-old Jimmy Mason, "it's been quiet around here for the last few months."

"Before it was a war zone, you couldn't take the kids out. We had drive-bys all the time."

Another man predicts the truce will hold, "but only with the older guys pushing the issue. They got to keep the young guys from getting out of line."

Geno Macon, 23, who has `Macon Mafia' tattooed on his arm, says he'd like a meeting with other neighborhood representatives.

"If this is ever going to take off we are all going to have to shake hands," he says.

Down in California Gardens a bare-chested 20-year-old who goes by Buck, and refused to give his full name, says getting along is preferable to "just blasting everyone."

His brother Nestor, 17, who also wouldn't give his full name, says if anything happens he will come to Smith first before retaliating.

"We need to have a mediator," he says. "You can't talk to some of the people because they'll pull a gun and shoot you. We want to try and keep the shooting out of it -- why shoot or stab each other?"

But Buck warns: "The neighborhood is like a family. We can't go looking for trouble but we'll bring it on if they ask."

Chief Dean is standing before a blackboard inside the city police station brainstorming on ideas as diverse as free computer training for kids to how to manage a criminal history.

Not surprisingly, given the location of the task force meeting, no gang members show up.

Dean proposes a monthlong, one-day-a-week life skills training program where youth would learn how to get a job. But first he needs volunteer teachers.

"They need to hold a job," says Marvin Johnson, "A lot of them can get jobs but they can't hold them."

Frank Stallworth, field representative for State Sen. Rueben Ayala, says the only way the effort could fail is "if in six months I don't see anyone hired."

The Rev. Ray Turner of Missionary Baptist Temple on the Westside asks, "If you lay down the rules of the game and nobody wants to play, what do we accomplish?"

"We need to go to them and find out what they want," says Johnson.

"We need to get employers who will accept felons," adds Turner.

Dean says they would be taught "how to manage their criminal histories."

Lt. Klettenberg notes the need to "educate employers on types of felons."

"There's a big difference between a child molester and someone who is dealing a little dope and gets popped for it," he says.

Over at the 16th Street Seventh Day Adventist Church, LeRoy Brown talks enthusiastically about a proposed $1.5 million community center in a neighborhood parched for recreational facilities. Brown said they are seeking funding through a variety of sources including private donations and grants.

He hopes construction of the two-acre site beside the church will begin in the next few months and open next year.

Along with his duties as elder, Brown heads the non-profit Westside Brighter Vision Center, and foresees a community center offering medical clinics, job training, technical skills and recreation all under one roof.

"I like to refer to the Westside as a diamond in the rough -- there is so much talent, so much integrity here," he says. "What appears on the outside is not the heart of the community. We will continue to move forward until we accomplish our goal -- to take a diamond that is dirty and shine it up until it's the most brilliant part of San Bernardino."


Published 8/17/1998

After the truce, the tough part

By David Kelly
The Press-Enterprise
SAN BERNARDINO

They call him "Big Devil" around his California Gardens neighborhood but Franklin Welch seems smaller, thinner and far less evil than his moniker suggests.

True, at 16 he stole a car, provided the guns and rode along when his friends shot dead a rival gang member but he's done his time -- four years in prison -- and now, at 20, he's facing a world not much interested in giving him a second chance.

The quiet, shy man sat alone in the courtyard of the 16th Street Seventh-day Adventist Church watching some boisterous friends rapping on the sidewalk.

"I want to be a paramedic but may not be able to because of my murder conviction," he said. "I'm trying to get a job as a security guard. I never really worked before but I got to get off the streets or I'll go down with the gang and get jacked up again."

Welch, like many of his friends in this Westside neighborhood, came to the church recently seeking help or hope or anything that might get him off the depressing treadmill of crime, gangs, jail and sudden death.

But the problems they face are enormous, so enormous that the community leaders who recently organized a truce between five rival neighborhood gangs are now realizing that was the easy part.

"We initially thought we would just be mediators heading off gang problems," said the Rev. Joshua Beckley, chairman of the Gang Peace Task Force. "But it's turned out to be much more complicated than that."

While negotiating the truce, gang members claimed unemployment made them steal, sell drugs or rob for their money.

So the task force embarked on an ambitious new course -- trying to turn severely damaged people with little or no work experience into productive citizens. And this objective has proven the most challenging.

Simple things like getting drivers licenses, basic hygiene, opening a checking account or just reading and writing baffle many of these young people.

"There are problems that haven't even crossed our minds," said the Rev. Ray Turner, a task force member. "A lot of the kids we are dealing with have a way of thinking we wouldn't consider normal. The problem is a lot bigger than what we all think."

Compounding the stress is the fact that community leaders may be working on borrowed time. Nobody knows how long the truce will hold. So the task force has a narrow window of opportunity to act, yet they are torn on how to proceed, when to proceed and what to proceed with.

Some are openly annoyed by their slow progress while others say it's foolish to gather expectant teens together with nothing coherent to offer them.

"It's not a small task but you have to start somewhere," said a clearly frustrated Lee Dean, chief of the San Bernardino Police Department, who has been a major player in the task force. "I'm not happy with the progress."

Survival comes first

LeRoy Baker, an elder at the 16th Street Seventh-day Adventist church, has an idea: Start at the beginning.

"Who are you?" Baker asks 17-year-old Eugene Moore, who came to the church seeking help in settling a legal problem.

"A black male," Moore replies, somewhat stunned by the question.

"I know, but who are you?" Baker presses.

"I don't know how to answer," a confused Moore says.

"What is your purpose?"

"I'd like to have a little job, go to school, do whatever there is to do," he says with a shrug.

Easier said than done.

School is on hold. Moore violated probation and police were waiting to nab him when he showed up for class, so he didn't go.

Police couldn't find him at home because he didn't have one. His mother got out of jail the day before and neither had a place to stay.

His legal guardian couldn't take him in because she already had someone on probation under her roof and it's illegal to have two. He has no car so he simply didn't show up for court.

For money, Moore has stolen cars and has already done time for grand theft auto -- he made $400 to $500 on each car sold for salvage. For shelter, he sleeps at a girlfriend's house.

"I've been living on and off the streets since I was 12," said the smiling teen with his black hat pulled down to his eyebrows.

"This is a prime example and this is a mild case," said a visibly angry Baker, who has put together his own job training program. "Survival is the No. 1 priority, not education."

Point-blank

That message was hammered home last week when about 10 teen-agers and gang members met with Baker and the Rev. Beckley.

There was the standard bravado, one kid trying to impress the next with how tough he was.

"I pulled a gun and stuck it in this guy's face," bragged a chubby 15-year-old, who would not give his last name.

Why?

"Because I didn't like the way he looked at me," he replied coolly. "I got arrested for attempted murder but I flipped the script." Flipping the script, he explained, meant he lied to the court and got away with it.

Another young man was just kicked out of school for beating up another student "with red shoelaces who was staring at me."

And still another casually described watching his drunken father beat his mother to death when he was a small boy.

But after an hour, fear and hurt began to replace machismo.

They talked about deadly 8-year-olds "strapped," or carrying pistols, toddlers spouting gang lingo, dads turning sons into gunmen because they would do less time in prison and parents selling off the furniture for drugs.

And they explained that, truce or no truce, going into certain neighborhoods or even walking alone on the busy street outside could still spell sudden death.

"When we leave from this building, we have to watch our backs," 18-year-old Dwayne Butler said.

Most are stranded in the neighborhood because catching the nearest bus, which arrives outside the Little Zion Manor apartments, is a risk none are willing to take.

"What happens if you go to Little Zion?" Baker asked.

"It's like committing suicide," Butler replied.

"You never know what might happen," said a 20-year-old who identified himself only as Big Tone.

"You'll get shot or beat up," Franklin Welch said.

"That makes you want to retaliate and it causes a domino effect," Big Tone said.

"So the truce only lasts if you stay in your own `hoods?" Baker asked.

Big Tone, who punctuated every other word with "you know what I'm saying" or "point-blank," nodded.

"All I see is my homies doing the same thing every day," he sighed. "Walking up and down the street."

"Now we understand a lot more," Beckley said. "First of all we can't put you all in the same room."

But they explained that while California Gardens and Little Zion still have problems, they have calmed the beef down with the Delmann Heights neighborhood while Little Zion seems to peacefully co-exist with the area south of Baseline called the Projects.

"We're going to need multiple sites," Baker said.

The two men looked wearily at each other.

"This is not going to happen overnight," Beckley said.

Baker, who is program director of the nonprofit Westside Brighter Vision Foundation, has devised a 102-hour curriculum that blends job training with life skills. He has no money and few volunteers but he feels time is slipping away.

So he made the kids a proposition.

He asked if they wanted to be the first -- the experimental class -- to see if their street mind-sets can be channeled into a wider, more productive world where futures are determined by hard work and integrity and not neighborhood boundaries.

They all raised their hands.

"You have to make a commitment," warned Baker, "that there will be no slippin', no slidin', no shuckin' and no jivin'."

They giggled a bit but agreed.

So what futures are they looking for?

Butler wants to be a doctor; Big Tone, a rapper; Darnell Manning, a welder; Welch, an emergency medical technician.

"I'm tired of seeing people get shot," Welch said. "I want to help people now. We are all tired of the killing."


Published 9/21/1998