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> Seeking Solutions

Youth Crime Transcript

HARVEY CARON: "I got seventeen years in prison. I'm probably going to be here for the rest of my life."

RONALD BENNETT: "The only thing that was on my mind was getting the next drug, that's it."

STEVE RAINES: "There's guys saying it's OK to bash faggots, it's all right."

MOSES LEVY: "To desecrate any part of the church-- to us, this is the work of the Devil."

TAMI KIMBLE: "They called me a nigger to my face."

NOAH THOMAS: "Sick…"

REV. JONATHAN MOUZON: "People are reaching out for somebody that seems to care about them, somebody that loves them."

DAWN PARSONS: "You do not have a right to a good neighborhood. It's your responsibility."

LILLIAN ANDERSON: "Get active. If you want your neighborhood back-- and you can get it back-- remember, there's more of us than them."

Title: Seeking Solutions with Hedrick Smith

VERTAMAE GROSVENOR v/o: Principle funding for Seeking Solutions provided by the Pew Charitable Trusts. Major funding provided by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, The Surdna Foundation. Additional funding provided by the following: The Charles H. Revson Foundation, The Greater Kansas City Community Foundation, The Carnegie Corporation of New York.

STAND-UP:

Smith: HELLO, I’M HEDRICK SMITH.

IN NEIGHBORHOODS ACROSS AMERICA THESE DAYS, LIFE STOPS COLD AT THE CHILLING NEWS OF EACH NEW SCHOOL MASSACRE IN A PLACE LIKE LITTLETON, COLORADO OR SPRINGFIELD, OREGON. PARENTS WORRY: ARE KIDS SAFE IN SCHOOL? OTHER PEOPLE ASK, WHERE WERE THE ADULTS BEFORE THE BLOODSHED? HOW CAN WE PREVENT SUCH VIOLENCE?

WHAT GETS LOST IN ALL THE FINGER-POINTING AND THE SOUL-SEARCHING, IS THE FACT THAT SOME COMMUNITIES ARE COMING UP WITH ANSWERS.

IN THIS PROGRAM, WE’LL EXPLORE SOME EFFECTIVE GRASS ROOTS RESPONSES TO TEEN VIOLENCE AND THEN HEAR WHAT LESSONS ORDINARY AMERICANS DRAW FROM THESE SUCCESS STORIES.

FIRST, A COMMUNITY IN OUR NATIONAL CAPITAL… WHERE HUNDREDS OF FAMILIES LIVED IN DAILY PERIL FROM A MURDEROUS TEEN GANG WAR. BUT THIS IS A CRIME STORY WITH A DIFFERENT ENDING… BECAUSE SOMEONE FOUND A WAY TO STOP THE KILLING AND RESCUE THIS COMMUNITY AND ITS YOUNG PEOPLE….LET’S SEE HOW IT HAPPENED.

ELLEN MUNDARAY: it was so bad that I didn’t allow my grandkids to go out for three years.

ELLEN MUNDARAY, BENNING TERRACE RESIDENT: This is my living room right here and I didn’t even sit in my living room and watch TV because, fear of getting shot.

LEJON WATSON, CIRCLE MEMBER: When we were out there in the street that was our own personal war. That’s the war we knew. That’s the combat you know without any training was to get a gun and go fire.

WAYNE LEE: I’ve been shot five times

WAYNE LEE, AVENUE MEMBER: I got shot in the head, and both of my arms and in the hand, in this hand and then both of my arms and in the head.

DERRICK ROSS, CIRCLE MEMBER: You could just walk right up and down the street with an assault rifle or something and you didn’t have to...the worst you had to worry about was some senior citizen, get on the telephone, and calling the police and saying something about it.

So it became a city of lawlessness. So where there’s anarchy, there you had it.

LEE: That was one of the saddest funerals I’ve ever been to in my life because I watched that boy grow up then to see him laying in the box like that for nothin’. All this for nothing. He didn’t even have to die. For something so dumb, we didn’t even know what for, you know.

DAVID GILMORE, D.C. HOUSING AUTHORITY: I actually ordered the staff to prepare the demolition application at that moment. I said it’s time for us to do this. It’s time for us to wipe it out.

RICO RUSH, ALLIANCE OF CONCERNED MEN: We wanted to stop the killing, that’s what we wanted to do. But we had no idea how we were going to do it.

TYRONE PARKER, ALLIANCE OF CONCERNED MEN: I said the only thing we can do is go up there and talk to the kids, talk to those who are basically involved, creating these problems.

MUNDARAY: Boy am I glad to see y’all.

narr: WITH HER HELP, RICO AND TYRONE BEGAN CONTACTING AVENUE AND CIRCLE GANG MEMBERS.

WATSON: I’m going in with what I know how to go with best. If I had to take a gun with me so be it. We’d go in with a gun.

LEE: The first day, matter of fact, when little darryl got took, we came in here ready for war. Police was in here and everything. We came, up in the circle, ready.

ROSS: Ain’t nothin’ can stop it. It’ll stop when it stops. I mean, y’all can’t stop it. The police tried to stop it.

PARKER: I remember specifically one of the brothers say, ‘well tell you what man, let’s pray. You know man. And after we get through praying we gonna get back up and keep on killin’.’

RUSH: All those guys was talking big and they going to do this and they going to do that and we gonna shoot you and we gonna shoot and we gonna do that. But deep down inside, they just want somebody to care about them, and that’s how I was.

AMONG THEM...ERIC JOHNSON, RECOVERED ALCOHOLIC AND DRUG ABUSER; PETE JACKSON, PRISON INMATE TURNED DEPUTY WARDEN; GERARD ALSTON, ANOTHER EX-OFFENDER; AND JAMES "MAC" ALSOBROOKS.

RUSH: I got tracks right now, it’s been over 21 years right here and I got tracks, and you know I’m glad these tracks don’t, won’t ever leave because they reminding me, they remind me of how it used to be.

SMITH: So what turned your life around?

RUSH: In the va clinic... This lady, Carmelita Witherspoon came and gave me a hug and that was the first person who had put their arms around me in I couldn’t remember how long, because on the street everybody would stay away from me.

SMITH: What did it feel like?

RUSH: It felt like somebody cared. It felt like, like I was a part of the human race.

PARKER: My son got killed over at the skating rink being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Two dudes get down, one start shooting and the bullet hits him, one bullet hits him, kill him, take him away, my son.

SMITH: What was that like?

PARKER: Like nothing I can really describe, like a pain that’s indescribable, like a future, like a hope going down the drain, like everything that you believe in that you would wish for through your child is no longer in existence and you ask why.

PETE JACKSON: But you gave the mission to us and you have seen that we will be successful no mattter what…

PARKER: In these words we say Amen!

CROWD: Amen!

WATSON: You just don’t come up in here, you know. You have the nice Lexus, the Cadillacs and all that. You got well dressed black men jumping out, long coats on. When you turn and look, they looked like homicide detectives.

ROSS: I left because I was like, they police. They could be wired. I’m not even talking to them. So I left.

PARKER: Derrick Ross had a spirit that was non-negotiable. No tolerance. Very cold. Ran it with an iron fist. What ever derrick said, that’s how it’s gonna be.

WATSON: I couldn’t give ‘em the story, man I had it hard. My mother was strung out. My father, papa was a rolling stone. Wherever he laid his hat was his...so I don’t even who my dad is. We couldn’t give em that story because they’ve been there, done that. They’d been there and done all of that.

ROBERT WOODSON, neighborhood organizer: What they had experience with is the interaction with the kids. What they did not have experience with is negotiating a truce.

LEE: There was a lot of hostility in the room, I’m talking about guys on the avenue sitting on this side of the table. The guys in the circle sitting on that side, and you could just sense the hostility and we looking eye to eye to each other.

RUSH: And the funny part about it was they all had a different perspective on what the thing was about. And nobody could come up with where the beef had really started from.

ANTHONY WALKER, AVENUE MEMBER: They took that little 12-year-old boy’s life. I was ready for them to come on - they could have killed me instead of messing with a little 12 year old. He didn’t get to see his life yet.

RUSH: Then I said, well what if Darryl Hall, if his spirit was here in the room, what do you think he would say to you guys now that you all have come to the table. And Wayne Lee said...

LEE: Little Darryl would have said to put our guns down and get something else on our mind because this wasn’t working and we had to find something better to do with our life.

RUSH: And the room got very silent. And at that moment, I think they started reflecting back, I sort of took them back as to what it was like when they were 12 and how it got to a level now. A 12 year old in fear of his life in a community that they used to be in, that they felt comfortable and free to ride their little bicycles.

ROSS: you can’t just be surviving. I’ve done the surviving thing.

LEE: we been ready to stop, but we just never had anybody to mediate the situation and come in and talk to us and help us talk it out or whatever.

GILMORE: I’m sitting here reading this paper and saying to myself, that’s it, somebody has had that better idea.

GILMORE: I remember this kid that’s sitting to my left looks square at me and he says well, what are you going to do about the graffiti at Benning Terrace?

RUSH: The graffiti was like the Vietnam memorial. They wrote guys’ names on the walls in memory of them.

LEE: You know when I come out some days I look at those, I look at their names on the wall and it bring back memories, and I think about the type of guy he was and how i miss him so much.

GILMORE: And I looked at this kid and I said, you know, I’m not going to remove the graffiti. I don’t have any plans to do it. But you might want to.

LEE: We didn’t really want it to go but if it had to come down, we was going to do it ourself you know.

PARKER: Gilmore was essential because it’s one thing for us to give a man a spiritual uplift. He’s still got to eat.

ROSS: I mean it was like you put the past behind you and it wasn’t like you just put the past behind you because you turned your eyes away from it. You took the past away.

GILMORE: They were so anxious to put the past aside, that they were willing to reach out to grab anything they could, even a $6.50 an hour job.

WOODSON: You don’t burn and destroy something that you build. That’s why they would get up an hour before reporting to work at 8:00 and water the grass, because they had planted the grass, they had planted the flowers.

WATSON: I’m satisfied. I like my life like this. I like the way I get paid...At one time I used to walk with my head slumped. Now I walk up, walk around with my head up.

GILMORE: This is a white shirt that identifies folks as a supervisor.

WATSON: Ay shoot. I seen the white shirt. It was just like, it was like almost a moment of winning the lotto, winning the big prize, the grand prize cause it was LeJon’s day. I went in the house, and I threw the new shirt on and I got in the mirror, and I was like, you the man, you know? You are the man.

LEE: Good Afternoon, thank you for calling the DC Housing Authority, how may I help you?

FEMALE VOICE: Hi, my name is Viola Jackson.

LEE: It’s a nine to five, you know what I’m saying. You go to work everyday you don’t have time to get yourself in no trouble or go out and shoot and all of that.

" 2674"

LEE: It’s a better way for me and I’m quite sure that the other guys are looking at it just like that too.

FEMALE CALLER: Thank you Darlin’

LEE: You’re welcome.

NARR: THE BIGGEST SURPRISE...

ROSS: Good Morning, DCHA James Creek.

RUSH: This is the same guy that a lot of people said, I don’t know why you’re gonna talk to him. He’ll never talk to y’all he’ll never do this. He’ll never do that.

GILMORE: This kid has literally taken his life and flipped it upside down or shall we say, righted it from where it was.

ROSS: …and that was done 12-25.

INSTRUCTOR: Question number nine?

ROSS: And that’s false.

NARR: TO GET CERTIFIED TO BE A PROPERTY MANAGER ANYWHERE IN THE COUNTRY.

ROSS: I didn’t think it could happen, because it had never happened actually to me until the Alliance and stuff came along.

ALLIANCE MEMBERS: Stir...... it up!!!

RUSH: That’s right, you feel all the energy come in?

RUSH: Go ahead, Anthony. You OK.

ANTHONY WALKER: I’m still where I’m at...But they ain’t giving me a chance to get myself together. Every time I try I’m getting snatched back like four doors behind, or every time I get through one door they snatch me back another two more doors. So when my daughters, my kids get older, they gonna be right there, stuck and (expletive deleted), just like me.

RUSH: No they ain’t. You know what? Do we give some hugs and love, brothers? You know why we give you so much hugs and love? Huh? Because we know where you were and where you are -—what? Right now. And you know what? It took a man with courage to say what you did just now. We ain’t going to give up.

WALKER: First time I ever had a job so, I’m going to try to get myself, my body to know this, to know how to work, and how to do this, how to come home pay my taxes.

STAND-UP:

SMITH: BUT SOME OTHERS HAVE FALLEN OFF THE TRACK. A FEW HAVE DROPPED OUT OF THE PROGRAM---AT TIMES EVEN TRY TO SABOTAGE IT. FOUR OTHER BENNING YOUTHS WERE CONVICTED OF DARRYL HALL’S KILLING AND ARE SERVING TIME. CERTAINLY CRIME HASN’T DISAPPEARED HERE. BUT POLICE STATISTICS SHOW A STUNNING IMPROVEMENT AT BENNING TERRACE IN THE TWO YEARS SINCE THE TRUCE BEGAN - FAR BEYOND NATIONWIDE TRENDS. FROM EIGHT MURDERS IN 1996 TO ZERO IN 1998.

MUNDARAY: Come on Pookie, come on.

MUNDARAY: Life is good in Benning Terrace. Life is really good here.

OFFICER PHILLIP HARRIS, DC POLICE: Unfortunately, not everyone has got involved. You have guys that used to be involved in a life of crime now involved in the community and working along with the police officers will still know some of the people that haven’t kind of changed over so it creates a conflict of interest.

SHOOTING SHATTERS THE NIGHT. THREE BENNING TERRACE YOUTHS...TWO OF THEM PART OF THE PROGRAM...ARE HIT AND RUSHED TO THE HOSPITAL.

SMITH: And it was an effort they think to sabotage the program?

HARRIS: That was the impression that I had. They were jealous about the positive things that were coming out of the whole program.

PARKER: We show the kids that when they’re down we’re still going to be here. And this is the spirit that we bring to the table. They’re going to have some circumstances. This is not a perfect situation. This is a healing community that's coming together, and this is part of the healing of it.

RUSH: We didn’t have to do a lot of talking; they did a lot of talking. They was like, this is another test for us. And that was the attitude about it.

REVEREND RICHARD CORBIN: We thank you Lord there is love, and there is unity in the community now. We put our hands together and praise God and say thank you.

GILMORE, KIDS & ALLIANCE MEMBERS: Victory! Victory! Victory is ours. Determination! Determination!

CROWD: Amen, Amen. Amen, Amen.

WOODSON: If it can happen in Benning Terrace, in one of the most violent neighborhoods in one of the most violent cities in America, if it can happen there, then it can occur in every community.

CROWD: Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.

SMITH: As you’ll see, our program will criss-cross America east to west, north to south, cities, suburbs, rural towns. To share the lessons of the Benning Terrace experience and to talk about similar challenges all around the country, we come now to Portland, Oregon for a public dialogue. We’ve invited a cross section of people to talk about how Americans everywhere can work to reduce teen violence. John Miller, I’d like to ask you, to begin, by telling us whether or not you have these kinds of problems here in Portland all the way across the country.

JOHN MILLER, JUVENILE PAROLE OFFICER: Yes, we have the same similar kinds of problems. We’ve had a significant gang issue for over ten, twelve years. It’s come related with drive by shootings and deaths and stuff on the streets and we’ve seen an emerging ethnic and other race gangs kind of developing in the city of Portland area as well.

SMITH: Thank you. Let me ask you, Dennis Murphy, you come from Springfield, Oregon. It unfortunately made the headlines a little over a year ago with a terrible shooting in the schools. Four people killed, many more injured. What kind of impact does it have on the community to go through that experience? What’s it like?

DENNIS MURPHY, SPRINGFIELD PARENT: It’s your worst nightmare. You can’t imagine it, victimized, traumatized. All the emotions that you can dream of rush into a community and where only hours before things were normal. A town. A town of 50,000.

SMITH: Does it change your sense of vulnerability?

MURPHY: Absolutely. First of all you can no longer deny that this can happen in your own backyard. You have wanted to believe this is from somewhere else, it belongs somewhere else. It’s not going to happen here.

SMITH: Professor Blazac, your job is studying crime. The problem is huge, it’s pervasive. Has it changed kind of in its locus, its dimensions?

RANDY BLAZAC, CRIMINOLOGIST: We have a generation of young people in crisis. A, a fifth of our population of, of Americans are juveniles. And every single one of those institutions that involves going from childhood to adulthood is in a state of crisis, whether it’s the family or the school or the media. All these things are, are happening at the same time so everywhere we see problems with young people that we didn’t necessarily see before.

SMITH: I want to ask you all about your reaction to what you saw at Benning Terrace. What surprised you the most, what impressed you the most?

JOHN MILLER: When you offer a change to young people and you have to offer something else, not just the change because change doesn't do anything. What happens to them is when they actually can see, that there is a reason to change. And that made a lot of sense to me in that clip that you just showed.

SMITH: Yeah.

JOHN MILLER: That there was a reason to change.

SMITH: John Canda, any response from your experience?

JOHN CANDA, GANG OUTREACH WORKER: Those young people and the, the gentleman that went and helped them out spent time with them. They didn’t just go there one time. They didn’t just say we’re here. We went through that and here are some things you need to know and walk away but they stayed and I think that’s one of the things that we see that’s not happening enough in the lives of young people is the consistency of the adults who walk in in the beginning, recognizing that it’s not just a, a commitment between 8 and 5 but it’s a 24 hour, 7 day a week commitment that if you say, you tell a young person and you look them in your eyes, I’m going to be there for you, if they call you, and you’re not you’ve lost credibility. So we have to do a better job, just like they did at being more consistent.

SMITH: Mm hm, I want to ask Chris Philips, if I understand it correctly, you are today in a wheelchair because of a shooting. Is that right?

PHILIPS: Yeah.

SMITH: Can you tell us what happened?

CHRIS PHILIPS, FORMER GANG MEMBER: I, I got shot sitting in my car by a rival gang member who was like a young gang member trying to get a name for his self. Because he remembered back in the day how much things that I’ve done in my past and it was like hard for me to escape my past. That’s why I think it’s very important that kids understand that once you get involved it ain’t like you can just say well I don’t want to be involved in it no more. When you done done things to people in the past which they’re not going to forget about. So it’s like you have to it’s a consequence for each, each thing that you do. It's like you might go to jail or you might get, you know get shot. You might end up in a wheel chair or you might be dead.

SMITH: Thank you. Let me ask whether or not there’s anybody in the audience, anybody here who feels that maybe this is a soft way to go, that maybe we ought to take a tougher line here?

STEVE DOELL, PARENT OF MURDERED CHILD: We can’t negate the fact that once you step over the line, we can’t do what we’ve done in the past in this country. And say we can let a kid walk away with 2 and a half years in a juvenile detention for a murder. Or probation for a rape. The kids have to know we have clear bright lines and when they commit violent crimes, there’s going to be a consequence and they have to be held accountable and responsible for those crimes. And I can relate to what I saw in this film and what this young man said about seeing someone in a casket. Because I saw my 12 year old daughter in a casket. She was-- murdered in a stranger to stranger incident by a 16 year old violent youth so I certainly know what they are talking about.

SMITH: I wonder if anybody else wants to add to that point there? Yeah, go ahead please.

JEFF COGEN, COMMUNITY WORKER: Well, what I would say and I think that’s clearly true that if someone commits a crime they should be punished for it but it seems to me that as a society we’ve emphasized that punishment at the exclusion of the nurturing and what we just saw at Benning Terrace is an example of how even a war zone can get turned around when there’s support and caring and that is what’s lacking. What we know is that that the vast majority of young people in this country don’t feel that they’re being supported by adults and they need that.

SMITH: Mm hm, go ahead please.

TERESA PERRY, PORTLAND RESIDENT: There’s a whole lot of kids in the park that I patrol that are not cared for by their parents. And they don’t feel loved so they fall into gangs, and they’re just lost souls. They have no one to care for them…and the school needs to start noticing when they’re having problems in school.

SMITH: OK, so the teachers, the parents, the neighborhood…

TERESA PERRY: The teachers, the parents, the society itself, the neighborhood, the community everybody.

SMITH: Do we have a school principal here? Right there-- yeah.

LELA TRIPLETT-ROBERTS, HIGH SCHOOL PRINCIPAL: You know as I look at teenagers, they get all of the bad rap. We see this when children come to school as young as four years old in pre kindergarten.

SMITH: What is it you see?

ROBERTS: We see these tendencies toward violence as a way to solve--

SMITH: Aggressive behavior?

ROBERTS: To solve problems and to feel better about who they are. And I think as an educator what I always advocate for is to be pro active and I think we have to start and we have to assume that we must train and educate every child from the time they enter school in different strategies for problem solving. We have to work on them so that they develop self confidence and they feel empowered because the kids that I know that have become really involved in violence are kids that don’t have a connection with any significant adult.

SMITH: Thank you. I got a teacher over here? Is there somebody here from Springfield? What’s it like in that school now, what do you do in a school after there’s been something like these terrible killings?

MARY MURPHY, SPRINGFIELD TEACHER: There’s been a great deal of bonding. I teach at Thurston middle school. I’m a 7^th grade teacher. And I knew Kip Kinkle and knew of his father and knew how he sought out the help. Teachers knew that, that this young man you know had a, a bent towards violence.

SMITH: This is the boy that did the shooting?

MURPHY: You see, as an educator we know the youngsters that have a potential for some of these things when they demonstrate how to build a bomb in class, you know that more than likely they have some knowledge. Kids today are very intelligent as, as you had mentioned and they-- seek out to their passions. But as I saw in the clip at the beginning of the program, the man that waited until he was in prison and middle aged to get a hug. Our kids need more hug, hugs and they need more hope.

SMITH: You’re a young person. Are people reaching out to you, did you feel you are getting the support? I mean what works for you?

ISIS HARRIS, PORTLAND RESIDENT: When they’re reaching out, they’re reaching out in the wrong areas. I mean sometimes they’ll reach out to you and they’ll give you some type of support but it’s in the wrong areas. I think as far as young girls go, they need to learn self love and self respect and self esteem to build their character, instead of looking out towards society to get it. As far as like fast men, fast cars and all that.

SMITH: What would work for you, but what would be meaningful to you?

HARRIS: Mentorship helps and knowing that you are important, and that you can make some type of, some type of you can give something back to the community, basically.

SMITH: And you want the chance?

HARRIS: Yes.

SMITH: Mr. Richardson, I want to ask you-- what has struck me and we just heard it here. Somebody she wants the chance and the comment was made in this video that we just saw, they were hungry for it, they were waiting for it. I mean is that your experience?

ROBERT RICHARDSON, GANG OUTREACH WORKER: Well, without a doubt certainly all the young folks that I’ve dealt with, young folks spell love T-I-M-E. And what we’re seeing in that video. I started situations to where a young man was pre, sentenced 7 years. And from the time he went in the court room to the time he was released from prison we kept a relationship. It’s all gauged on you can give and not love but you cannot love and not give. And what we really need to understand is that if it’s really legit it won’t be debatable about holding on to it, because it gives something, and you receive something from it. So when young people, in the context of understanding is that, they must first be respected as a person.

SMITH: I want to ask you LeJon, you were tough at the beginning of that film. What is it that gets to you and turns a guy like you around?

LEJON WATSON, FORMER GANG MEMBER: Well, basically what, what really got to me was just that life style wasn’t me. It just, it just wasn’t me. You know, when I look at a lot of parents in here, and I see, and I see the hurt in their faces, and I really had to look at how I created heartache for all these, these parents, even my parents. You know, I had two hard working parents. Father supervisor in metro. Mother was a certified accountant. When I went to the street, I chose to go to the street. So it wasn't the teacher, that, that my parents didn't teach me, they didn't beat my tail, or anything.

SMITH: Well, let’s go back to this gentleman’s comment. Was it, was it somebody, society was tough to you or was it somebody reached you and touched you somewhere in there?

LEJON: It’s someone who reached me at that time. I was at a vulnerable stage where I wanted to be reached.

SMITH: Are there a lot of guys out there and gals out there who want to be touched?

LEJON: Oh yeah. And they just don’t know how to be, you know. They just I mean they you put up this wall.

SMITH: Thanks very much. I want to ask you, Bob Woodson, something. There’s a moment in the film, when Tyrone Parker says it’s wonderful. You can take care of a man’s soul but you’ve got to give them a life alternative. How important are jobs? How important is some other path?

ROBERT WOODSON, NATIONAL NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZER: It is, but I think we make the mistake if we put jobs first and put external circumstances first. The Alliance of Concerned Men have demonstrated their trust and confidence for five or six years before this on the street. They earned it the hard way, they worked for it. So when the opportunity came and they presented themselves, they had credibility. But you’ve got to transform the heart of a person, and then opportunity works to reinforce. In other words, a transformed heart needs busy hands and a full stomach. But a full stomach and busy hands does not create a, a changed heart. What these young men needed was love. Some of us made a commitment to them. We said we are in your face, in your life and in your heart for life. We are not going to abandon you. We’re not going to lose you to the grave, we’re not losing you to drugs, and we’re not losing you to death.

SMITH: Eric Johnson, Alliance of Concerned Men. If you have one piece of deep down wisdom from this experience and all your other experience, what is it that makes the difference here?

ERIC JOHNSON, ALLIANCE OF CONCERNED MEN: Community involvement.

SMITH: And what does that mean?

JOHNSON: It means everybody in this room coming together, all across this country, finding the solutions. We are the solutions, all you have to do is come together, have heart enough to go to them corners. You know who the problems are. Go, seek out the problems. Grab them kids, put your arms around them, hug them, tell them you love them and stick with them. Through all the hard times. Because it’s not going to be a thing where you going to see the benefits right away. We in for the long haul.

SMITH: Thanks. Forgive me, I’m going to come back to you. What I want is to do is share with you now a program in Oregon that’s working very effectively right now.

GYPSY: I’d like to welcome everybody to Los Hermanos youth crime prevention program.

GYPSY: How many of you men know what culture is?

LINDA MILLER: My kids always think they’re not going to get caught. It’s not that bad. It’s not that big a deal.

LINDA MILLER, MIDDLE SCHOOL TEACHER: These guys are all in here for a stepping stone type crime. You don’t get here to the state prison for the little things. You have to have a background that has brought you up through the system. And I’m trying to get the kids before they’re in the system.

MILLER: I mean, I had ten year olds that were in drive by shootings, had not been arrested but were in drive by shootings already. Ten years old. That’s frightening to me. So I wanted a program that dealt with choices. They have the choice. It’s their power, they can do it.

ANTONIO PALACIOS: I’ve been in prison for fifteen years. My self-identity when I was on the streets was drug dealing.

ANTONIO PALACIOS, LOS HERMANOS CO-FOUNDER: We wanted to try to keep the kids that we knew out there which was our own children, nephews and nieces from ending up in prison like we did because it’s some of them were already going down the same path. They even looked to us as their heroes if you will. So that was our goal at the beginning was just to help our children.

PALACIOS: So my question to you guys is what is, to you, what is to Bobby Morales, what is self-identity to you?

MORALES: Self-worth, what is important to me in my life, a family, you know, children. Happiness.

PALACIOS: Brad?

BRAD: It’s also in how I define myself. The culture I identified with was the criminal subculture, the people that were outcast, the kids that grew up in single families, whether it was just a mom or a father at home, and we identified with each other because we were going through the similar experiences.

RON: I grew up to be exactly what I wanted to be. Now I’m starting to realize what I attained was more than I bargained for. I didn’t realize that them old motorcycles and stuff were going to lead me to doing a life sentence.

PALACIOS: You can’t talk to kids if you have not accepted responsibility. I wouldn’t even be doing this if I hadn’t accepted the fact that I committed these crimes. Nobody told me to commit these crimes. I did it. And if guys can’t say that, they’re not in the program.

HARVEY CARON: When I talk to them, I tell them I can’t tell you what to do, ‘cause I made all the wrong choices. Is all I can do is tell you what I did, and hopefully you’ll learn from the results of my behavior, what I got, and maybe not make the same bad choices I did.

GYPSY: We have to be ready with some ideas and suggestions for some alternative ways to replace the beliefs, not to get rid of them.

PALACIOS: I agree with you, Gypsy, but I also agree with Harvey and with Will that basically all that we can do is tell them that we were in their shoes and we chose an identity that got us here, and if nothing else, if you can plant that seed in these kids’ heads that the identities that they have right now, if it’s similar, then they’re going to end up in prison or dead.

GUARD: Okay now, when you go down this hallway remember to stay single file on the right.

CARON: You know what, there is a serious attraction there, a serious, serious attraction to that lifestyle. The bummer is the repercussions of it just didn’t add up. You know, I got 17 years in prison, I’m probably going to be here the rest of my life. So was it worth it? Absolutely not.

JORGE: We’re not telling you guys not to, we’re just letting you know what happens when you do. We’ve talked about that a lot of times. I’m not telling you guys, don’t smoke marijuana, I’m not telling you not to shoot up dope, I’m just telling you what happens when you do. This room, this prison, prisons like this are full, full of guys that think it’s going to work. We’re just here to let you know it didn’t work for me, it didn’t work for Ron, it didn’t work for 2,300 inmates that are in here. That’s all. That’s all we’re saying.

TERRY LEGGERT, CIRCUIT COURT JUDGE: What I like about the Los Hermanos program in terms of the effect is it’s not a scared straight program, which we found out the kids just tune it out.

INMATE: Would you jeopardize your freedom...

LEGGERT: It’s much more interactive.

INMATE: ...to back up your homeboys?

KID: I have to if I am in a gang, I have to. You’re supposed to do that.

KID2: See, I wouldn’t do that.

KID3: Would you want to have freedom or to back up your homeboys...

KID: Everybody got their own decisions, like, I’m telling you, everybody got their own decisions... If somebody wants to die, they can die anytime they wanted to.

GREG: That’s the decision I made, and that was 25 years ago, and I’m still here. Twenty-five years ago I made the same decision we’re talking about right now to back up my homeboys, and here I am, 25 years later. And do I think it was worth it now? No.

KIDS: No.

LEGGERT: Youth need positive role models. They need positive mentors. Now that sounds sort of odd when you’re talking about inmates.

JORGE: I’m in here for armed robbery...

MORALES: Heroin addict...

LEGGERT: But when you go out and listen to these inmates at the Los Hermanos program, they are role models in the sense of we know what we did was really bad and wrong and if we ever had another chance to do something different we would have. And so I look at it as presenting them a positive role model in how they can change their life and avoid ending up in a penitentiary.

DAVID ENDICOTT, LOS HERMANOS GRADUATE: I bet I’d be in juvenile hall right now. Because I think cause I thought I could kick somebody else’s butt and I’d do it causes I have a temper and if I lose my temper I don’t know what I’m going to do. I might end up hitting them over the head with a bat and cracking their skull.

ENDICOTT: Seeing what it was like in prison, I realized I didn’t want to be there. I realized that I wanted to be able to use the bathroom when I wanted. I wanted to make my own choices. I wanted to do what I wanted, when I was of age. Here I am growing up getting a better life, doing what I want and more now cause I’m older, I have more responsibilities and now they’re still, they’re getting older and they have no life still. And I just wouldn’t want to end up like that.

LEGGERT: I’ve seen youth that have gone to the program who stopped committing criminal activity. Not everybody changes overnight. We’re looking for incremental overlapping things that work together to make some changes in youth.

PALACIOS: A lot of us use the term "give back to society." I don’t like that term, I’d rather use the term to make a difference and try to make my society, the place that I live in because I’m part of the society, the place that I live in a better place to live in.

SMITH: Let me ask you-- you’ve been in the program, I understand.

FELIMON GUTIERREZ, LOS HERMANOS GRADUATE: Yes, about five years ago, I was there and I was barely getting into gangs. They teach you about consequences to the crimes you commit. You want to go rob a store, you know there’s a punishment for everything. So you really think about twice of whatever happens you do things.

SMITH: But didn’t anybody before tell you not to rob a store.

GUTIERREZ: Not really. I had my mom you know she always told me about good and bad but being a kid you don’t listen to your parents really. You want to run around wild and do whatever you want.

SMITH: So you didn’t listen to your mom but you listened to these guys.

GUTIERREZ: Well, I mean, you look at them, that could be your future. Sitting there in the cell talking to kids, or maybe not even talking to kids. You can end up dead or something.

SMITH: Are you still tempted to, to rob the store?

GUTIERREZ: No, I work now. I got my son, so I do whatever I can for my son. Robbing a store is not really a good idea. Getting locked up, he ain’t going to be able to see me.

SMITH: I noticed that back here, four rows back is one of the young men. Mom’s over here. I just wonder whether or not from a, from a parent’s viewpoint whether or not you see anything and sense anything in your son? As a result of this program?

TINA DONOLLEY, PARENT OF LOS HERMANOS ALUMNUS: I hope it opened his eyes up to see what people are in there for so that he doesn’t get into that kind of trouble and--

SMITH: So the idea was to get him there before he got in trouble. I mean he wasn’t in trouble, right?

DONOLLEY: Right.

SMITH: What do, what do you think when somebody says in a program, we’re going to take your 15 year old son to the penitentiary. I mean, as a parent how do you react to that when you first hear it?

DONOLLEY: When he told me he was going out there, I was like (sound effect)--you know, I got real nervous. I thought, what in the world does he want to go over there for? But I think it’s been a great program for him.

SMITH: So it’s reaching them, it’s reaching them. You've got your hand up here.

CHRIS PHILLIPS, FORMER GANG MEMBER: I mean, no offense to you, like if you was trying to tell me like when I was banging and you was trying to tell me about some gang, I probably wouldn’t listen to you because I feel like you know wait a minute he ain’t, he ain’t been there he ain’t seen the life style so how you going to try to educate me or tell me something about the way I’m living when he ain’t ever been there. So I mean in order for these guys to change you know what I’m saying they have to respect these fellows. And the other thing is that a lot of people in the community and a lot of parents and stuff they don’t, they don’t really get involved as much is because they feel it’s not their kid so they don’t have nothing to worry about. But then it becomes a problem when their kid come home with their hair slicked back with their pants sagging you know what I’m saying. They in the gang, then they want to get involved and want to help. But they don’t want to get involved and want to help when it’s somebody else’s kid.

SMITH: Let me just ask, are there people here who work with younger kids, how early do we start? Somebody said you were talking earlier, the school principal was talking, four. Anybody work with kindergartners, first graders? Yes ma’am.

JULIA COHEN-POPE, ELEMENTARY SCHOOL COUNSELOR: I was a former juvenile court counselor and I made an active decision to become an elementary school counselor because I feel like I can be far more effective in doing violence prevention with the very young children.

SMITH: Very young meaning?

COHEN-POPE: Kindergarten through fifth grade.

SMITH: What do you say to them?

COHEN-POPE: I call them life skills. We say the box says violence prevention, I say these are life skills I'm teaching them.

SMITH: What is that?

COHEN-POPE: Anger management, how to be empathetic, how to recognize how other people are feeling. I’m teaching them how to solve problems, how to make good decisions.

SMITH: How to avoid fights in the school yard?

COHEN-POPE: Absolutely. And I really believe that we’re missing the boat by not using schools. In particular elementary schools to do far more violence prevention, far more community building. Bringing people together.

SMITH: Somebody way back here.

DONNA DENGLE, YOUTH COUNSELOR: What we know about brain development is by age 2 social attachment has happened. We talk about prisoners not having remorse. They’ll never have remorse if they don’t have that bonding and attachment and that social connection by age 2. We have to start working much sooner to make these things happen. And to do that we have to support parents so that they know how to nurture. Those hugs start much earlier than adulthood.

SMITH: Do parents and schools in our society get together enough on these issues or do we wait til the problem comes?

SYLVIA AGUILAR-FORESEE, JUVENILE PROBATION OFFICER: I haven’t seen it and again the conversations need to be going on throughout the community and what you see here are many of the same faces you see at the same tables over and over. We need to include more parents. We need to include more, more institutions.

SMITH: What can we do? How do we start to bridge these gaps and get to some of these young people before the disaster? Before that terrible thing that happened to your daughter.

STEVE DOELL, PARENT OF MURDERED CHILD: With all due respect to people who think we have to start very young or use the "ghosts from the nursery" theory, if you will. What I know about this, since I’ve been involved in and studied it, is that kids start acting out around 9 or 10 years old. That’s when it really starts happening. You know, when you have somebody that is abusing animals, when you have somebody that is attempting assaults, when you have somebody who is making pipe bombs and bringing them to school and then trying to, trying to, almost murder their own father, wh- why didn’t someone step in? Because all of a sudden, I had a 12 year old daughter who was dead on the street, who never knew this individual. And he never knew her but he was out to destroy somebody, and in the middle of it he destroyed a lot of lives. I've had the privilege of going to Los Hermanos, and speaking to these young men. And it was a very good experience for me because I think not only we imparted that they can destroy their own lives by ending up in prison but when, when they victimize someone else, they not only take the life of the victim themselves, but they destroy the lives of the parents, the brothers, the sisters, and the friends and the community itself.

SMITH: Let me ask you, you’re an experienced youth counselor, how do we make these connections earlier? How do we, as a country, and how do we in our communities, do this earlier?

JOHN CANDA, GANG OUTREACH WORKER: Personally, I don’t, I don’t think it’s that difficult. You put your pants on. You open your door. You walk outside, you find some people who are, who are gathered in front of your house. You have a conversation. And every time they come back you have another conversation and maybe the next time I don’t wait for them to come to me but I go where they are. And I sit down with them. But I'm putting in quality time.

SMITH: Do people do this, do enough people do this?

CANDA: No. Enough people don’t do it because they think it’s more difficult than that. They don't do it because they let grants or funds stand in their way. I’m suggesting that our mentality changes, whether I have money or if I don’t. It’s not a job for me. It’s a life style, and until we take on that mentality and say, no barriers can stop me from walking outside my house and talking to those people who are in my yard or on my block. That’s what we have to do. It’s very basic and its simple.

SMITH: Mm hm, let me ask you. You’re a police officer. You’re in a uniform and typically in our society we say to you, your job. You want allies, do you have enough allies?

DAVID BARRIOS, PORTLAND POLICE: Where I learn is from the people that I work with on the street. We, we’re providing services to people, to young people on the street as well. And they are my teachers, they are the ones who, who show me how to make inroads and, and do my job better.

SMITH: You work for the city of Portland. Do you see people in the city, private citizens, sufficiently involved and do you feel as though the city is putting enough resources into the kind of program that people here say is needed?

JOHNNIE GAGE, VIOLENCE PREVENTION WORKER: Yes to all of those and I also to, to add to what, what John was saying. I think another reason why, why people may not be mobilizing as much as they could is because people are afraid. I mean, we’re seeing the availability of guns at an alarming rate. And I don't care whether you're wearing a flak jacket or a bulletproof vest. That’s a fearful thing, it’s a fearful thing to walk into your house and find a son or a daughter with a gun. So, um, I think that’s one of the main reasons. I think that in response to this whole gang phenomena, we’ve just done the best we could. And over time we’re finding new things to do. I think what we what we’ve seen in Benning was that there was a precious resource that may have went untapped and that was some guys that were ex cons, what a lot of us may call the least of our communities that were a precious resource that helped turn that whole situation around. I think it’s a re, an abundance of that same resource in this community.

SMITH: I want to ask you Judge Leggert-- listening to the dialogue tonight, reading what you read in the newspapers, whether or not you feel as though-- maybe through shock therapy, seriously, maybe through shock therapy-- more and more Americans are waking up to the fact that this is problem on our doorsteps, not on somebody else’s.

TERRY LEGGERT, CIRCUIT COURT JUDGE: Well, I hope so. One of my concerns is that people want the problem to go away and are looking for quick easy solutions. As I said about the program myself was it’s, there’s a bunch of different things happening with these youth and we’re hoping that they’re all giving them the same message. Maybe one youth is going to be touched by a program or a man from the community come and talk to them and somebody else needs a different kind of mentor. Maybe they need some a little bit of tuition to go to school. Maybe they need glasses so they can see the board. I'm not feeling a lot of energy devoted towards some of these, financially, to some of these issues. Yes, I want the problem to go away, but I don't want to pay any more money for it. So there’s a lot of different solutions and there’s a lot of different issues that people need to look at and a lot of it costs money. And we just have to understand that if we want it to go away it’s time and money.

SMITH: Mm-Hmm. Yes Ma’am?

REBECCA LYNN, MOTHER OF WOUNDED STUDENT: It took Bethel, Alaska, Springfield, Oregon, Paducah, Jonesboro and finally Columbine before people said this is heinous. Our kids are killing our kids, and do we want to continue to watch this happen? It took that many shootings and that many dead youth before we did wake up and say, no, enough is enough and, and I agree with the judge and several of what all of these folks have said. There are so many solutions. And we do have to make it multifaceted if we do want to save our kids.

SMITH: I want to thank all of you for taking part in this dialogue this evening. Together, we have been probing one of our country’s most painful and haunting problems. Young people killing each other all over America. We’ve focused not on the agony but on the healing. We’ve just seen two effective anti-violence programs and heard some practical, helpful, and inspiring ideas. One powerful message is that we Americans cannot stop teen violence simply by blaming Hollywood or Washington or gun dealers. We ourselves must get involved. We have to reach out to our young people, listen to them, take them seriously, make connections. Hug them, and hold them especially close when we see them starting to slide towards trouble. That takes time, effort, and commitment. But the lesson from this dialogue, is that if we say it's someone else's problem, we risk seeing much more bloodshed tomorrow.

SMITH: In our next program, we move to the Midwest to see how two different communities are winning on a another front-- the war against drug dealing and street crime. I'm Hedrick Smith. Thank you for being with us.

GROSVENOR v/o: To learn more about this program and grass roots movements to combat crime, visit pbs online at the internet address on your screen. (pbs.org)

LILLIAN ANDERSON: If you want your neighborhood back, and you can get it back, remember there are more of us than them.

RITA SIMO: We’re all in the same boat. And the way to avoid being troubled is to become friends with everybody, because you know them.

NARR: CONQUERING CRIME IN OUR CITIES.