I'm an expert on nothing. But I know my experience better than anybody and my experience is only in the housing projects where my parish is located to housing projects called Pico Gardens and a Liesl Village The Gangs. I deal with eight of them that are in the projects and any number countless others that surround the projects are Chicano gangs. We had and have one African-American set a Crip set. That was in there for a while and has sort of moved out they come back once in a while and there's kind of some fights that insu. But basically my experience are Chicano gangs to extent that this relates to your experience here in the Twin Cities. Run with it to the extent that it doesn't toss it out. There will be similarities and dissimilarities. It's important for me when I come to cities and I go to a lot and talk on gangs when I accept invitations because it's important to compare and contrast. This is a national issue. If the polls are to be believed crime is the number one issue in this country and Janet Reno. The Attorney General says that within that topic of crime youth crime is the number one concern. So whether I just finished talking in in about five cities in, Ohio A lot of denial as you find in a lot of cities when you're beginning to have a gang problem. Nothing is as Grave as Los Angeles, but this is everybody's concerned because it's a national issue and a lot of people are proposing a lot of dumb policies to address this and I think we need to look at it a little bit. Number of years ago Los Angeles times did a kind of an expose a feature story on the 77th police precinct, which is in South Central LA another area kind of beleaguered by gang activity. One of the things I noticed in this article was that they mentioned that when gangs responded, I'm Excuse me, when police officers would respond to gang activity to get a call on the radio to go because there's been some incident a shooting a knife fight a brawl of some kind between two gangs. They would characterize the call in this way on the radio. They'd say we have an nhi on the corner of Normandy and Crenshaw. Nhi indicated to the police officer in his car that gangs were involved for nhi stands for no human involved. And so that meant of course that they have a lighter touch on the gas pedal and they get there just in time to be too late to do mop up to take names to drape yellow police tape to drape a sheet over a dead body after all no human involved. Every city my experiences at most every city has the one galvanizing gang-related homicide that seems to get everybody worked up is the one that moves people to some kind of action be it good or bad but it kind of gets them riled up in 1988. We had such a death the killing of current Oshima who was Japanese American graphic artist. She was on a date in Westwood which is kind of a she she fancy part of town where people go to movies and have dinner. She's on a date. She leaves the restaurant. She's walking down the street and two cars are kind of passing each other. Filled with gangs enemy gangs words are exchanged guns are brought out and a bullet hits her in the head, and she's pronounced dead on arrival at UCLA Medical Center. the very next day 40 detectives are Taken from other precincts and assigned to investigate this death the very next day a hundred police officers are taken from different precincts and pumped into the Westwood area to make it safer. The very next day 35 thousand dollar reward was offered for information that would lead to the arrest and the conviction of the person who killed Karen toshima. I had to cancel my last scheduled time to come here because I had to bury my 30th kid and believe me when I tell you that no detectives have been assigned to any of those deaths nor have more police been brought in to my community. Never have they offered a reward for information that led to anything. And the reason should be disturbing to us if we're thinking people or especially for people of faith is that one life in Westwood is truly worth 30 in my neighborhood. As a result of her death Community organization number of community organizations and churches. I'm embarrassed to say started a campaign called Turn The Tide it didn't live very long but it was there for a while and the centerpiece of this campaign was a March that they wanted everybody to attend in Exposition Park in LA. They wanted a hundred thousand people to come out for this March and it was one of those were mad as hell. We're not going to take it anymore kinds of things. And one of the local television stations supported this as well ABC affiliate and to kind of advertise this and get people interested in to come to this campaign and especially the kickoff March they had five minutes pots on certain aspects of gang life at the five o'clock Afternoon News and the first night was girls and gangs and it was mainly cholas. It was girls from the East side of town Chicanos. The second night was gangs in the valley a place typically not known to have gangs and it was one of those there here. Also, the third night was some kind of kindergarten prevention program somewhere to kind of get kids hunker down with the kindergarten said and get them to just say no, I guess the fourth night was I can never recall what it is. But there you have it. The fifth night was on Dolores mission on our reproach in my community to the gang issue. Over the course of these five nights. I had about 30 homeboys gang members. Somebody stop me the other day and said what's a homeboy after I just given a talk? I would probably mentioned it 80 times. I thought everybody knew what a homeboy was. It's a gang member. I've 30 homeboys in the TV rec room sitting there and they're watching this with great interest because they know they're going to appear in the last night. So they want to see themselves come out on TV. So they're all sitting there packed into this TV room watching each one of these nights at the end of each five minutes spot the correspondent a woman named Laura Diaz would come back on the screen and and she looked earnestly out at the crowd at home audience at home and plead with them. Please come to our march on such and such a date help us to turn the tide with your help. We'll be able to wipe out gangs. Now. This is her verb of choice throughout the whole week wipe them out como si fuera and cucarachas, you know, like as if they were Cockroaches and the one thing we needed was a can of raid suitably large to wipe them out Wipeout gangs. She says and here's a 900 number you can call and if you call that your cash donation will kick in so that we can you guessed it wipe them out. So the fifth Night comes on and it's a most unfortunate piece because it chooses to juxtapose our approach but specifically my Approach, I guess with the police approach and it had a captain Medina from Hollenbeck police division our local Precinct as we say in Spanish talking Masa about me saying, oh the father Boyle is part of the problem. He's not part of the solution. I mean, he lets gang members hang out at his church if you can imagine such a thing and of course it was true. We had a at that time a weight room in the garage for homeboys. They started to feel it as a welcoming place while they were there they engaged in no criminal activity. No guns. No drugs. As was mentioned earlier, we have an alternative school for gang members. We have a job training and placement program a mentoring program Homeboy Industries, including a bakery where kids bake bread instead of shoot each other seems like a good idea to me anyway, but according to him. I'm part of the problem not part of the solution. So end of show Laura Diaz comes on again. Wipe out gangs come to the March call this 900 number sending your donation wipe them out. So the show is over and I go to my office and I'm sitting there and a lot of the homies come in and they sit down and some are standing up and some have gone outside to smoke a cigarette and I'm trying to get some work done at my desk. And this kid named Rusty 17 17 year old Chicano gang member member of a gang called the Clarence Street locals Taps me on the shoulder. They call me Gigi. He goes. Hey G. I got to talk to you. I said sure me quite let me just I need to finish bodhichitta. Which means right now, I'm struck by how serious this kid. He's kind of a grim looking kid at the moment. And normally he's quite funny and rarely serious. He's what the homies would call a bagger. He's like a champion bagger bagging is where you take a physical attribute of somebody especially a homeboy and you run with it you kid him about it, you know, like he would bag on my forehead. He seemed to think it was overly large. Of course he was wrong. But but he would bag on it. He'd say damji. That's not a forehead. That's like, you know, maybe a 10 head, you know, which he thought was funny and obviously it wasn't. So anyway, so very funny kids sometimes would reduce me to tears he be so funny and always kind of not serious here. He is quite Grim. I got to talk to you so I kick everybody out. I sent him down will ya que pasa? Mijo? What's up? We're sitting face-to-face shakes his head and he goes damji that TV show really got to me. I said why won't they want to wipe us out? You know, they're having a March so that they can wipe us out there. It got a phone number you can call they're asking for fethiye money to wipe us out and he's genuinely perplexed by this and he looks at me and he says what are they want to do? I said, I don't know. I think they want to wipe you out, you know. He doesn't laugh or smile. As I wish they'd help you out. I wish they'd fix up your schools or I wish they'd give you a Rec Center. I wish they'd hire you find you a job. I guess they just want to wipe you out. He looks him and he goes and they were talking shit about you too, you know meaning the police. Probably more hurt than confused on that one. I think and he says, how come I said, you know me. Well, I don't know. I I don't know why I think it's because they want me to hate you. Do you think I should hate you? And he shook his head. No. And then nothing prepared me for what? He did next. He he took his his Lokes his sunglasses at home looks and he had him on his knee and he put some on his face and he leans his head way back in the chair. And as we say in Spanish table saw your ad he starts to cry. But big time, you know not like tears sobbing. He can't breathe. I think he's going to hyperventilate. He's crying. So heavily I'm stunned by this. I'm sitting there in silence and wondering where this is coming from. Do you want to talk about it? He shakes his head. No. More pause more silence he's sobbing. Well you me cool, you know what to get them with you. I love you a lot. The key thing is to Casa. This is your home Quinta conmigo. I want you to count on me. And he nodded he said I know I know. And then he begged on because I didn't have any Kleenex and I do want to one of those on his sleeve, you know, and and I said go wash your face and join the homies outside. It was almost to the day a month later that I told that story at his funeral. Because I wanted everybody in earshot to know with certainty that a human being involved. bright intelligent wildly imaginative Champion bagger Olympic crier human being if he were your son. You'd be the proudest parent alive. About a year before I went on a sabbatical. The kid named Richie was shot in the head and was effectively brain-dead. So the doctor told us. Who was 19 years old Chicano member of a gang called the mob crew? He was part of the crew of about 15 a gang members who built our daycare center, which is the lowest cost daycare center in the city of La and it's run by our women's Cooperative all women from the from the Project's the homeboys built it it would have taken six months. If we had people who knew what they were doing building it, but it took us a year and a half. So there was a higher value somewhere in there. But Richie was in the wrong place at the wrong time and you got a bullet in the head and they kept him in the Intensive Care Unit at White Memorial Hospital for about three days. So that they could determine if in fact he was legally officially dead and they do those Flatline things and if there's a little bleep of brain activity he's alive. And you there's nothing you can do you don't pull plugs but if you have a flat line for a number of days you signed the certificate he's officially dead, but during that time his lady Lupe who was eight months pregnant with their second child had little Richie jr. Who's two years old kept this constant vigil by his bedside and put up pictures that were meaningful to the two of them. Homeboys came by about 60 of them to say goodbye and to kiss him and caress him and cry over him and drape gross. Adios over his neck. And I spent a lot of time there too, and I can recall a couple months before. This happened. He called me sort of late at night and I went to meet him at his girlfriend's house and we sat in the stairwell of the old beat-up projects in LA. And he too was crying and was distressed about something which I can't recall at the moment, but I remember asking him. Oh, yeah, what what do you want? What do you most deeply want and I'll never forget, you know, he sat there and kind of pursed his lips and folded his hands and he was getting a hernia tried to get the give the right answer, you know, because not to please me so much as if he were to give the right answer maybe it would put him on the right path. So he sits there and he's thinking I just want to be a good father. He says to me But I don't know how to be. I had buried his own father for years before of a heroin overdose. And of course he had no model there and his mother. So what we call him the streets of Cooley head. She smokes PCP 24/7 and all his younger brothers and sisters. He was the oldest had been taken from her and put in foster care and he went to live with his grandmother. I just want to be a good father. He says and I'm recalling that as I see his tattooed 19 year old body lying in this bed. He had a tattoo here that said I'm still here which is an oldie song and he had it put on the summer before because he had been shot and he survived. I'm still here he says. the grandmother finally agreed to sign the permission to have his heart and his liver and his kidney donated so that three other people could live he was a healthy kid after all. And as two nurses were Wheeling him down the aisle the hallway. to surgery to harvest his organs one nurse turned to the other and with disgust she shakes her head and she says Who would want this monsters heart? And the other nurse who told the story at an in-service about 500 nurses, I gave an in-service on gangs. She told the story in front of everybody. She stood up and said I turned to her and I said How dare you call this kid a monster. I mean you didn't even know him. I didn't even know him. But didn't you see his lady there and his baby and it's his friends who came by and said goodbye to him with great tenderness. This was no monster. She said. Shame on you she said and in front of all these nurses she starts to cry telling the story and she says, you know, I cried all the way home that night. They said good for you. If we think gang members are monsters then what we do with them is pretty abundantly clear. We build more prisons three strikes and you're out you extend death penalty to include lot more other crimes you Triad chilled children as adults you lock them up you wipe them out. And you lose the key. That's what we do if they're monsters. If they're human beings and that opens up a whole other path of very complex sets of solutions. Los Angeles is the gang capital of the world and yet we don't have a gang problem. We have this simple the symptom that screams at us gang violence is a symptom hit points Beyond itself to problems that may seem intractable but problems we've never addressed and for our neglect gang violence has become more and more pervasive in the city of Los Angeles. It's a symptom that points to these problems intense poverty dysfunctional families joblessness boredom despair. There's a great disparity between the schools that have in the schools that have not. Those are our problems. Gang violence just point to it gang violence just wakes us up and screams as and at us and says Yoo-hoo here are the problems. Unfortunately we fixated on the symptom. And have always neglected and ignored the problems. Is it a surprise to anyone? That the symptoms have gotten more pronounced. If you go to a doctor and you have a nagging cough. And the doctor gives you a bottle of Vicks Formula 44 and gives you a big fat Bill. You've gone to a bad doctor. I want to know what it means. Do I have lung cancer. Do I have emphysema? Am I allergic to something do I have the common cold? You can see there is a difference. If you don't treat treat the root cause of the symptom what happens to the symptom gets more pronounced and more aggravated. And it leads to different Morgan greater difficulties, really? The tallest order for me as a priest working with gangs is despair as I go around the country and see how dissimilar gangs are. You're Struck One is struck by how similar they are in this one thing despair. gang violence gang membership gang banging It's the urban pours version of teenage suicide. It's how our kids play it out. A lot of priests I know in this country in the last ten years have buried teenagers who kill themselves. I've never had to bury one. And yet maybe I've buried 30. If a kid especially can't imagine a future for himself or herself then the present your present is not very compelling and if your present is not very compelling then you don't care if you inflict harm and you don't care if you duck to get out of Harm's Way that kid Rusty I was telling you about earlier was sitting on a curb one night with his friends with his homies and they were drinking and a car slowly pulls up. And then they begin the ritual three-part dance called gang banging Mad Dog hit up and Des the car pulls up. They Mad Dog each other they stare at each other for a few seconds. Then they move to part 2 the hit up. Where you from. This is Portal Clarence treat locals. The other gang says in the car. This is Portal white fence. They've identified themselves as enemies. They move on to the third part the disrespect will F White Fence will F Clarence treat locals and the car leaves, but everybody knows that it will be back. And this time they'll have guns everybody knows that at anybody who has a pilot light of Hope on inside their heart. Imagines that their mother is calling them and they go home or they sneak into their homeboys house or they hunkered down behind a car in the parking lot. But you know, they're going to be back and they'll be armed. Rusty was the only kid who didn't budge. He sat there on the curb the car slowly returned. He stands up he raises his arms like this and he says what's up then which is sort of a gang posture. That means do what you must do and a bullet to the head and he was dead. And I remember his homeboy pop by called me at 3:00 in the morning said Rusty's been shot. And I remember driving down Fourth Street getting to Mont where he was saying to myself. I know he's shot in the arm. He shot in the leg. He's he's okay and I pull up and I see the ambulance slowly pulling away, which means nobody's in it. And I see the police Yellow Tape, which means somebody's down and I see the draped body with a sheet, which means he's dead. And so I pull back the sheet and I identify him and then I have to go to do something. I've had to do many times. Which is knock on the door at three in the morning of a mother and tell her that her only son or her beloved Son or her youngest son is dead. And I know this is a mother thing, but it's also a Latina Chicana thing. And it's like an Indian like Yelp a Yelps cream that comes from the gut to the deepest part of you and it pierces the night when you hear that news in it's the most horrifying thing I've ever experienced in my life. of all the 30 kids that I've buried as they walked down the center aisle to view their dead homeboy in the casket and then they file past on the side. And kick it in the parking lot for a time. I always isolate the kid who's out by himself thinking here's my window of opportunity. Maybe I'll catch this kid and he's vulnerable. Maybe you'll hear something perhaps for the first time. I go to that kid and I always sort of do the same thing. It's almost like a survey I put my arm around him and I say size came equal. I never want to see you lying in a casket at 16 or 17 or whatever his ages. I'm convinced if you said that to your son or daughter or your kid sister or brother, they'd say this to you. They'd say shot damn, right that makes two of us. I don't want to die. I don't want to die. Please believe me when I tell you I've never had a kid. Tell me that not once not even close. And what is doubly Erie for me is they always say one of two things. They say you got to die sometime or they say why not? Both are indicators of a despair that's deeper than we ever realized. On a talk show. I was on sort of The Rush Limbaugh of Youngstown Ohio, I guess and all these people called in and said the predictably crazy thing one woman said, well these gang members think they're Invincible. They think they're never going to die. I go. What a weird take on this. They don't care. That's the dangerous kid out there. The most dangerous kid is the kid who doesn't care. Not that they don't think they're going to die or they're invincible. They put themselves in a kind of a suicidal path. I had a 15 year old girl bound into my office extremely happy. And she goes g I'm pregnant, of course, you know my heart's on the floor and I'm trying to pick it up and put it back where it belongs and she senses that I'm not happy. And we talked about it a bit and she interrupts me and she goes with a big smile on her face G. I just want to have a baby before I die. Now you tell me where a fifteen-year-old girl gets off thinking that she won't see 16. Despair is the tallest order. It's what this is about if we can address to spare. Then I think we can address this problem. You know, you ask anybody who works with gang kids are at risk youth or kids involved in violence probation officers are people work with them. Whoever they are. Then you ask them to identify the kids who have succeeded in have pulled out and now have a life in a sense of a future. Then you go back and say what is the one thing all of those kids have in common and it'll be this? each one had a loving caring adult who paid attention 10 would be great, but one you got to have one. This is a communal problem. It requires a communal response. This is why mentoring is such an important Concept in this issue adult saying, you know, we no longer can pound on the table and say it's the parents fault. Well, who cares? You're right EK as we say in Spanish EK, you know, where does that get us? What parent did you want to blame in Ritchie's case the father who died of a heroin overdose or the mother who's a coolie head? Who did you want to blame? And who cares the point is we need to be the parent the entire Village raises the family as the African-American Community says and they're completely right and we need to embrace it. They also say leave no child behind We have to think that way. If you want to learn what not to do with gangs in this city look to Los Angeles. For 10 solid years. We've backed the wrong horse. We've put all our eggs in one basket law enforcement. The law enforcement Paradigm to deal with this issue is a failure. If you proceed down that path, I guarantee you. I'll be back in 10 years. And you'll be where we are. You will have failed. Law enforcement finally says in Los Angeles. This isn't a Law Enforcement issue. This is a social problem in the crowd Roars and I'm incensed because 10 years have passed and we've given you blank checks forever. That means now we have no money to do what we should have done a long time ago. We just passed three strikes and you're out in, California. This will mean 20 billion dollars to build prisons to meet the Third Time Felon who will now be spending the rest of his life in prison. That's 20 billion dollars that we can't use to do what we need to do to address the problems. This is a pervasive attitude in this country and smart people need to talk about it. The issue is not smart soft on crime or tough on crime. I want to talk to the person who's smart on crime. Building prisons to address crime is like building cemeteries to address AIDS. Does that make sense to you? It's a total failure. It's a complete waste of money and it's built on the principle of deterrence and deterrence only works if you care. You go to a kid and say, you know, you could get the death penalty if you do that, I don't care. Because he's despondent, you know, you could be tried as a as an adult even though your juvenile if you do that. so Deterrence doesn't work if you don't care and if you can't imagine a future for yourself in our community, we've gone through a lot of Evolutions, you know where we used to see the gang member as the enemy and now we're at a place where we see the gang member as our kid and we won't oppose him. We will help him and that's why we have such a proactive response from my Parish, but also we put the welcome mat out in pretty clear terms. I remember once a kid came into my office at to what they call the Sacristy and I was getting ready to say mass. And I was 10 minutes late. I'm looking at my watch and I could see the people outside are tapping their feet and looking at their watches too. And I'm throwing on my suiting up to do mass as a priest and this kid comes in and his name is Speedy from a gang called the mob crew. 17 years old at the time he leans on the counter and Isaiah Q will how you doing? What's up? And he says to me, you know, gee I just don't care whether I live or die. Of course. I'm thinking to myself. I've gotta get up the mess and you're launching into this Cosmic thing that requires more time of me. I said, oh you Michael, you know, we all feel like that one time or another but it's going to have to do for the moment for you to know that I care whether you live or die and he goes, okay and I go and he goes on his way and I go same ass three hours later. He comes into my office. He looks at me he goes how I don't want your forehead to get red, which means it turns red when I get mad and they know this and they always warned me. I don't want your forehead to get red, but I walked and a home. Well, my forehead went red because this is a girl who lives in his worst enemies neighborhood. It was unconscionable irresponsible. It endangered her life. It was self-destructive. It was suicidal to do it was not funny. Fortunately, he walked her home dropped off from the apartment. He came down the stairwell and then he encounters 30 homeboys from the East too late that I said Dukes his worst enemy. Fortunately again, they didn't have a gun but they had empty 40-ounce bottles and sticks and stones and whatever and they don't call him Speedy for nothing and he got the hell out of there as he's coming around the bend and I Lisa Village housing projects. He runs into this woman named Yolanda. And now she doesn't know him but she knows he shouldn't be there. She kind of recognizes him. She knows what neighborhood he's from. She starts stops them been beca because toshiaki what are you doing here? He hangs his head down in shame, you know. And she says this to him in Spanish, you know, if anything happened to you, it would break my heart in two. You know, I've seen you in the park with your little nephew. You're so tender and kind with him. What a good kid you are. I've seen you help Father Greg at the church Feed the Homeless every night what a generous and good person then she repeated it. But if anything ever happened to you, it would break my heart in two. Better get out of here, and he came to my office and told me that story and after he told me that story you said, you know G. That shit made me feel good. Of course it did. Can you imagine anything smaller than the scope of human relations than what this woman said to this kid, but it was the slenderness thread that connected him to tomorrow. It enabled him to go to bed that night. It kept him from gang banging. I put all my trust and confidence in that. Los Angeles has had a tough policy after tough policy. From the police one example was Operation Hammer, which was one of those Street Suite things. You see somebody looks like a gang member. Yes, whoop them down and up or however you do that and you and you run them through the computer and he has a warrant you lock them up and it cost six million dollars. and issued in a big fat zero What I couldn't have done with one sixth of that and done more to handle the problem of gangs in our community. You asked police officers at the time. Anyway, what's your strategy here? Can you articulate in a nutshell? What's your approach is? I'll sure make life as difficult make life as miserable as we possibly can for the gang member. Well that is redundant in my community, you know and life is miserable. Thank you very much. No outside help needed. And that was the approach. Get tough Scared Straight. It's funny. I saw on TV the other night in La they have a new program called Pace. They have all these acronyms act acronyms. They used to have a thing called crash which was Community response against Street hoodlums gives you sort of an idea of how they're going to approach this thing. It used to be called trash total response against Street hoodlums. Anyway, now they have this new thing called pace and they featured it for three nights in a row on TV. It was just the dumbest thing in the world you get gang members at risk kids. You get a police offer their officer there. He's in his face. You know how this works Scared Straight mentality. You look like an idiot dressed like that. You know this works, of course anybody who's taken psych 101 knows that this kind of approach works with kids. It makes them stop and say wow. This is making me uncomfortable. I think I'm not going to be a gang member anymore. No, this doesn't fill me with hate towards police officers. Doesn't make any sense are approaching this country right now is scary to me. It's three strikes and you're out tougher is better. The cast this in moral terms this morning in the Tribune some gentlemen Warren limmer. From a place. I've never heard of Maple Grove or something, you know is talking about boy. If you give me the choice between determining whether we have salvageable kids here or Public Safety. I'm going to have to side with Public Safety and of course everybody the crowd Roars you can hear the crowd roaring. And he said this is just a stopgap measure until we can really deal with what we need to deal with which is the underlying issue which is the fall, of course in family values and moral values nonsense. I'm a Catholic priest. I'm here to tell you this has nothing to do with morality nothing. Increase in crime has more to do with the rise in unemployment than it has to do with the decline of moral values. I was on a panel once with whole bunch of movers and shakers and whole bunch of gang members in an audience and I was sort of this the poor man's Phil Donahue running around with microphones trying to get gang members to talk to these official people after the riots in LA. And one of them was Senator Rockefeller, of course, all of all, the powerful people say we need prevention programs. When you ever hear prevention programs part of that is true, but part of what it means is right off the gang kid. He doesn't exist. We lost okay hunker down with the kindergarten set walk them into adolescence repeat the Mantra over and over again in their ears just say no to gangs just say no to the gangs make the right role moral choice, you know choose good over evil. The finally this kid gang member ex-gang member really raised his hand and he said very politely and quite disarmingly African-American kid about 17 years old Senator Rockefeller III really appreciative that you want to start a prevention program for my kid brother. But what good will that do him if my parents don't have a job and they can't feed him and they can't pay the rent. The social controls have broke down in the family. That's not because we have bad people at the helm. It's because the stresses are worse than they've ever been. yesterday on some radio show I think was Akron. No, wait a minute father. Wait a minute. Wait a minute on I was going a little kid, you know, my mother held down eight jobs and we had 43 kids or you've heard all the stories, you know, how it goes and on and on and on and by God, we were able to blah blah blah. Well, I got news for you. Congratulations. That's terrific. I'm proud of you. It's totally changed now. It's not bad people unable to pull themselves up by the bootstraps. We had gangs in Little Italy and New York and Irish gangs. We had them all immigrants Under Siege. Trying to protect themselves from from Outsiders people who made fun of them and harass them and we need to stick together and let's fight him if we have to but then over here in the corner was the latter that marked upward mobility and they climbed up it and then they looked back nostalgic lie on their gang days in Little Italy and of story they bought the house in Bayonne and and they're doing okay. That ladder is gone that ladder is gone if you think it's there. Then you're greatly misinformed. Housing projects where I live and work where transitional places people came for a time then they moved on because the latter was always there. Nobody's budged in 20 years. That's the kind of shape. We're in right now. That's the kind of Despair that we're talking about. If we can address that despair as a community, then this will go away two things that I think you have to believe one is human beings involved. If you believe that you won't tolerate in yourself and others this high moral distancing that keeps us from really dealing with this problem as we ought to The other thing is I hope that you have a healthy respect for the complexity of this problem. Please argue with anybody who comes up with a single Solution that's clear and right and if only we did it and they also happen to be completely wrong. It's very complex. It really requires a whole set of complex Solutions. I spoke once to the the Board of Supervisors of the County of Ventura, which is north of La they wanted some help on how to handle a burgeoning gang problem. They had of course. This is what they say to me. Stop me if you've heard this You know father we can't do everything heard that one before we have budgetary constraints. So we have to prioritize heard that one before and of course, I'm sitting there and I'm going oh, well, that's true conventional wisdom, you know how conventional wisdom sort of emasculates you for a while you kind of go. Well guess that's right. Then I said what? No, wait a minute. Go home to your family you and your wife head of Board of Supervisors of Ventura County. The two of you sit down with your kids and now say that to them kids. We can't do everything. Because of budgetary constraints we have to prioritize so help us choose. We're going to put a roof over your head or we're going to feed you. We can't do both will clothe you or will send you to school we can't do both. Those are unacceptable choices in a family. They can't be more acceptable in a community that can't be. If you put all your eggs in the prevention basket and say well these gang members are lost. I assure you in a community like mine. Those kids will always have more influence on those kids than you ever will. You got to deal with both. You got to deal with the parents. You got to hustle up jobs and convince employers to give a kid a chance. You've got to get adults who have it together to agree to be mentors knowing that a loving caring adult who pays attention is the key in your ticket out. You have to do it all I wish there was some other way around this. We have not huge nonprofit organization called project Apostle of which we have homeless shelters daycare centers alternative schools. One of the things is jobs for future and what it really is is getting employers to enter into a relationship to all say we don't have any jobs who had great create one don't give to your favorite charity create a job for one of these kids. I went went went once went to a kid who was really in trouble and I thought God what would work with you? If I got you a job, what would you love to do? And he said well, you know, I'd like to be a mechanic. I don't know anything about it. I said great. I went to my mechanic Japanese-American older fellow named Dennis. The guy who is sort of a chain smoker and never talks. I used to bring my car to him and I say Dennis there's noise in the hood under the hood and he just take these long drags on the cigarette and Nod and would never never speak but excellent mechanic just excellent. So I go to him and his secretary was a member of our Parish Carmen. I'm pleading as best. I can't Dennis you got to give this kid a job. He's a terrific kid. If you gave this kid a job, it would just make all the difference in the world. He just wants to be a mechanic and I'm going on and on I'm looking at Carmen she's giving you any one of these, you know, and I'm thinking I make no progress with him and he's just smoking. You know, finally I finished my Spiel. He takes one last drag on his cigarette and he looks at me and he says I'll teach him everything I know. I almost cried almost kissed him. That was 2 years ago. It has transformed the life of this kid little Danny from a gang called tiny voice. Absolutely changed his life, but it is absolutely changed the life of Dennis my mechanic. It's not employer-employee. It's Mentor kid. We live in The Sibling Society were kids are teaching kids how to be adults. That's disaster. There are no fathers 70% of the kids currently detained in this country have no experience of a father imagine. Do you think that might have something to do with the fact the currently detained in this country course? We need to appeal to employers to hire we need to appeal to adults who have it somewhat together to leave no child behind. I was in Portland giving some talks and I ran into this woman who lost her son and he was a gang member and he was Kind of a big gang member actually. Poor African-American woman lived in the projects received afdc. And she says this to me she goes, you know what this is about. It's about people being in pain. Who don't feel connected to each other? Then she shook her head and she goes. We gotta show up in their lives. I put I would put all my resources in that in a second. I'll take anybody on who says that doesn't work with a gang member anybody. Anybody who wants to get tougher? I'll say look at that. We have an attorney general in our state who says incarceration Works prove it and I'll shut up forever. Show me in the last 20 years where it's issued in one reversal of this trend even a momentarily stopped show me where it's worked and I'll shut up. Last year 30 billion dollar job bill was deemed too expensive. Gone Forever leaders need to say no. Wait a minute. We need to really be smart here. The crime policy in our country in our state in my state in particular is being set by victims and their families and my heart goes out to Polly klaas has father who lost a daughter that's terrible. It's just horrifying. And he shouldn't be setting policy for the State of California. I can hold both those thoughts at the same time and not feel like they're in conflict. I went to a summit meeting with the governor. And the auditorium was filled with victims and their families in high profile victims the night stalkers, you know, victim's sister and all these people Polly klaas his father and and all people talked about was this dehumanizing demonizing Monstra sizing. They're scum their evil lock Em Up throw away the key. And that's why we have three strikes and you're out in the state of California. We need to be smart on this.