It’s the little things that hurt

On Feb. 9, I had returned to my office at the Save Our Youth (SOY) Center around 9 p.m. after a field trip to UC Irvine to see the UCI vs. UC Santa Barbara basketball game. I was in my office no more than 20 minutes answering e-mails and doing other random office chores. As I set the alarm and walked out, I was shocked to see that my office door and the outside walls had been tagged by a local gang in the 20 minutes I had been inside. I immediately called the cell phone of a gang unit officer that I communicate with on a regular basis. He was off duty, but he said he would contact the gang unit officer on-duty and they would respond as fast as they could. As I waited, I felt the usual emotions of anger and fear when your property gets vandalized.

The first thing the gang unit officer said to me as he pulled up to the scene was, “Why didn’t you call dispatch? I saw lots of potential taggers on the way over here but I couldn’t do anything about it because you did not go through the proper channels.” I replied that I needed a gang-unit officer because I knew the gang that did this. I even had a suspect in mind. Dispatch would have sent a patrol to write a report but he most likely would not have any substantive knowledge about the gang. Sadly, this is only part of the story why I didn’t call dispatch that night.

In my three years I have been the director at Save Our Youth, I have learned that I need to be carefully selective as to when I call the police. Not because of the Costa Mesa police themselves ? they have been vital partners in our mission of preventing youth violence in our lower income communities and have always conducted their work with our youth with the utmost respect and professionalism. The reason I am reluctant to call the police is that year after year, when going through the process of applying for a Community Development Block Grant (CDBG), the Costa Mesa City Council uses a “Police Incident Report” from the police department to determine whether we should receive funding. SOY has encountered this tactic from both committee members who review applications and even the council members themselves who approve the final grants.

Our address is 661 Hamilton St. We share the same address as Rea Elementary, the Boys and Girls Club, Costa Mesa Civic Playhouse, a Headstart Preschool, A Health Clinic, Language Assessment Center and soon the whole adult education program of the Newport-Mesa Unified School District. Anytime that any of us who occupy the large physical address of 661 Hamilton or our neighboring residents call the police over the course of the year to report an incident, it gets listed on SOY’s Police Incident Report. Needless to say, our Police Incident Report is long for a single address because we share such a big property and there are multiple institutions that share the premises. Opponents of SOY (and it blows my mind that every year during this process we have to defend our existence) say that this Police Incident Report proves that we attract crime. It is even inferred the youth that are members of the SOY center are committing the crimes. How they determine this from a sheet that lists only the date, address, type of incident and case number is beyond me.

Let me explain why the tagging happened in the first place. There was a kid who was trying to get out of a gang and he came to us. We often harbor these youths who made poor life decisions, usually when they are around 14 or 15 years old. They want to get out of the gang lifestyle, but they really don’t have anywhere to go. Consequentially, we get tagged by the gang that the kid belonged to. It is rare, but it does happen and it’s always a one-off event. In other words, once they have tagged, they don’t keep coming back. Call it gang etiquette. While frustrating, we don’t mind. It’s better than the kid getting severely beat up or even killed. This is one of the many functions that the SOY Center provides to your city. We will take the hit so your home, business or community doesn’t have to.

While seeking funding through the Community Development Block Grant application, we think it’s unfair that the City Council uses these Police Incident Reports as one of the factors to determine funding. I used to call the police all the time; we are partners in preventing youth violence. The grants are federal money that is funneled through the city so they can distribute it to organizations that service low income populations. The amount of money that we receive per year from CDBG on average is negligible in regards to our total operating budget, less than 2%. It is the only public funding we receive (even though our critics would like you to believe that all we do is take taxpayers money.)

I feel the CDBG application process is necessary to go through because it provides us and other local organizations with a barometer of support from the city of Costa Mesa. It is our only interface with the city (other than the community service hours we provide at their events.) It’s not even about the money. We are seeking respect and to be treated fairly in the application process. Unfortunately, that does not happen because of politically motivated tactics by certain members of City Council and members on the committee reviewing the grants.

The public service grant allocations are a small item on the council agenda, especially in this tumultuous year at the City Council, and there are many other issues that warrant more immediate attention. But the SOY Center has been kicked around and disrespected during the application process for too long. Residents of Costa Mesa should be proud of SOY and the role it has played in your community since 1993. We are not a local chapter of a larger national organization. As a community youth center; we are organic to Costa Mesa.

If you go to the City Council agenda report for today, you will see the attachment for Police Incident reports. If you compare the Police Incident report for 661 Hamilton from this year to last year’s (attachment for Council Agenda Report dated April 5, 2005 for the April 19, 2005 City Council meeting), you will see that there are fewer incidents. This is either because there has been less crime, or less crime reported. Unless the council discontinues these tactics that discourage community organizations like us from calling and working with the police, then we will never know.