MAILBAG:

Gang activity appears to be up everywhere. Costa Mesa isn’t the exception.

While a majority in the local government have focused almost entirely on enforcement to knock down criminal activity, street gangs have gradually increased their domain in some areas of Costa Mesa.

Unfortunately, kids in low-income neighborhoods, particularly teenagers and young adults, have been paying the price for lack of prevention and intervention programs. The situation gets worse when families are going through painful economic hardships or when they have dysfunctional status.

High levels of gang activity aren’t new in Costa Mesa. According to the Costa Mesa Police Department, gangs proliferated in the early 1990s. It is considered to be one of the most violent periods in Costa Mesa history.

In 1990 the city recorded 780 violent crimes, 572 aggravated assaults, 1,007 motor-vehicle thefts and six cases of murder and non-negligent manslaughter. Eight people were killed in 1992, the city’s highest ever.

It took a collective effort of community organizers, the police and nonprofit groups to get gang-plagued neighborhoods back on healthy grounds. For the most part, elected officials only watched them rolling up their sleeves and work.

A man who stood out among the many civic organizers was Roy Alvarado. His life was as dramatic as a Latin American Telenovela. He was a former gang member, an alcoholic and a drug addict. Eventually the legal system caught up with him, and he served jail time in San Quentin and Chino for selling drugs, snorting cocaine and other charges.

Later, however, Alvarado changed his bad habits and helped the youth in Costa Mesa avoid getting pulled into the cycle of gang violence.

Today, very few people in this city remember Alvarado. He was a unique man, a social fighter, someone who advised kids in the Westside to stay in school and helped them move to constructive jobs and careers.

Alvarado understood that education and mentoring programs could be effective instruments in getting kids out of the culture of gangs and criminal activities. He spent many years building up social networks and institutions at school and in neighborhoods.

Since gang violence affected both local neighborhoods and schools, he thought prevention programs should start at both ends. Alvarado believed that a mentoring program for high-risk kids should be put together at both educational institutions and community organizations.

To that end, he spearheaded the creation of Save Our Youth and Madres Costa Mesa. Both of them worked shoulder-to-shoulder to stop Westside teenagers from being pulled into gang organizations. In addition, he worked as a gang counselor for the Newport-Mesa Unified School District.

Although streets gangs and criminal activity did not disappear altogether from the Westside, their power weakened largely as a result of a partnership between community organizations and the local police.

In other words, it took enforcement, prevention and intervention programs to get some imperiled neighborhoods in Costa Mesa back to normal.

Thus, it isn’t too late yet for our elected officials to look at our recent history and find ways to act together with community-based groups to stop the maladies of organized crime and gangs. Our children desperately need their input. Enforcement alone won’t stop the cycle of gang violence.

Humberto Caspa

Costa Mesa