City to spend $6 million on youth gang violence prevention
Sep. 4—Local school districts, nonprofits and community-based organizations will join forces with city government and its police department to reduce gang violence by targeting its root causes through spending millions over the next three years.
The city of Bakersfield received a $3.1 million grant from the Board of State and Community Corrections in July and authorized the use of the funds at Wednesday's City Council meeting in a 6-0 vote, with Councilman Bruce Freeman absent. The city will match these funds, which are expected to last until December 2025, for a total of $6.2 million.
"We are a very active city and we are addressing the issues that we are seeing," Councilwoman Patty Gray said at Wednesday's meeting.
This round of funding is an expansion of the same grant the city received two years ago. That money led to homicides decreasing by 30 percent this past year, City Manager Christian Clegg said. City staff said the same work will be completed by their partners for the next three years.
Local organizations will focus their efforts on an even younger cohort.
"I think we can make even a greater impact with all of us together," said Xenia King, the founder of Mothers Against Gang Violence, a partner agency.
'Our streets aren't the same no more'
Welsey Davis, the founder of the Wendale Davis Foundation, has noticed an alarming trend in his work.
His outreach workers, raised in southeast Bakersfield, see younger kids getting involved in violence and gangs. Davis was part of the city's initial round of funding, and has again contracted with the city until 2025. He founded his organization after his son died in a 2006 shooting by an unknown person, and aims to reduce gang violence through his outreach workers.
Other involved organizations include Compassion Christian Centers, Stay Focused Ministries, the Henrietta Weill Memorial Child Guidance Clinic & Adult Behavioral Health, and the Community Action Partnership of Kern. These organizations will get referrals about those at risk of gang violence from the Bakersfield Police Department.
Davis said their first step when seeing a shooting is to prevent retaliation. His workers — whose ages range from their mid-30s to their mid-to-late 60s — often know victims' families. They will work with the family and offer a litany of resources, such as paying for funeral costs, setting up vigils and connecting with a minister to obtain services for free.
But Davis said their work needs to begin before someone decides to pick up a gun.
Children at risk need to be identified by schools by the second or third grade because their lives could take a turn for the worse once they get older. A child raised by their grandmother, listening to music laced with expletives and guns while flashing gang signs, for example, needs to be singled out by school staff as an at-risk person. And people like Davis need to be called, he said.
"That 6-, 7-year-old kid, just in a matter of a few years, almost gets to a place of no return," Davis said. "I am talking 9, 10, 11, 12 years old."
It's almost a form of abuse for that child to only know that toxic environment, he added.
And schools are seeing an increase of children bringing guns and knives to campus, said those with community-based organizations. They don't fight with their fists — it's with knives and guns.
"Our streets aren't the same no more," said Mercedes Mayers, a project manager with Stay Focused Ministries. He's in the grant program and supervises youth on probation. "There's no more rules in the street."
The Kern County Superintendent of Schools wrote a letter in support of the grant and will provide Stay Focused Ministries space to conduct their work by making at-risk student referrals to them, Salvador Arias, the principal at one of KCSOS' community schools, wrote in an email. Community schools serve students who have been expelled from their school districts and minors on probation.
"There are only a few community schools in Bakersfield and we receive referrals from all areas of Bakersfield and Kern County, which causes a mixture of gangs," Arias added.
Often, these children may come from broken homes, experts said. They don't have parents who are around much, or they are incarcerated.
It's why filling in that gap is part of the work to be done, Mayers added.
Outreach workers will take them everywhere, she said — to sporting events, McMurtrey Aquatic Center, museums, restaurants, John's Incredible Pizza. She has noticed when kids remain idle, there is a higher chance they will get involved in unsafe lifestyles.
"Some of them have never been outside of Bakersfield ... some of them have never been to a restaurant in their life," Mayers said. "For them to have that experience ... like it was something new. They craved it. They were excited. They talked about it for weeks."
These kids just need one person to believe in them, she said. If they have any setbacks, they don't need an adult to abandon them. Mentors will keep track of their peers, surroundings and influences, she said.
"This one is really the prevention piece," Mayers said.
Ishani Desai can be reached at 661-395-7417. Follow her on Twitter: @_ishanidesai.
