Since not even the most brilliant legal minds in the United States have yet thought up an effective way to deter what quaintly are called “at-risk” kids from drifting into gangs, the new City Attorney of Los Angeles decided to take a swing yesterday.
Will his plan work?
[img]596|left|||no_popup[/img]
New City Attorney Carmen Trutanich with two of his best new friends
Here is a clue.
If you remember any seminal incidents in your life between the ages of 9 and 15, that may tell you the kind of imprint the meeting will leave on the newest round of at-risk boys.
Carmen Trutanich is a big bluff man.
A few weeks ago, he defeated the stunningly unpopular, unlikable Jack Weiss in the race for term-limited Rocky Delgadillo’s office.
Mr. Weiss was almost a bigger favorite than President Obama was last November. Better funded, Mr. Weiss also was armed with a higher much profile, which turned out to be a problem.
In the gritty tradition of the hard-nosed San Pedro docks’ neighborhoods that spawned him, Mr. Trutanich, a bear of a man, spanked the previously confident City Councilman.
Yesterday on the eighth floor of City Hall, where both he and his office had been polished and waxed for a special occasion, Mr. Trutanich playfully posed for a battery of pictures with 10 boys who seemed thrilled to be there.
Far from their much grayer home environment.
Ten boys between the ages of 9 and 15.
Green Power
Their smart kelly-green tee-shirts may have suggested they were from anywhere ordinary.
Not so.
Actually, they are likely growing up grimly. That is because they live in the bleak Mar Vista Gardens Housing Project, adjacent to Culver City.
At least by reputation, their neighborhood — Inglewood Boulevard, south of Braddock Drive — has been infested for years with gangbangers. So prolific are these lethal lads that drivers virtually have to honk to shoo them out of the way.
With the aid of a little publicized non-profit, Positive Alternative Choices Today, Pact — at www.pactla.org — and the enthusiasm/commitment of their newest friend, a new officeholder with huge muscle, these boys and their Mar Vista Gardens peers will somehow summon the fortitude to defeat the temptation, or ward off the frightening threats, to join a gang.
Mr. Trutanich convened the late-morning session to fulfill a campaign pledge.
Twice during the campaign, he visited the Pact headquarters at 12421 Venice Blvd.
Bill Ewald, chairman and CEO of the 15-year-old group, and Pamela Bumgardner, two of Pact’s main faces, deduced immediately the candidate was serious about aiding them because he sure was not going to attract many votes in that building.
Mr. Ewald explained that the present group is part of Pact’s Work Ethics program that works like this:
whom they quickly point out has been fingerprinted, the boys travel door-to-door around the Westside selling short-term newspaper subscriptions.
The goal in every endeavor, of course, is to show these boys there are two dimensions to life they can choose:
Seamy or sunny.
Mr. Ewald estimates more than a thousand boys have circled away from gangs since 1994 as they develop working skills that help them now and in the future.
The City Attorney did not want to place too stern of a sheen on their casual get-together.
“More social than anything else,” he said. “But when I was at the Pact offices during the campaign, we had a discussion about growing up, taking responsibility, going to school, becoming contributing members of society and how you go about doing that.
“We had a pretty frank discussion.”
“Yes, very frank,” agreed a woman in the background.
Still, yesterday’s meeting was not just a frothy fling, the City Attorney said.
On the boys’ first outing to a building so large and important, Mr. Trutanich wanted them to return home knowing that “they are at the top of the legal profession in the city of Los Angeles when they are here.
“There is no reason for them not to accede to this level. Just because you come from a difficult station in life, that does not place limits on what you can accede to.”
