Chattanooga Pulse

Think of it as a cancer. Treat it before it spreads too far—and you have a chance to eradicate it. Ignore it, pretend it doesn’t exist—and it will poison your system.

Gangs in Chattanooga are like a cancer, and we are at a critical treatment point. Continue to act as though they are “not really a problem”, slap simplistic platitudes on the situation, such as “parents need to take responsibility,” and in five or 10 years, the city might well find itself realizing the disease is out of control.

Or, as Michael Cranford, president of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Chattanooga puts it, “We may be thinking of these as the good old days.”

Where we are—and why

For years, Chattanooga simply denied gangs existed here. Bloods, Crips, Vice Lords—they were in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago—but not here. However, it is now openly acknowledged that at least 30 gang-affiliated groups operate in the city, although, as Sgt. Todd Royval of the police department’s Crime Suppression Unit points out, some of these groups consist of “three to four people” and might more accurately be described as “gang wannabees”. Some, however, are much larger, organized, and have ties to both regional and national gang networks. It was these ties that led to state and federal involvement in the June 9 indictments of 47 people, all with known or suspected gang affiliations.

Yet despite these arrests, and possibly partly because of them, nine shootings have occurred since then, almost undoubtedly gang-related, several involving young teens, including the shooting death of 15-year-old Alonzo O’Kelley Jr. by a CHA officer, currently being investigated by the NAACP.

Sgt. Royval notes that Chattanooga police officers now have a 10-point scale for identifying gang members, including associating with known gang members, wearing gang insignia (including colors), tattoos, etc. “We go to place where we get complaints, where there is a lot of graffiti, people hanging out,” he says. But as other cities’ police forces have discovered, neighbors are reluctant to come forward, fearing retaliation, he says. So as soon as the police car rounds the corner, gang members reclaim their turf.

“Ha! Let them keep killing each other. Nothing but a waste of space,” posted one local on a news site’s coverage of the violence. National gang experts, however, point out that the root causes of gang formation—poverty, racism, drugs, unemployment, high drop-out rates—the same factors that have led to the highest incarceration rate of African American males in U.S. history—cannot be solved with police busts, no matter how efficient. According to 2007 Bureau of Justice statistics: “Based on the current rate of first incarceration, an estimated 32 percent of black males will enter either State or Federal prison during their lifetime.”

Dr. Alejandro del Carmen is a professor and chair of the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Texas at Arlington and author of Racial Profiling in America (2008). He conducted a study of 200 active gang members in Fort Worth, Texas, and describes many young people’s involvement with gangs as “an evolution. The journey to and from school becomes a main source of contact.” In his study, conducted in conjunction with the Fort Worth Boys & Girls Clubs, “both parents were not at home. The father may be gone permanently, and the single mother is working multiple jobs.” If there is a history of gang involvement in the family, odds increase exponentially that the young person will become involved. In Dr. del Carmen’s research, kids as young as 9—or younger—were already at risk.

Chattanooga Boys & Girls Clubs’ Michael Cranford agrees. “Ninety percent of the at-risk kids we see come from single-female heads of household families. Kids join gangs because there is safety in numbers, because it is part of something they belong to.” Despite the negative implications, [gang membership] gives them a feeling of competence, a sense of power, and a sense of influence over others, he says—the same qualities the Boys & Girls Clubs strive to provide in a positive sense.

What’s being done

In 2005, Mayor Ron Littlefield created the position of director of faith-based and community partnerships, operating within the mayor’s office, and designed, according to current director Al Chapman, to improve relationships with religious organizations and nonprofits working to improve the community. As part of this program, the city provides grants to organizations such as Girls, Inc., Reach One Youth Outreach, Stop the Madness, and a number of neighborhood-based projects that are working to reach at-risk kids, including programs at churches such as Olivet Baptist and Church of the First Born.

In a recent development, Chapman notes, Signal Centers of Chattanooga secured $320,000 in federal stimulus funds that will be used to fund projects such as its Young Adult Enrichment Program. At the end of June, he adds, Hamilton Country

Commissioner Greg Beck secured $55,000 in county funding that will be used to help fund the partners. “Our effort is focused on kids who are in the middle, who haven’t decided to join gangs,” he says. He praises “local heroes”, such as 70-year-old grandmother Charlotte Battle of Greenwood Terrace, who started her own program to help kids in her high-crime, low-income neighborhood, Jessica Lawrence in East Lake, Ronnie Hill on the Westside, and Tasha Walton in Cromwell, all of whom are receiving grants.

But looking at the budget figures obtained by The Pulse, prior to the one-time amounts listed above being added, a total of only $66,580.62 had been approved by the city for the 19 religious and nonprofit organizations listed. Deduct the listed projected administrative costs, and the total becomes $59,080.62.

Chapman points out that other city departments, such as Parks & Recreation and Public Works also provide youth programs, and in some cases, internships. The Arts, Education & Culture department’s programs include Unity in the Community, Unbroken, and Remember the Dream.

Yet even with these programs, in Chattanooga at this time, the burden of intervention and prevention falls primarily on the shoulders of private institutions. And these institutions struggle with finding the funding needed merely to sustain, never mind expand, their efforts.

Richard Bennett is executive director of A Better Tomorrow, headquartered on Highway 58, which received $1,000 of city money this year. Bennett is a soft-spoken, burly man, a former drug dealer who spent time in prison. Now a minister, he created A Better Tomorrow to help kids who are where he once was. “My father left my life early and did not pay child support,” he says. “I couldn’t read a lick when I graduated from high school. I did not know who I was.” The lure of selling crack cocaine, of big money—“At one time, I had $180,000 in the house”—proved irresistible. Now, having turned his own life around, he works with kids in schools such as Washington Alternative School, Howard High and Brainerd High. Bennett recruits mentors to work with the kids, teaching them life, decision- and goal-setting skills.

Graduates of the eight-week “Destiny/Life Choices” program receive a certificate stating they have “made the decision to be responsible for his/her choices, made the decision to be an individual, unique and special, made the decision to believe all things are possible.” Each graduate lists on the certificate three short-term and five long-term goals.

Credibility looms large with at-risk kids, Bennett emphasizes. “Children can sense insincerity in a second.” He admits that some of those who volunteer for his program, when confronted with the scope of the problem, walk back out the door and never return.

“But my passion is for those kids that people don’t want. The collateral damage,” he says. Somewhat wistfully, he adds that A Better Tomorrow could help many more kids if additional funds were available.

A restored Victorian on Lindsay Street houses the headquarters of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Chattanooga. Sitting down with President Michael Cranford and Executive Vice President Debra Gray, we learn that the four club locations are serving as many as 250-275 kids each per day this summer, a large increase over last year. Summer membership is only $10. For that, kids have access to group activities, a leadership program, a summer jobs program. During the school year, the membership fee drops to $3, and kids can access computers at all the centers, find mentoring help, and aid in filling out college applications. Older kids in the leadership program mentor and tutor the younger ones.

The goals of the “Youth Development Strategy” are listed as: “A sense of competence…the feeling there is something they can do well. A sense of usefulness..the opportunity to do something of value for other people. A sense of belonging…a setting where the individual knows he has a place where he fits and is accepted. A sense of power or influence…a chance to be heard and to influence decisions.”

Between school year and summer programs, “We’re reaching about 3,000 kids, ages 6 to 18,” says Cranford. But, he estimates, there are at least 9,000 kids living at or below the poverty line in Chattanooga and the clubs cannot reach them all.

What must be done

Dr. Tod Burke, a former police officer and a criminal justice professor at Radford University in Virginia, has written a number of papers on gang-related issues. He notes that a three-pronged approach is essential for communities serious about tackling gang proliferation: prevention, intervention and enforcement.

“There need to be community-awareness programs, not designed to panic people, but to acknowledge that there is a gang problem. There need to be gang-resistance programs for pre-teens, and education presenting the justice system in a positive light. After-school, in-school, and counseling programs are also essential,” he says.

All sources interviewed pointed to stemming the dropout rate and improving educational opportunities as key. “Fifty percent of African American males do not graduate from high school in this county,” says Cranford. “How many kids are going to pay the price for that?” asks Debra Gray.

“Improving educational opportunity is the classic way to increase mobility. A society with a weak education system will, by definition, be one in which the advantages of class or family background loom large. We need to ensure that children from less advantaged backgrounds have the same educational opportunities as those whose parents can afford to enroll them in nursery school at an early age, live in a high-priced neighborhood with good schools, and send their children to college.”
—“The Future of Children: Opportunity in America”, a Brookings Institute policy brief

After-school and evening activities for kids with working parents are also vital, giving them a supervised place to go, and role models to look up to. “The Police Athletic League sponsors midnight basketball in a number of cities,” Burke notes.
Jobs, even temporary ones, and internships, provided in both public and private sectors help give kids both a sense of self-esteem and some income.

In the “enforcement” sector, Burke points to successes in community-based policing, and “gang.net”, a software program that helps track gang members. Chattanooga’s Sgt. Royval mentions the G.R.E.A.T. program, similar to D.A.R.E. Its initials stand for “Gang Resistance Education and Training”, and it targets 5th through 8th-grade students.

“A city needs to develop a strategy,” says Burke, noting that cities such as Durham, NC, have in fact made progress in keeping kids out of gangs.

Michael Cranford urges that more private/public partnerships be formed, citing the success of the Boys & Girls Clubs arrangement with the city’s Alton Park recreation center. “The city had just built this beautiful facility, and we had the kids,” he says.

Chattanooga prides itself on the re-making of the city from the old, dirty days. Do we have the will to turn that spirit to the saving of at-risk kids? Can someone more privileged learn to see the cute, chubby little boy waving at them from a cart in the supermarket as the same child who might be dying in the street 12 years later? It’s our challenge, Chattanooga. How will we answer it?

Realizing the Dream

Devon Johnson (not his real name) is a slender 16-year-old with long eyelashes. He speaks with quiet confidence, his responses to questions peppered with “yes, ma’am” and “no, ma’am.”

Devon, by his own account, has friends who have been drawn into the gang life. “They didn’t have enough positive things around them,” he says.

He credits his 10-year involvement with the Boys Club as a major factor in his choosing to take a different path. He became aware of gangs at around age 10, he says, but has focused on finishing school and going to college.

He knows exactly what he’d like to become, which, to protect his identity, we will not reveal.

After our conversation, he leaves us a track of music, recorded in his house. “I’ll be the first in my family to go to college,” he sings. The name of the track is “The Dream.”

Resources for involvement

If you own a company, run a program, or are a private individual who would like to help the organizations mentioned, can offer jobs or internships, mentor, or offer other services, contact:

• Al Chapman
Director of faith-based and community partnerships,
City of Chattanooga:
(423) 425-7816.
www.chattanooga.gov

• Debra Gray,
Executive vice president,
Boys & Girls Clubs of Chattanooga.
(423) 266-6131.
www.bgccha.org

• Richard Bennett,
Executive director,
A Better Tomorrow:
(423) 227-2849.
www.abettertomorrowinc.org