Gang worker wounded in the body but not in his heart
Shot and partially paralyzed while protecting an at-risk youth, Calvin Hodges has only one objective: restoring peace to Nickerson Gardens.
By Scott Gold and Joel Rubin
February 5, 2010
Calvin Hodges insists he is not angry at the men who shot him.
"I'm angry at the mind-set," Hodges said on a recent afternoon in Nickerson Gardens, the Watts public housing complex where he grew up, and nearly died.
At 35, he's seen it from all sides now during a journey that has taken him from repeated run-ins with the police to being praised by them as a hero.
In the three months since Hodges was shot, leaving him partly paralyzed, he has become an emblem of all that is risky about the city's campaign to interlace traditional policing with gang intervention and street outreach. And if the authorities' suspicions are right -- that a deadly wave of violence followed Hodges' shooting because he was in the hospital, unavailable to keep the peace -- he will become an emblem, too, of why City Hall believes that risk is worth it.
Within weeks of Hodges' shooting, Nickerson Gardens degenerated into a terrible spiral of violence after several years of relative calm. At least five men have been shot to death in the area since Nov. 22; police believe the killings are linked to a dispute within the Bounty Hunters, Nickerson's dominant gang.
read more here
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-hodges5-2010feb05,0,18294.story
Showing posts with label LA gangs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label LA gangs. Show all posts
Friday, February 5, 2010
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Without preaching, a pastor's Christian militia reaches out to gangs
Without preaching, a pastor's Christian militia reaches out to gangs
Dana Parsons
September 23, 2008
My Rolodex is sprinkled with names of people from the 1990s who wanted to do something about the gang problem in Santa Ana. One was a former F Troop gang member, another was a mother of a gangbanger, another a community activist. I couldn't track down any of them Monday; none of the old phone numbers worked.
But there are new people to talk to.
One of them is Kevin Brown, a former Santa Ana cop and now the pastor of Side-By-Side Church International in Irvine.
If it seems that Brown, 52, is merely the latest in a long line of people tilting at windmills, he disagrees.
The way he sees it, nobody has ever tried it the way he and some like-minded Christians are doing it.
Like walking up to a group of 15 or so gang members on a Santa Ana street at 9 o'clock on a Saturday night. And then telling them that they are loved and their lives are worth saving. And then spending 30 to 45 minutes with them, telling them that one bad decision can send them to prison for years. And then coming back a second Saturday night and a third.
That, Brown says, is how you reach them.
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Dana Parsons
September 23, 2008
My Rolodex is sprinkled with names of people from the 1990s who wanted to do something about the gang problem in Santa Ana. One was a former F Troop gang member, another was a mother of a gangbanger, another a community activist. I couldn't track down any of them Monday; none of the old phone numbers worked.
But there are new people to talk to.
One of them is Kevin Brown, a former Santa Ana cop and now the pastor of Side-By-Side Church International in Irvine.
If it seems that Brown, 52, is merely the latest in a long line of people tilting at windmills, he disagrees.
The way he sees it, nobody has ever tried it the way he and some like-minded Christians are doing it.
Like walking up to a group of 15 or so gang members on a Santa Ana street at 9 o'clock on a Saturday night. And then telling them that they are loved and their lives are worth saving. And then spending 30 to 45 minutes with them, telling them that one bad decision can send them to prison for years. And then coming back a second Saturday night and a third.
That, Brown says, is how you reach them.
click post title for more
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