Al DeVos, San Benito County gang prevention coordinator, gave an accounting of gang activity and the work of the Gang Prevention Policy Committee to the board of supervisors on April 25, noting that local gang membership is holding steady and arrests for drug possession have increased significantly.
The policy committee is a partnership between the Office of Education, the Hollister School District, the City of Hollister and the county.
DeVos said the committee’s vision is to keep youth connected to their families and schools. The real concern, he said, is how to make youth and family successful, which overlaps not just gangs, but crime and even real estate values. Working at a policy level, he said the goal is to reduce crime and gang activity.
“Our guiding principles include holding people accountable and have strong systems, which means Health and Human Services, Behavioral Health Services, education systems, and having our own network to support families,” DeVos said. “The big one is investing in youth. It’s about keeping community members connected with one another and to their government.”
The committee is promoting local solutions, he said.
“We have the capacity and resources here to address a lot of our problems,” he said. “And a lot of the solutions come from within our community members and our local governments.”
Using data from the California Healthy Kids Survey, he said one of the questions asked of students is, “Do you consider yourself to be a member of a gang?” He pointed out numbers from a survey of San Benito High School students.
“Based on self-admitting, there’s usually about 6 or 7 percent more male participants than females,” he said. “In 2009, when we started compiling this data, the trend has been decreasing in gang participation for 11th-grade students. In the last couple of years, there’s been an increase of about 6 percent for males and females.”
There are many influencers for gang activity including attitudes within the community toward gang membership, charismatic gang members, and gang recruiters from out of the area, DeVos said.
“We see gang membership, as a whole, hasn’t declined,” he said. “A lot of times it reaches a peak around the eighth grade, and by the time they’re in the 11th grade the numbers are lower.”
He provided the board with gang arrest statistics from the county jail collected from 2009 to 2016, which showed there has been a significant increase in drug possessions, which are reflected in the number of arrests and what is being seen at area schools.
“What’s significant about this is some of our laws have changed where some drug offenses aren’t going to lead to arrests,” he said. “The trend is probably not truly reflected because arrests can’t be made for some of these offenses.”
As for gang members arrested for firearms and weapons possession, there has also been an increase.
“But that’s not just for gang members,” he said. “That’s a percentage of the public, which has also increased.”
DeVos showed a chart that indicated the sort of crimes for which gang members are most commonly arrested.
Thirty-five percent of arrests were for probation and parole violations.
- Approximately 27 percent were for vandalism;
- 25 percent for burglary, robbery, stolen property and theft;
- 25 percent for resisting arrest;
- 23 percent for trespassing;
- 20 percent for drugs, contributing to a minor, firearms and weapons,
- 14 percent for vehicle code violations; 8percent for sex crimes; 7percent for DUI and drunk in public; and 5 percent for murder, aggravated assault, and mayhem.
DeVos said the policy committee attempts to help families connect with one another.
“One of the tenets we have is that families have the skills and abilities to resolve a lot of the issues they have if the agencies involved help them develop those skills,” he said. “School engagement and literacy are key parts in helping youth so they will be successful in life.”
Grants through Proposition 47 can be used to promote working with schools, DeVos noted.
“The Department of Education and our local schools are working on making our teachers more engaging to the students, so when they come in they feel like they have an adult that’s working with them,” he said, adding the curriculum needs to be more than just the state standard. “It should be something they’re passionate about and they want to be there.”
He said there needs to be an effort to give youth access to fun-filled, powerful activities. He said there are a lot of sporting activities in the county, but if kids don’t begin getting involved when they’re 6 or 7 years old it’s difficult to do so by the time they’re 12 or 13.
“We’re also working on expanding re-entry programs and intervention services,” DeVos said. “There’s quite a bit going on in the Probation Department and the Community Corrections Partnership in this area.”
He said there have been life-skills building successes with the Gang Resistance and Training Program in the elementary schools that includes trained resource officers working with third- to eighth-graders.
“There’s very little discussion about what is bad about being part of a gang, but there’s a lot of discussion about how you make great decisions,” DeVos said, “and how you handle a situation if there is bullying involved. We have excellent survey results from kids who not only like it, but it’s one of the highlights of their week. They say after this class that they’re less likely to be angry with somebody in their family and they can handle things more positively.”
Developing the school resources officer program has been a long process to assure that all the officers at different schools are similarly trained and collaborate with one another, said DeVos, explaining that the lack of literacy skills is tied directly to criminal behavior, as well as earning potential.
“It ties in through the real estate market, all sorts of revenues for the city,” he said. “It starts with the youth, giving them that ability and opportunity to improve their literacy.”
DeVos told the board there are large grants through Prop. 47 that will be allocated to the schools to help decrease absenteeism and truancy, as well as increase the graduation rate. Another area he is involved with is graffiti tracking and reporting.
“As a trend, up until about eight months ago it was very quiet regarding graffiti,” he said. “But in the past eight months, we’ve had an increase in incidents of graffiti and vandalism. That’s an area we need to work on in developing our resources in removing it because one of the truisms with graffiti is, you see it, report it, remove it as quickly as possible.”
Supervisor Anthony Botelho commented that he recently noticed graffiti on the back wall of Mountain Mikes Pizza and that it was quickly cleaned up. He asked who was responsible for cleaning graffiti off buildings.
“Is it the property owners? Do we have gang members who are on probation?” he asked.
DeVos said everyone has a responsibility in cleaning up graffiti. In a city, he said people can call the non-emergency number to report it, and if it’s in the county, they can call the sheriff’s non-emergency number. He said in Hollister, code enforcement will tell the building owner that they have 72 hours to remove it or face fines. He said there is no resource in the county to clean up graffiti. Botelho asked DeVos if there needs to be a county ordinance to address graffiti. DeVos answered that there is already an ordinance that dictates property owners are responsible for cleaning up graffiti on their buildings.
“If it’s on a guardrail or bridge that the county owns, then there’s a question on how to get it removed,” he said.
Ray Espinosa, county administrative officer, commented that Supervisor Robert Rivas had reported the graffiti on Mountain Mikes and Public Works had cleaned it up. Rivas asked if there was any funding that would continue to address bullying in the schools. DeVos said there were studies of the suspension and expulsion rates.
“Intervention is all about positive behavior and support, and how you don’t just punish them, but how do you help them develop positive behavior,” DeVos said.
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