Illustration by Ard Su
City partnership uses outreach to limit student gang involvement
SANTA ROSA – In December the Santa Rosa Violence Prevention Partnership and the city’s police department rang the alarms: youth as young as age 10 were showing interest in the gang lifestyle and someone needed to get through to them.
“(In 2023) there was a couple of kids that had been involved in some major assaults and stabbings,” said Danielle Garduño, manager of the Violence Prevention Partnership.
For intervention specialist Rogelio Roman, who lost his brother to gang violence in 2004, the student clashes in the last few years hit too close to home, especially after a series of gang-related fatal shootings in June left two teenage boys dead in the span of eight days.
The incidents put into focus how necessary a youth-specific gang intervention program was in Santa Rosa, Garduño said.
Thus began the Safe Campus Intervention Program, a new subsect of the city’s Violence Prevention Partnership. It focuses on creating relationships with students who may be interested in the gang lifestyle and steps in when tensions rise, hopefully preventing conflicts from happening again.
Before the program pilot in December, the City of Santa Rosa’s only intervention program was a local chapter of California Youth Outreach – a state organization geared specifically for young people who were transitioning out of incarceration.
Garduño and Roman were both involved in California Youth Outreach. When the repeated gang-related acts of violence involved teens, they connected with hopes of expanding the Partnership’s intervention services to include youth. The two interventionists modeled their tactics after California Youth Outreach groups, which not only removed children from the circumstances that led them towards gangs, but also empowered them to stay away.
Christian Hernandez, now 23, was one of those teens involved in the youth outreach programs when he first started high school in 2017.
“Middle school and the beginning of high school were some of my worst moments,” Hernandez said. “I was actually involved in all these little gangs and those days I was basically getting into trouble left and right.”
He’d grown up around gang influence in southwest Santa Rosa, where gang activity is prominent.
“It was all around me, from friends to family members,” Hernandez said. “Those programs, what they helped me do…is basically get me off the streets, get me out from hanging out with people I should not hang out with.”
Similar to the pioneering youth empowerment groups, he learned conflict resolution, what healthy relationships looked like, and how life could be outside of violent activity.
“Since they always (saw) my potential, they always gave me a place where I (could) try to work on my leadership skills,” Hernandez said. “Personally, I’ve always been about trying to help my community and helping you, that’s my main thing, because at least my end goal for myself is to be a juvenile probation officer.”
After he graduated from Piner High School in 2020, Hernandez was given the opportunity to work at West County Community Services, a Sonoma County non-profit that offers health and well-being services to kids and adults. He took – and then passed – the exam required to be an officer at juvenile hall, and is now working to finish his associate degree in the Administration of Justice.
“It was all around me, from friends to family members. Those programs, what they helped me do…is basically get me off the streets, get me out from hanging out with people I should not hang out with.”
Why some youth show interest in the gang lifestyle
“Gangs emerged in Santa Rosa during the late 1980s and early 1990s, primarily in high-density neighborhoods with access to larger numbers of impressionable juveniles,” said Santa Rosa Police Department Sergeant Travis Menke. “The gang-related issues in Santa Rosa largely stem from conflicts between northern and southern [California] Hispanic gangs.”
The Santa Rosa Violence Prevention Partnership originally launched in 2003 as the Mayor’s Gang Prevention Task Force, and up until last year, its primary focus was on adult intervention and reintegration post-gang involvement. The task force changed its name in 2015 to the Santa Rosa Violence Prevention Partnership.
“Over the years, the city has established and disbanded a dedicated gang unit multiple times,” said Menke. “This pattern reflects the cyclical nature of gang activity: enforcement measures typically lead to a reduction in disputes, but when those measures are relaxed, issues often resurface.”
There are also times when gang activity slows because of high incarceration rates when the gang unit is active. “A significant factor in this cycle is the reintegration of individuals released from prison, who frequently return to their former neighborhoods and reestablish gang affiliations and operations,” Menke added.
In 2019, the gang crimes unit was disbanded because of staffing issues, a symptom of the inconsistent effort.
This change in policing, paired with the Santa Rosa City Schools district decision to remove resource officers in the summer of 2020 amid a national reckoning with police brutality, led the problem to grow unchecked once students began in-person school again. The unit only returned in 2023 following the deaths of two 15-year-old boys who were shot and killed in separate acts over an eight-day span.
Frequent, on-campus fights were also often deemed connected to gangs; police were called to school sites to confiscate knives and other weapons; lockdowns were frequent, mostly due to students from other districts breaching campuses to fight.
Garduño cites this string of violence as the spark for the Safe Campus Intervention Program that police brought back their Gang Crimes Unit.
Those events are what “really led the partnership as a collaborative. To step back and say: ‘it’s time to reset,'” Garduño said. Through the unit they can keep track of how gang involvement overlaps with active members and youth interested in the lifestyle.
Also since Covid, there have been more – and younger – Santa Rosa youth showing interest and direct involvement in gangs. Garduno’s team has connected with kids as young as 10 in the past three years and more overall children and teens than pre-pandemic.
“You’ll see the older members utilize the younger members to carry firearms … because they’re not at risk of the same severity for punishment as an adult would be,” Menke said.
In 2021, there were only two arrests of juveniles with firearms. In 2022, that number jumped to 19. This year, so far, there have been 20 arrests. Twelve of those arrests were Hispanic juveniles.
“The considerable increase in (these arrests) is very concerning,” Menke said. He said these kinds of apprehensions are often predated by low-level crimes like tagging with graffiti, petty thefts, or misdemeanor fights akin to the ones being documented at schools in the Telegram app.
“They’re basically ‘putting in work’ for the gang to kind of validate themselves; that they can be a trusted gang member,” Menke said.
You’ll see the older members utilize the younger members to carry firearms … because they’re not at risk of the same severity for punishment as an adult would be.
What makes a student “at-risk” for violent group activity?
The factors for why local teens join gangs are nuanced. It can be because they have a desire to feel belonging within their community, to follow in the footsteps of older siblings or family members who are involved, or to use group activity as a means to contribute to their family’s economic stability.
“We find a place where we’re seen or heard, and sometimes, gangs offer that space,” Hernandez said.
YouthTruth data for Sonoma County’s high schools show a hefty drop in how students felt about belonging in their schools over the last several years. The annual survey asked students to identify if they feel welcome at their school and have collaborative relationships with their classmates. In 2020, students overall were in the 43rd percentile for this indicator. In 2021, when students returned to school after more than a year of online learning, that number fell to the 25th percentile. That has since increased to the 55th percentile.
And yet, in every year since 2020, students of color have identified as feeling less belonging and connection to their peers than their white counterparts. At 58.6%, students identifying as Hispanic represent the largest ethnic group across the entire district; 27.6% identify as white, the second largest demographic group.
Post-pandemic, the schools have introduced restorative justice specialists in an attempt to rectify the issue of school violence amid other mental health impacts for students. However, with the district’s ongoing budget crisis, it can only afford to support two specialists at each high school and one at each middle school. Currently, there are two positions unfilled at Maria Carrillo High School and Piner High School.
The team identifies three levels for crisis intervention and works with the schools and the city to categorize and structure how their team will approach students—whether it will be reactive, like after a violent incident has begun, or if it’ll be proactive like addressing a rumor that two kids are going to fight. Those low-level calls allow the team to address the root cause for students wanting to act violently, which may be directly fueled by gang interest or active involvement.
It’s the team’s main goal to pull those kids out before they come into contact with law enforcement.
It’s proven successful in the last nine months. In-house data shows the group’s ability to address violence as it occurs or, for the most part, before, through connections built with students and their school administrators.
How the Safe Campus Intervention Program works
Part of the program’s success is attributed to training intervention staff and targeted hiring, Garduño said, which ensures the staff have lived experience.
“Those who … have found a positive way to leave that lifestyle behind and move forward in their life,” Garduño said of her intervention staff. “They know what our young people are going through, and they know the challenges and the barriers that they will be facing to leaving that lifestyle behind.”
Since his brother’s death, Roman had spent 12 years working in various northern California gang prevention nonprofits, including California Youth Outreach, where he helped parents identify the signs of possible gang involvement in their students.
“For me, it’s about working with the families and helping them navigate — what it takes to navigate having their youth involved in gangs and knowing the pain and the suffering that comes with it when you lose the loved one,” he said.
Roman and the Violence Prevention Program team host family information sessions in Spanish and English for concerned parents to obtain more information. They help parents identify behaviors in their students that put them at risk, Roman said. Withdrawal from schoolwork is just one example.
The other Intervention Specialist on the team of two is Juan Flores. He grew up in the same southwest neighborhoods of Santa Rosa as Hernandez.
“I could’ve definitely gone that route … but, my story comes from how I stayed away from being involved,” Flores said. “That was through programs like Neighborhood Services that provide an opportunity for you to have recreational activities, after school programs, at a low cost.”
Flores has worked with the city’s Recreation and Parks department for 15 years, planning recreational camps and activities for low-income Santa Rosa families. When a position opened up for the budding the Violence Prevention Program, he jumped at the opportunity.
“I thought it was natural,” Flores said of the transition to the Partnership. “It was the youth that I’ve been growing up with and mentoring since they’ve been kindergartners. To be able to come in at middle school…at a high school level, where I saw that there was a need in community — it was great timing.”
It’s these connections with students, coupled with the school partnerships, that help school administrators identify an ongoing situation, and have trust in calling Roman and Flores to assess and hopefully mitigate a situation.
Those who … have found a positive way to leave that lifestyle behind and move forward in their life, they know what our young people are going through, and they know the challenges and the barriers that they will be facing to leaving that lifestyle behind.”
To do so, the team has identified three levels for crisis intervention that help schools inform them before they arrive.
The first is “basically rumor control,” Garduño said. “School staff might be hearing things … there might be a fight after school,” Garduño supposed. “They call us and say ‘Can you come engage with our students?’”
Level two is when these rumors have been substantiated. “There may have already been a couple of fights,” Garduño said. “Tensions are high on campus.”
It’s at this point that intervention staff mediate with students and prevent an incident before it occurs. The third level is direct crisis intervention.
Garduño mentioned one example of success: last spring the team received notice of a Level Three call where a middle school student was threatening another and preventing him from accessing his parents’ car after school. When the intervention team arrived at the scene, officers and administrators were already on site.
But because the student had already been in contact with crisis intervention staff, police waited to intervene and Garduño’s team was able to interact with the student, who had enough trust in them to open up about the situation and for it to be easily resolved.
“We were able to successfully remove him from that situation,” Garduño said. “No arrests were made and no one got hurt. So that was a great success for us — intervening and ensuring that our students stay safe and they don’t escalate any further in a scenario.”
It takes time to build relationships and for schools to educate themselves alongside their violence prevention programs on how to spot early signs of violence brewing.
Right off the bat, Santa Rosa schools are identifying these “rumor control” incidents, forging connections between students at-risk with Garduño’s team and therefore — hopefully — reducing the number of calls for response to crisis.
Early successes in Santa Rosa
The data from last year is promising for what’s to come, Garduño said.
She says that a high number of calls at any level is proof that schools are relying on interventionists to talk with students and address the root issue of gang interest before going to the police.
What’s even better, the high number of Level 1 calls shows that the team is often working proactively, not reactively, and hopefully stopping violence on campuses before it occurs.
Santa Rosa’s program was modeled after the San Jose Youth Empowerment Alliance, the city’s violence reduction strategy that has been active for over three decades.
“When they first started out, they were seeing much higher [Level 3 calls] when the schools were calling them, it was for those crisis response incidents,“ Garudno said of San Jose’s Program. ”Now, their numbers are reversed … they’ve got the crisis piece of it down.“
While helpful, the data isn’t how the team defines success.
Flores and Roman both recalled three students, now freshmen, who had been identified as at-risk youth during middle school.
Because of their interactions through an intervention call, the three students were funneled into a Youth Empowerment Group over the summer, hosted by Safe Campus Intervention. The weekly groups are gender-specific, with hopes of teaching identified youth about forming positive relationships, identifying strong role models and enrolling them in prosocial activities.
“Because it (can be) specific to boys and young men, it focuses on things like toxic masculinity, healthy relationships among boys and young men and how to be nonviolent leaders on campus,” Garduño said.
The summer group initiated the three strong relationships that Flores and Roman have developed. They’re proud they were able to support the adolescents over the summer and then escort them to high school in the fall. “And now they’re all playing football,” Roman said.
He and Flores helped the boys acclimate to school and complete the concussion test required for joining the team. They waited for the results from their first game of the school year, when the team broke their 25-game losing streak.
Even though the students didn’t get playing time that game, that’s not the point, Roman said.
“I know they didn’t play,” Roman said. “But they got to be around that environment.”
The credibility comes from not only the youth, but folks on campus — principals, counselors. How much they're seeing us in action, how much they are seeing us interacting with the youth and making that difference, that's the biggest piece. That way folks can actually call us when there's a need.
Working through the challenges
The two-person team on the ground is working with limited city funds, so Garduño is focused on securing grants.
She’s also waiting on word for federal funding that would allow the program to increase its capacity altogether, through hiring more intervention staff and increasing the partnerships to more Santa Rosa schools. One small success is that the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office provided funding to increase the capacity for Youth Empowerment Groups.
In total, the program has just under $400,000 in funding.
The Safe Campus Intervention team takes about 75% of the Violence Prevention Programs total funding, equating to $200,000 for the program, each year. The team also recently obtained a $21,000 grant from the Sheriff’s Office to expand the Youth Empowerment Groups in Santa Rosa middle schools.
When the original Mayor’s Gang Prevention Task Force started in 2003, then Santa Rosa residents pledged to support the program by voting for a 20-year use tax. In 2022 the initiative (now The Partnership) received another 20-year commitment in funding.
In the meantime, Flores and Roman are keeping their boots on the ground, forging relationships and trust with students. They visit campuses at lunch, during club events or sports games.
“The credibility comes from not only the youth, but folks on campus — principals, counselors,” Flores said. “How much they’re seeing us in action, how much they are seeing us interacting with the youth and making that difference, that’s the biggest piece. That way folks can actually call us when there’s a need.”
All the while, they offer opportunities out of the unhealthy lifestyle for those affected and provide alternative paths for those at-risk youth.
“At the end of the day, the (youth) all want to belong to something,” Roman said. “If we don’t give them the opportunity to belong to something positive, they’re going to find a negative outlet.”
At the end of the day, the (youth) all want to belong to something. If we don't give them the opportunity to belong to something positive, they're going to find a negative outlet.
This story is part of Agents of change: Community efforts to overcome racial inequities, an editorial series created in collaboration with Report for America, with the support from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, that highlights the efforts of local communities to address racial inequalities through grassroots approaches.
The post City partnership uses outreach to limit student gang involvement appeared first on The GroundTruth Project.
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