Los Angeles officials unveil training academy for people trying to keep kids out of gangs

LA unveils training academy for anti-gang workers

LOS ANGELES — The nation’s first training academy for anti-gang workers was launched in Los Angeles Thursday with a $200,000 contract and high hopes.

By developing standards, curriculum and oversight for those attending the Los Angeles Gang Intervention Training Academy, the city hopes their work will be viewed more professionally.

“Although overall crime continues to drop in Los Angeles, we continue to see gang violence as one of the serious threats facing our city,” Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said at a news conference.

Los Angeles, home to over 400 gangs with 39,000 known members, spends $26 million a year on different gang intervention agencies that help negotiate cease-fires and develop anti-gang programs.

But anti-gang workers are often former gang members with different ways of doing things, there is little oversight on what they do and how they do it and there is no accountability on how money and manpower is spent, the city said.

So a national panel set out to come up with a program to train, certify and unify the anti-gang workers.

Some of the problems the city has faced with intervention groups or individuals in the past:

— The city terminated its contract with Unity T.W.O. after the group was unable to account for hundreds of millions of dollars in government money.

— The executive director of Homies Unidos was arrested on federal racketeering and conspiracy charges.

— An interventionist once praised as a model of reform was charged with robbing a well-known rapper.

Potential academy students will be subject to extensive background checks and interviews with the academy’s Professional Standards Committee. That committee will also be in charge of the interventionists’ code of conduct and administering certification interviews.