On May 26, three men were shot as they sat on a bench in Northgate Park. One was fatally shot in the head; the other two were shot multiple times but neither suffered life-threatening injuries. The story made nightly news and was the front page headline the next day in the Statesman Journal, staying there for three days.

A candlelight vigil for the victim, Montez Bailey, was held in the park two days after the shooting.

The shooter was identified as Lorenzo Garcia Ceja, 17, five-foot four, one hundred pounds. A SWAT team raid of his family's home turned up no clues to his whereabouts. As of this printing, he remains at large.

The murder of Montez Bailey is the first in the Northgate Park area in four years. At the corner of Williams and Stortz Avenues on September 23, 2005, Juan Carlos “Happy” Gabriel was stabbed to death.

Then as now, there have been claims that, like Gabriel, Bailey had no gang ties, that he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Bailey’s mother, Kathy, was quoted as saying that the shooter said, “this is the south side.” The three on the bench corrected him, “this is the north side,” and reportedly laughed at him.

“When they laughed,” Kathy said, “he pulled out the gun and shot them.”

The exchange was a variation of “Where’re you from?” It’s the question that gang members ask others, maybe rival gang members, or in some cases, just unlucky unaffiliated kids, in the wrong place at the wrong time. There is no right answer. The question alone can be viewed as a threat.

In the days after the shooting, the Statesman Journal used banner headlines regarding the case followup. In a place like Salem, gangs tend to receive an all-or-nothing treatment. In Los Angeles, the daily paper would barely have noted the incident. Gang crime is most frequently brown-on-brown or brown-on-black, centered in impoverished neighborhoods.

There is an apathy toward gang activity among the city’s influences that is pervasive, allowing most gang violence to continue and flourish under the radar. Some may think that gangs are not the problem of Beverly Hills or South Salem — that it neither affects them nor do they pay the price.

However, tax dollars that fund the police and prisons are paid by rich and poor alike.

Prevention and Intervention Cost Less

In the three-pronged attack of prevention, intervention and suppression on gang influence and crime, it is the latter that gets the most funding, from the federal government on down.

Salem’s current budget allots $31.5 million for police administration, investigation, patrol and support, about a third of the general budget. Less than $1.5 million allotted for neighborhood and community services – most of which provides staffing.

Statistically, prevention and intervention cost less. Janice Hahn, a Los Angeles City councilwoman, is fond of reminding her fellow council members that incarcerating a kid costs $90,000 a year vs. $1200-$1300 to enroll the same kid in a prevention/intervention program.

As a member of the council’s Ad Hoc Committee on Gang Violence and Youth Development, Ms. Hahn testified that she became worried for the safety of younger and younger kids in her district. The need to get twelve- and thirteen-year-olds into prevention programs evolved into aiming the programs at eight- to ten-year-olds. Indeed, Salem’s profile of gang involvement has expanded down from 12-22 to include 10-year-olds.

In Salem, Sergeant Doug Carpenter, who heads up the Gang Enforcement Team, doesn’t see a lot of intervention going on.

“Funding for prevention [programs] is sorely lacking,” he said.

There is no prevention here. That may sound glib, but not when Cheryl Page, Prevention Program Associate for Salem-Keizer Public Schools, said that there are no gang prevention programs in place.

Salem has, in her words, “universal prevention” — a term Page defines as teaching “development skills, empathy and anger management.”

“It can’t be taught with a manual," Page said. “There is no one-size-fits-all approach.”

There is no proven gang prevention program. Universal prevention, on the other hand, is implemented to combat a variety of behaviors including bullying, anger and substance abuse.

Bullying is one of the reasons that Levi Herrera, director of Mano a Mano, gives as to why kids join gangs. But the main reason, Herrera contends, is for respect.

“Fear is respect,” he said.

For proof, look no further than the local, state and federal government responses to gang violence. It is a vicious cycle. The press coverage increases every time there is gang activity, which brings on the public outcry and the resulting police clampdown, as was seen when the SWAT team raided Ceja’s family home.

Many communities around the country have put intervention programs into place. By and large, they are all underfunded. Multnomah County placed a gang intervention program into effect in 2006, budgeting $172,566 to it, most of which went to personnel. Without knowing the extent of their problem prior to its implementation, the county claims a 50 percent decrease in victims experiencing fear of violence.

Salem has a number of private nonprofit programs offering intervention: The Catarina Cavalos Center, Youth Impact and Mano a Mano/Latinos Unidos Siempre. All operate on a limited basis with shoestring budgets. Mano a Mano can only work with 25 youths at a time, about 100 each year.

The Woodburn Example

Nearby Woodburn has had to deal with not only a constant problem with drugs, from marijuana to meth, but also a longstanding gang presence. In fact, the Salem Police Department trace a considerable amount of the city’s gang crime to the “OG,” Original Gangstas, of Woodburn.

Assault and robberies have tracked above average for the last five years, as has the unemployment rate. City officials turned over most of their gang-related programs to federal authorities. A strategic program with the odd title of Operation Weed & Seed, coming out of the Department of Justice’s Office of Justice, is in place in Woodburn.

Headed up by Michele Roberts, Operation Weed & Seed is “a multi-agency approach to law enforcement, crime prevention and community revitalization.” The program’s mission is to “weed out” violent crime, gang activity, drug use and drug trafficking, while “seeding” the area with a variety of social and economic revitalization activities.

However, the brunt of the program is aimed at suppression techniques and brings the federal program together with local law enforcement.

Unless suppressive techniques are strategic and in Levi Herrera’s words, “culturally confident,” they are designed to fail. Locking up offenders guarantees their exposure to the hardcore essence of gangs, ensuring they will be released harder and more resolute in gang life, he said.

Part of the Weed & Seed program is aimed at education, gang and drug education and high school completion. The federal program is in place through the funding of what is known as a 21st Century Grant from the Department of Education, established in 2006 to assist “high-poverty and low-performing schools.” The grant will expire soon and the City of Woodburn does not have its own funds to continue it.

Gangs as an Epidemic

There are some experts in the field that see gang violence as more than criminal activity. They approach it as a public health issue.

Chicago epidemiologist Gary Slutkin started a program called Ceasefire Chicago in an effort to reduce the level of violent crimes. Within three years, there was a significant drop in shootings and killings in “ceasefire zones,” a 100 percent reduction of retaliation murders, and a positive effect on neighborhood safety.

Connie Rice, of the Advancement Project, an organization with new ways of seeking to dismantle structural barriers to inclusion, secure racial equity, and expand opportunity for all, conducted an 18-month assessment of the City of Los Angeles' anti-gang programs and drew the blueprint to reduce gang violence through a comprehensive strategy, balancing suppression and prevention. Her recommendations included coordinating the disparate prevention and intervention programs into a cohesive effort. She stressed involvement of parents, clergy and the school department.

Rice’s assessments and recommendations were tersely echoed by John VanDreal, who heads up the Threat Assessment program for the Salem-Keizer School System: “Keep them busy.”

Van Dreal is the psychologist for Salem-Keizer Public Schools and has been instrumental in creating and formulating the student threat assessment system that, among other components, stresses “shared ownership, shared responsibility and decreased liability” among community agencies.

The system recommends strategies that help decrease risk appropriate to specific situations, neither over-reactive nor avoidant. While the program was not created specifically for gang reduction, its principles and approach are certainly applicable.

“With the right resources some kids will grow out of the gang mind-set," VanDreal said. "If there is something valuable [to the kids] they will get out of a gang.”

Organizing team sports and offering comprehensive after-school programs as well as hiring and keeping the best teachers for the most challenging kids is a place to start, according "Rice Report."

The Advancement Project’s recommendations for intervention include creating a permanent Gang Intervention Strategy Board and developing qualification and training requirements for gang intervention workers, among other proposals.

If, as Levi Herrera said, Salem is “about twenty years behind L.A.,” then we have twenty years of research, studies, proposals and programs to learn from.

One of the most cost-effective ways for Salem to reduce gang activity is to make use of the proven tactics originating from cities that have dealt with gang violence before, but it requires a change in mindset.

Admitting there is a gang problem is the first step; choosing not to go it alone is the next.