By CARLOS VILLATORO
Register Staff Writer | Posted: Sunday, June 20, 2010 12:00 am
A 20-year-old gang member wanders onto the campus of Harvest
Middle School up to no good. He attempts to climb onto the school’s
rooftop. He wants to impress the younger kids who are following
him.
The school is closed; the administration has gone home. The only
thing standing in the way of this gang recruiter is a short, white
guy — Travis Newton, who runs the Boys & Girls Club of Napa’s
after-school programs at Harvest.
Spying the roof climber, Newton gets in his face. The intruder
backs down. He denies doing anything wrong. Newton gives him a
warning before going back to his kids.
The warning doesn’t take.
A short time later, “One of my kids runs back into the classroom
and says ‘Travis, I just saw that guy come out of the girls’
bathroom,” Newton said later.
It’s on.
Newton finds the gang recruiter hanging with the same middle school
students. Like a sheepdog protecting his flock, he goes on the
offensive.
“What are you doing in the girls’ bathroom?” he demands. “Hang out
with kids your own age.”
Newton and the recruiter get in each other’s face and begin
arguing. The troublemaker backs down.
“He eventually left, in a typical wimp way ... like a little
Chihuahua barking,” Newton recounted later.
A self-professed fan of law enforcement, Newton said he won a
small victory that afternoon in his battle against gang members who
would seduce neighborhood teenagers.
Until a few months ago, Newton taught after-school classes at
Harvest that focused on health and fitness, math and community
service. As his awareness of the gang threat grew, he wanted to do
more.
During his campus patrols, he had confronted gang members,
witnessed fights between rivals and seen the bruised face of a
student moments after being jumped into a gang.
Gang recruiters begin targeting potential members as early as
elementary school, Newton said. By the time a child leaves middle
school, they will have made a decision to either join or stay
away.
Early this spring, Newton launched the Boys & Girls Club’s gang
prevention program. He got help from Vanessa Luna, a gang violence
suppression education coordinator for the Napa County Office of
Education.
He learned what gang members wear, their hand signs and the
behaviors to watch for in at-risk kids.
As he sees it, his after-school campus job is similar to another of
his activities: wrestling coach for the Napa County Sheriff’s
Activities League. In wrestling, if you lose focus, you get
pinned.
The kids in Newton’s gang prevention program aren’t gang members,
but they easily could be. Many of them know someone in a gang, are
friends with gang members or have been asked to join.
The gangs seduce the children by offering them a twisted sense of
family, Newton says. They know that some of the students lack a
family structure at home.
On a muggy day in mid-May, Newton picked up a few pizzas from
Little Caesars, then wandered throughout the Harvest campus
inviting people to eat. The pizzas attracted 13 youngsters in
addition to the five or so students who are enrolled in his
anti-gang program.
One of the visitors had recently been “jumped,” or initiated, into
a gang, Newton said.
Newton showed a film, “Nuestra Familia, Our Family,” about the
perils of gang life. Halfway through, he turned the lights
on.
Danny Reyes, who helps Newton run the program, asked, “Has anyone
in this group been asked to join a gang?”
Smirks spread across students’ faces. They nervously looked at each
other, waiting for someone to make a move. Finally, one student
raised his hand. The others followed suit.
Gang recruiters are “using you for their own benefit,” Newton said.
“How would you feel if you knew they were using you? Who in here
would feel they still cared about you?”
The room fell silent.
These are kids who live in gang neighborhoods, go to school with
gang members, have learned to adapt and, in some cases, have
succumbed to gangs, according to Newton.
None of them would admit how they really feel about gangs. He and
Reyes hadn’t won their trust yet, Newton said.
The film resumed. The visiting gang member stepped outside for some
air. He’d seen the movie three times, he said. He’d come only for
the pizza.
As the film continued, some of the kids had their heads down.
Others smiled and giggled at each other. Some passed notes back and
forth, hoping that Newton and Reyes wouldn’t see them. When the
movie ended, Newton and Reyes talked with the kids once
again.
“What do you guys think of a gang? Do you think gangs are cool?”
they asked. “Give us a thumbs up or a thumbs down.”
Some of the students immediately turned their thumbs down. A few
waited to see what the lone gang member in the classroom did.
Slowly, the boy, dressed in a white shirt and black jeans, turned
his thumb sideways. Gangs to him are neither good or bad, but a
part of life.
Then the boy did something that surprised Newton and Reyes. He
turned his thumb down. The others followed his lead and turned
theirs down too, except for one girl who sat in the front row of
the classroom. Her thumb was pointed to the ceiling.
Newton said he can often tell a gang member by the way he or she is
dressed, who they hang out with and their body language. In some
cases, the signs are ambiguous.
It used to be that Sureños, one of Napa’s biggest gangs,
traditionally wore blue, he said. Now the gang has abandoned blue
in favor of black. “That’s kind of the new uniform for Sureños,” he
said. It allows them to get around school bans on gang
colors.
The movie ended. The kids scattered. Newton walked the campus. He
doesn’t find any blue-or black-clad gang members.
It’s been a relatively good May day for the gang prevention
program. A gang member gave the thumbs down to gangs. No gangsters
were found wandering the campus after school. And more students
than ever showed up for the after-school prevention program.
“I am going to need to buy more pizza,” Newton said with a
smile.