Project 180 - gang prevention

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Kern County Superintendent of Schools’ new gang prevention specialists Sal Arias and Kevin Keyes

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No one, other than gang members, wants gangs in their schools and communities. Much has been said about the destructive nature of gangs and how the perception of their power influences at risk children. The Kern County Superintendent of Schools is doing more than talking, having just hired Kevin Keyes and Salvador Arias to join the office as Gang Prevention Specialists. Assigned to the School-Community Partnerships program, Keyes, Arias and their boss, Prevention Programs Coordinator Daryl Thiesen, have begun a county-wide program of gang prevention, collaborating with law enforcement, courts, local service agencies, schools, parents and children to bring it about. The program, called Project 180, arose out of Kern County’s gang prevention funding.

You probably could not have hired two people with a greater understanding of gangs than Keyes and Arias. They have lived it. Arias, by his own admission, was a gang member. He was beaten up and urinated on as a kindergartner because his brother was in a gang. The beatings continued through third grade, when he decided the only way to protect himself was by joining a gang. It caused him to miss school from which he was expelled in the sixth grade. Arias remembers being chased across a school campus by gang members wielding guns and chains. His house was the target of a drive by shooting. When his best friend was killed in that manner, a convincing school counselor advised the Arias family to quit their jobs and move to save their own lives.

Keyes saw it from the other side of the street as a corrections officer for two prisons. He witnessed the frustration and desperation of young men relegated to spending their entire lives behind bars. Keyes said every gang member he met in prison had started out as a truant from school. And part of his belief is that gang prevention cannot work without addressing truancy.

Arias and Keyes’ credentials go far beyond first hand gang experience. Arias got out of his mess by joining the Marines, with whom he served for eight years. Returning to Bakersfield, he earned a BA from Cal State, spent the last four years working with the county probation department and is working on his Master’s. Keyes followed up his prison career by spending the last few years as a community counselor and coach for the Kern High School District. He is earning his Bachelor’s from Cal State. Their primary focus is Project 180.

"People often say they can’t see past tomorrow," Arias said. "We are in the business of showing them tomorrow."

"Since I started this job, one of the most telling things about how far we have to go was demonstrated during a student sharing day I attended at a local school," Keyes said. "One child brought in a family album that on one page showed his father and friends in gang attire. When he turned the page, there was a picture of his father in a casket."

As Thiesen sees it, Project 180 is charged with turning things around by providing three direct services: mentoring for at risk children, understanding through a program called Parent Project and aggression replacement training for at risk students.

One element of the aggression replacement training is something called EDGE (Educating Diversion of Goals to Endeavor). At risk students will visit a maximum security prison, to see what the end result is if they do not make the right choices. They will be treated much as a resident prisoner, starting with the prison orientation every inmate goes through. Then, they will sit down one-on-one with prisoners.

"The prisoners will share the choices they made that put them behind bars," Arias said. "They will lay out for the students what their choices are and challenge them to verbalize what they will do to keep from ending up in prison."

Parent Project will give moms and dads the tools to deal with "strong-willed" children before they take the next step into gangs.

"We want the parents to look for the positives in children who are constantly being told they are bad," Keyes said. "If you want to help, you have to pat them on the back. It may require taking everything away for a short period of time to solve a short term crisis. Then, you build on love. Know where your kids are at all times, how to measure their attendance and progress at school, how to deal with a runaway child and inappropriate music. It is a program that was designed by law enforcement and parents and revamped to address crisis situations."

The third component of the program, mentoring, seeks to provide the element that seems most often associated with joining gangs, a sense of belonging.

"We have to get the kids feeling like they are a part of their family and community and plug them into all of the areas that will make that possible," Arias said. "Our role is to get uninvolved students involved in positive activities that will replace the love gangs are showing them. It is prevention through intervention."

Keyes and Arias will be identifying at risk students and referring them to the best fit among dozens of community partners that offer mentoring through healthy activities and even job training. Their progress towards graduation and participation in after school programs can be tracked through a computer program known as Youth Level of Service Case Management Inventory (YLSCMI).

Within a few weeks, Project 180 will have its own Web site, where parents, students, schools and community leaders can go for information, direction and assistance on gang prevention. Until that happens, Keyes or Arias can be reached by calling (661) 636-4243 or 636-4242 — a number where inquiries in Spanish can also be addressed.

As Arias put it, "There is nothing worse for a child then to wake up in Juvenile Hall on Christmas Day wanting to be home — that’s when they know they’ve reached rock bottom."


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