A week after an East High School teacher was shot in a youth gang-related incident, the problem of gangs in Salt Lake City dominated the mayor's race on Tuesday.
Surrounded by leaders in the arts and aerospace industry, candidate Deedee Corradini on Tuesday promised to fight gangs through education, job training and role models."Unless we talk about prevention or of breaking the cycle of gangs, we're never going to end the gang problem," Corradini said.
She proposes a partnership among businesses, the community and the schools to keep elementary-school age children from joining gangs. She wants businesses to donate money and resources, and she wants successful people to volunteer as role models for the children. Those people will include professional basketball players, musicians and dancers.
At a noon debate among the three Democratic mayoral candidates - Corradini, a local businesswoman; Mike Zuhl, Mayor Palmer DePaulis' chief of staff; and Dave Jones, a local businessman and Utah House member - the gang issue came up again. The debate was sponsored by the Democratic Forum.
Jones, perhaps a bit miffed at the attention Corradini was getting on gangs, said he'd put forth his four-point gang plan more than a month ago.
"I'd create a Youth Services Corps to get at the gang problem early. What do gang members want? They want what all young people want - respect, to be valued as a person, to belong to a group and to be acknowledged by that group as a contributing member."
Jones suggests that the corps help youths in their neighborhood to take care of the neighborhood. "If they're working to solve neighborhood problems, they won't be creating neighborhood problems. Maybe it's clearing out a vacant lot and building a basketball court. Maybe it's letting the kids decide to clean up a senior citizen's yard. The corps part comes in because we have to pay these kids - that's the way it is."
Money to pay the teens could come two ways: through federal grants that are currently unused in Utah and through a "round-up" program.
"When you buy your groceries the clerk asks if you're a member of the round-up program to help youths. You say yes. And if the bill is $65.50, the clerk rounds the bill up to $66 and the 50 cents goes toward the youth program. It's worked and worked well in other places."
Zuhl said he recently rode with a patrol of the metro gang squad. The officers stopped at a home where gang members were known to live. Zuhl questioned the young men. "I asked them what they wanted. To a person they all said the same thing - a job.
"To stop gangs you have to start early, very early. I'd start an education program using old gang members, people who've been there and can relate to these kids. We have to keep our recreational facilities open in the hours that matter to these kids. You create the jobs for the youth through a public/private partnership that would be a priority with me."
Corradini said the city needs more role models for minority children - the sort who often turn to gangs for a sense of achievement and acceptance. She promised to hire minorities in her administration and to use suggestions from minority communities on people qualified for high-profile jobs.
"We have to have more police officers and more teachers who are minorities," she said.
Her proposal calls for schools to remain open until 6 p.m. Volunteers would help children find constructive things to do in a safe and familiar environment. She said only a few so-called gang members are hard core.
"The rest of these kids, even though they act tough, are savable," she said.
Dave Buhler is the other major candidate for mayor. Being a Republican, Buhler wasn't invited to the Democratic Forum debate. Taking perhaps a more conservative approach, Buhler said: "I support what the city is doing now - participating in the statewide gang task force." The schools should take the lead in anti-gang education. "Salt Lake Community High School has a fine program on self-esteem. Fortunately, our gangs aren't yet heavily into dealing drugs. How do you get a kid out of a gang by getting him a minimum-wage job when he can make $2,000 a week pushing drugs? It's a tough problem."
Buhler says he supports a recent bill that allows a juvenile-court judge to sentence a youth convicted of a gang-related crime to a longer sentence. "By the way, that bill passed the Utah House with only 11 dissenting votes and one of those `no' votes was Rep. Dave Jones," says Buhler.
Counters Jones: "That bill not only allowed the juvenile to be tried as an adult, but sentenced to a longer time than an adult for the same crime. That's not the answer, locking up the kids longer than an adult criminal. Get to them early and change their attitudes about themselves. Just looking at strong law enforcement - which I support - is a narrow, inadequate approach." Jones says he and many minority community members thought the bill discriminatory.