Paulie Mac is huge—6'6, 360 pounds, with an Olympic power lifter's shoulders and an NFL lineman's arms. With his size, the 37-year-old music producer can generate both respect and fear. Though Mac says he's not afraid of anyone, he admits avoiding certain places.
"I've lived in Gerson Park and Regal Estates," tough neighborhoods in West Las Vegas and North Las Vegas, he says. "I did dirt, I did some things I'm not proud of, I did gangbang, but I've never been nervous going on the Westside after dark until now. I don't go unless I have to. There's a lot of madness going on in the streets with these young dudes."
He's right.
Every other week, it seems, teenagers and young adults are involved in headline-grabbing crimes. Over the weekend, youngsters conducted a series of robberies in Spring Valley. Earlier this month, thieves robbed an armored truck in North Las Vegas. On June 27, authorities say, 17-year-old Markell Jones and 15-year-old LaMarcus Gamble beat Sierra Miller; 19-year-old Deandre Hudson then shot the 20-year-old woman in the chest and torched her Volkswagen Beetle. A day earlier, Silver Nugget surveillance captured a gunman blasting away inside the casino, then skipping off. Teenage gangsters unleashed a barrage of bullets at a Memorial Day Weekend block party, killing three people. A month prior, on April 19, a group of teens and twentysomethings attacked two MGM Grand workers and assaulted customers at Wal-Mart, a convenience store and a couple walking in a northwest park. The violence reminds Mac of the 80s.
"When Reagan cut off a lot of funding for at-risk programs, everybody I knew joined gangs or got deeper into the gangs," Mac says. "From 1984 to 1992, you had key gangsters getting killed, lots of retaliation and then the riots [sparked by the Rodney King acquittals]. The same things are happening now. People are frustrated. There are no jobs. Cops are shooting people and getting away with it. We're sitting on a powder keg and it's going to get 50 times worse if things continue."
Mac says the programs that turned him around have all but vanished. The Boys & Girls Club in now-demolished Gerson Park was a safe house in the middle of a war zone. Down the street at Cadillac Arms Apartments, there was a free food program. And the popular Late-Nite Hoops program at Doolittle Community Center is history. "Doolittle was in the middle of all these gang neighborhoods, yet and still, you'd have 300, 400 rival gang members in there playing basketball at two in the morning. It was incredible," says Mac, his animated voice piercing the near-silence inside the West Las Vegas Library. "Families in the ghetto want the same things families everywhere else want—jobs, a house, food, health care and a safe place for their kids to go. The only consistent thing in many of these poor neighborhoods were those safe places that provided food and recreation. I don't see those types of programs as much anymore and I think that's why you're having some problems with violence.
Several experts echo Mac's laments. They say as many as two dozen programs have been cut in the last quarter century. Among the deceased:
• Metro's civilian Youth Diversion Task Force. One of the first of its kind in the nation, the initiative immersed dozens of youth in life and job skills program, running for three years until funding dried up in 1997.
• The Las Vegas Housing Authority's Late-Night Hoops program at Doolittle. Established in 1990, the program drew thousands over the years. Housing authority spokesman Al Conklin couldn't determine when or why the program—which cost about $80,000 a year—was discontinued.
• After earning national kudos, the City of Las Vegas' Weed & Seed neighborhood improvement initiative fell into turmoil. The city withdrew as the fiscal agent for the federal program in 1997.
This list pales, experts say, to the programs whose funds have been cut in recent years. The Late Night Solutions and Back on Track gang diversion programs got $30,000, one-fifth of their normal funding. The Southern Nevada Gang Task Force, Zero Weapons, Zero Tolerance, the BEST Coalition and the Boys & and Girls Club are also making do with less. Alicia Crowther, director of delinquency programs for the Boys & Girls Clubs of Las Vegas, says her staff is working to find alternative funding and support sources for the 70 male juveniles in its life skills program at Spring Mountain Youth Camp. "Removing services is the last thing we want to do," she says. "We're writing lots of grants and will do collaborations when necessary."
Experts cite three main factors for the cuts and curtailments in youth outreach: fewer funds, homeland security and declining juvenile crime rates. Congress stripped $307 million in youth outreach funds from the current budget. September 11 shifted budget priorities to anti-terrorism initiatives. After peaking in 1994, juvenile crime rates plummeted. By 2000, America's juvenile murder rates had fallen 74 percent. Statewide, juvenile violent crime arrests dipped 15 percent; the number of violent teen deaths violently dropped 13 percent.
That grace period is over.
So far this year, juvenile violent crime arrests are up, as are gun-related charges among minors—county juvenile justice data show 779 gun offenses in February, a 76 percent increase over 442 in February 2005. Metro police report a 48 percent increase in gang-related shootings through June—117 compared 79 during the same time last year—and twice as many gang homicides (21 to 10). Last year, the coroner's office saw a 50 percent increase in juvenile cases.
Melvin Ennis of the Clark County Gang Intervention Team is torn. There are programs available, including extensive municipal offerings. But many of them aren't in the neighborhoods where the need is highest. (There are Late Nite Hoops programs at the Cambridge and Walnut Cecile Community Centers, both are in high-crime neighborhoods). "We have to fight tooth and nail for everything we get," he says. And what is available isn't enough to meet the needs of a growing city.
"We're saving so many kids, but it looks like we're not doing anything because of the nature of the violence, " Ennis says. "You've got people out there working hard, people like the Dog Catchers [Foundation] do a lot work with kids, but they need help. They need funding and support. The common concern of everyone is to be safe, but some people wonder why we are helping bad kids and not the good kids, so they don't offer help. It's easy to cut funding to programs. But while funding is being cut, there seems to be a push to hire more district attorneys and more cops and to build and expand jails. What do they need to make the [corrections system] work? You need a commodity. These young people are that commodity."
Like Paulie Mac, Ennis says the violence reminds him of the early 80s. The town was smaller, the problems concentrated in a specific locales—West Las Vegas, pockets of Northtown, Boulder Highway. Everyone knew everyone, meaning everyone knew who the troublemakers were. When the school district cut middle school sports, Ennis says, many kids had too much time on their hands got into trouble. In came Band-Aid solutions—more cops, putting police substations in troubled neighborhoods.
"These substations had business hours. They weren't open when you needed them—at nights and on the weekends," Ennis says. "Community policing can work but it's been a joke here. There aren't enough officers and you have to be trained in customer service. It's the attitude that makes community policing work. Cops are trained in hook and book. Law enforcement has to have a rapport with the community. If I tell the cops about something that happened in the neighborhood, the cops shouldn't come up to me in the middle of the neighborhood and say, ‘Hey, Melvin, I took care of that problem, thanks for the information'. You have to build trust."
Lou Collins views federal largesse as a double-edged sword: it provides useful, life-changing services, but once the money is gone, so are the services. Collins, who works with the nonprofit Nevada Partners job training academy, says youth programs haven't benefited from the Valley's prosperity. Businesses should be lining up to support proven programs. "There should be a level of sustainability with all of the resources we have in our city. There are certainly fewer programs today than when I was coming up."
Duplication is another hurdle. If you've got five groups offering tutoring, Collins says, rest assured that all five won't get funded., even if all are needed. "Twenty-five years ago, Vegas was close-knit town, small. Now we're talking about having 40 high schools. There may not be enough programs for the population."
Adds David Wallace, director of the Youth Diversion Task Force of America, a local community-based group: "We need a permanent commitment from the community to support programs that have proven to be successful. A program like Late Night Hoops is successful, but it's also costly."
Wallace has experienced the perils of running programs on borrowed time and money. With assistance from Sheriff Jerry Keller, city councilman Frank Hawkins, Elgin Simpson, Mayor Jan Jones and others, he created Metro's civilian Youth Diversion Task Force. "It was the first time a police department created such a program," Wallace says. Funding ran out in 1997 when the focus shifted, he says, "from a police department providing these services to a governmental entity providing the services, the thinking being that juvenile justice could run the program better and for a longer period of time."
For seven years, he ran the county's S.T.E.P.S. program, (Supervision, Training, Education, Parenting and Services), which focused on after-school programming, community service, tutoring, recreation, parent involvement and crisis intervention. S.T.E.P.S. also conducted Scared Straight-style visits to local lock-ups. Martin Luther King III, the namesake and youngest son of the famed civil rights leader, accompanied Wallace on the North Las Vegas Detention Center. Dressed in orange prison uniforms, juveniles toured the jail, got locked up two to a cell and pushed around by male and female inmates. The scare tactics worked. Many of the kids stayed out of trouble. Wallace hoped county officials would include S.T.E.P.S. in the general budget but was told most its money was tied up in bailing out University Medical Center ($38 million in debt) and finishing the behind-schedule Regional Justice Center (an additional $33 million). Wallace has seen various worthwhile programs meet similar fates. If a program does what it says and has the proof to back it up—monthly, quarterly, annual reports; data demonstrating its effectiveness, he says funding should never be an issue.
"The community needs to prioritize the need for after-school activities," Wallace says. "I tell parents that they can see where their priorities are by checking their checkbook and appointment book. If there is nothing in either one of them pertaining to their child, then they're not your putting time and money into their children. There used to be lots of support for youth programming and we used to be trailblazers, people across the country would look at us a model. We're not trailblazers anymore," Wallace says. "I believe there's always been moral support for programs, but there's not always financial support. You need money to deter gang violence, delinquency rates, dropouts rates, etc. Parents need services and resources to meet their children's needs. Every youth is an at-risk youth, not just inner-city youth. If we wait to deal with them as adults in the [corrections] system, it will be more costly and less effective."
Batteries Included is a six-week job training program run by the City of Las Vegas conjunction with the school district and Nevada Partners. Mary Ann Price, public information specialist for the City of Las Vegas Neighborhood Services Department, says the program is one example of municipal involvement with youth outreach. The city provides grants, offers programs through Leisure Services, helps fund a homeless shelter for teens and engages in a bevy of collaborative efforts. A list of county offerings runs 45 pages. "Everybody is trying to figure out the reason for the surge in juvenile crime and trying to what they can to help."
If elected sheriff, Bill Conger, who worked 29 years with Metro—retiring in 2004 as deputy chief of the special operations division (oversees gang crimes, homeland security)—says he'd press for better police-community relations. As a cop on the Westside, Conger says, he was more focused on catching bad guys. Nab enough of them, he figured, and the community would come around.
"I missed the boat completely back then," Conger says. "You need that community component. A pastor will come out and talk to people at 3 a.m. after something has happened. Different groups would do the same thing. You need community integration to build trust. People don't just need to see police cars when crime happens, they need to see your face all the time. Get out of the car and talk."
Throughout Mac's conversation, James Henry sits silently, listening and occasionally nodding in approbation. Born here 36 year ago, Henry, Prudential Americana Group real estate consultant and music producer, lived in troubled neighborhoods all over the city. He's seen good cops and bad ones. Seen highly anticipated projects (Magic Johnson's Westland Plaza) crumble under the weight of lofty expectations (Vons closed its store there, unable to pay its bills). Seen money thrown at social ills and money stripped away from successful programs. Through it all, one thing has remained constant: "Poverty. People need jobs."
And not minimum-wage work, Mac adds. "That's why you have people doing all these crazy things ... bank robberies, hitting armored trucks. People are desperate. They're not part of the all the good things, the growth that's going on in Las Vegas. Some of them have jobs, but $8 an hour, after taxes, that's $1,000 a month. Who can live off that?"
As Mac talks, some of the teens browsing bookshelves in the West Las Vegas Library glance at him—his music career has made him a local celebrity. Every now and again, a young man sitting behind him, and thumbing through a copy of Sports Illustrated, strains to hear our conversation. Mac is on a roll. The more he talks, the more he jogs his memory. He learned to swim in UNLV's Upward Bound program (it still exists). At Doolittle, he saw positive role models. Block parties were safe. What doesn't remember, he says, is a time when church leaders risked their lives to help the community. (A group of Muslims at the nearby Masjid As-Sabur recently began early-morning walks around the area of McWilliams and H Street. Ennis cites Greater New Jerusalem Baptist's youth program as a model).
"The clergy needs to help save these neighborhoods," Mac says. If they don't, he shall. "I'm willing to be a voice to stop the bloodshed."