Sweeping anti-gang program targets most of south King County

A gang shootout in Kent that injured a dozen people in 2011 was the impetus for a sweeping new youth gang prevention program to serve much of south King County.

Gangs were becoming a problem all over the south county. So the non-profit Center for Children and Youth Justice, led by retired Supreme Court Justice Bobbe Bridge, put together a group of high-level decision-makers, including mayors, police chiefs and seven school district superintendents to figure out the scope of the problem and find solutions.

“I have been so impressed from the beginning with the tenacity, the energy and the passion around this community issue that these members, every single one of them, has had and a unified resolve to address the issue of gang activity,” Bridge told a county council committee Tuesday.

The group, known as the Suburban King County Coordinating Council on Gangs pulled together data on gang activity from census, schools, social workers, prosecutors, and multiple police agencies. No small feat said county council member Kathy Lambert.

“Departments defined gang activity differently, there was no uniformity and now they’re actually doing it, implementing it. This was like moving a mountain.”

The group spent most of 2012 and 2013 collecting data and adapting a nationally recognized gang prevention model to the south King County problem. Project Manager Anica Stieve said the program area is huge, with 750,000 residents including 100,000 school age kids.

“The unique part about this project is that it’s being implemented on a scale that has not been done before. Typically, the gang model is implemented on a single city or a single jurisdiction scale, as it is in Tacoma.”

Judge Bridge called it a multifaceted approach that includes prevention, intervention, re-engagement plus enforcement, or suppression. “It would have been so easy to go to suppression and leave it there,” she said.

Funded by a grant, the anti-gang program will use school staff, social service providers, street outreach workers, probation counselors and other specialists to focus on intervention, sponsor activities and provide direct services to gang members. Training begins this fall and the program begins in earnest in January.

The King County Prosecuting Attorney announced in early August that the last two of seven defendants charged in that shooting in July 2011 in Kent have pleaded guilty or been sentenced.