KRIEGER: A year after Williams' death, progress slow

By Dave Krieger, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published January 5, 2008 at 12:45 a.m.

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This afternoon, the Washington Redskins will dedicate an NFL playoff game to their fallen teammate, Sean Taylor, shot to death in November.

The Broncos won't have a chance to do that in memory of Darrent Williams, who was shot to death a year ago. But there are people in the community who have been trying to make his death matter ever since.

A year later, the impact of the Williams shooting on the battle against Denver street gangs, one of which is the target of the continuing Williams murder investigation, is a mixed bag.

Community activists report that Williams' death dramatically increased the level of interest in the anti-gang message among kids and their parents in gang-infested neighborhoods.

"I was at Manual High School and I was talking to a kid and he kept staring at my badge, my GRASP badge, and he asked me for a card and then he said, 'Is it true? Are you guys for real?' " recounted Cisco Gallardo of the Gang Rescue and Support Project.

"And I said, 'What do you mean?'

"He goes, 'Are you guys really trying to stop all this?'

"I was like, 'Yeah.' And he was like, 'Yeah, we're talking about it.'

"The kids, they know what's going on. They know that people are trying to do something. They, themselves, are leery if it's true or not, if people even care about them."

On the other hand, anti-gang activists also report that the financial resources devoted to the problem have hardly budged.

GRASP, for example, has two paid staff. Terrance Roberts' Prodigal Son Initiative has two part-time staff. Even Roberts is part time so as to devote more of his meager budget to gang prevention and intervention. The Rev. Leon Kelly's Open Door Youth Gang Alternatives has two paid staff.

By comparison, the Denver police gang unit has 45 sworn officers - and could easily use more.

"You know what a difference we could make if we had 45 dedicated people to fight this problem?" Gallardo asked.

"They took $1 million last year out of their emergency fund or whatever they call it to pay for snow removal. Which is a very important service for the city. But I think young people's lives are just as important. Why can't we say, 'Let's really fight this problem, let's get $1 million to fight it and see what happens.' But people are afraid of that, I think."

The Denver Foundation pledged $100,000 a year for five years to gang-prevention efforts. The Broncos underwrote a Darrent Williams Memorial Teen Center. The Denver Crime Prevention and Control Commission allocated $200,000 for anti-gang efforts in five neighborhoods.

"It's a good gesture, but $200,000 for the depth of this problem is nothing," said Open Door's Kelly.

"Everybody else has picked up on it - more gang kids, more services from the providers, but the funding aspect of it is still the same, if not less," said Prodigal Son's Roberts.

The revival of the Metro Denver Gang Coalition has brought service providers together. They say they're better coordinated and point to a growing appetite at the neighborhood level for anti-gang initiatives.

Gallardo described the enthusiastic reaction of parents to a pair of anti-gang murals GRASP put up in north Denver.

But Kelly, at this since the 1980s, has watched interest in the subject ebb and flow before. Some of those who made promises in the wake of Williams' death no longer take his calls.

"With those people who made commitments to me in the wake of Darrent's passing, I'm going to hold them to that," Kelly said. "I'm going to be a constant reminder to them as to what they said, and what blood was spilled to make them say that."

The black-market drug and weapons trades go on, of course. Gang shootings do their collateral damage. Kelly calls it a cancer on the core of the city.

"We're still burying kids, and kids are still joining the gangs, but we're able to provide more services to the youth because we're all coming together more closely and we have more kids that aren't getting into gangs, as well," Roberts said. "So there's a positive and a negative.

"I would hope that the city would recognize that money would be better spent in prevention and intervention efforts versus locking kids up, where they become bigger, better gang members and it perpetuates the cycle of violence."

Making a serious dent in the gang problem that cost Williams his life is a much more difficult memorial than winning a football game. It takes a lot longer, for one thing. For every inspirational story of an individual or church stepping up to lend a hand, there is another body to be buried.

"Part of the gang's hold on the community is nobody ever wants to talk about it," Gallardo said. "Nobody ever wants to confront it. And I think that's what's changed. People are confronting it.

"Now, I wish we could be in every part of the city. Some parts still haven't got the services they need. It's just such a slow process. Has it touched every kid in a gang? I can't honestly say it has. But we're working on it."

kriegerd@RockyMountainNews.com

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