A. Comprehensive Victim Assistance Program for Victims of Gang Violence

The Gang Victim Services Program in Orange County, California, is recognized as a unique service provider for victims and witnesses of gang violence. Five victim advocates, who work with the District Attorney's gang investigators and vertical prosecution team, provide a full range of services and support to victims, including:

• Emergency crisis response and field support services, such as notifying family members of death and impending death of victims; accompanying survivors to emergency rooms; staying with parents whose children have been killed within the past 48 hours; orienting a victim's family of coroner procedures and policies; providing autopsy information; offering employer and media intervention; assisting with burials and funerals; and providing crime scene clean-up.

• Liaison with law enforcement to help resolve property return and provide notification of case status, including the arrest of a suspect.

• Accompaniment throughout the criminal justice system, including during the police investigation, line-ups, meetings with the prosecutor, and trial, as well as coordinating a court visit and arranging for security during the trial and assisting the victim in preparing a victim impact statement for sentencing.

• Referrals for services which include individual and group counseling services and assistance in obtaining victim compensation.

• Post-trial services such as providing information about the Department of Corrections and procedures to obtain notification of the offender's status, appellate reviews, and parole hearings.

• Multilingual, multicultural services that provide victim advocates who speak not only English, but Spanish and Vietnamese, and who are given specialized training about victims of gang violence.

Teens on Target, a hospital-based gang violence reduction program in Los Angeles and Oakland, California, provides teenagers who are hospitalized for gunshot wounds and other injuries resulting from gang violence with assistance from trained peer counselors. These counselors, many of whom are in wheelchairs because they too were victims of gang violence, give bedside support to injured teens and act as positive role models, providing alternatives to violence. Sometimes they intervene with gang members who accompany victims to the emergency room. During each hospital visit, the peer counselor provides a one-on-one review of the violent crime that brought the youth to the hospital and explores alternative strategies for dealing with violent incidents; shares coping skills and support systems; helps to develop a plan for staying safe; and sets up ongoing peer support to help the victim not rejoin the gang culture. This program received the 1996 Crime Victim Service Award, the highest federal honor for victim advocacy.

C. School-based Violence Prevention and Victim Assistance Program

Schools are uniquely positioned both to address the needs of many victims of gang violence and to reach community members and gang members to help prevent violence. Victim Services, Inc., a New York City-based organization, has implemented a series of integrated programs designed to teach students, faculty, and family members means of coping with and avoiding the crime, including gang violence, that they encounter daily. These programs include:

• An anti-violence curriculum addressing gang violence, bias-related incidents, domestic violence, and child abuse. Both students and adults are used as teachers, in teams with trained Victim Services counselors.

• On-site counseling and support groups, known as Safe Harbors. In safe rooms in the schools, students, faculty and family have access to counseling and support services and learn non-violent ways of addressing and resolving conflicts.

• Peer mediation/conflict resolution programs that teach students, faculty, and parents alternatives to violence. Through the high-school Project SMART, peer mediators have successfully resolved disputes between rival gangs.

• Crisis intervention and victim assistance training for parents and faculty, to help identify and respond to the needs of kids who witness or experience violence.

Many effective victim assistance programs have been organized around the country by victims of gang violence. For example, Save Our Sons and Daughters (SOSAD) is a nonprofit grassroots organization founded in 1987 by Clementine Barfield, whose 16-year-old son, Derrick, was killed in the summer of 1986. She joined other parents of slain children to channel their grief and anger into activism--working together to create positive alternatives to violence throughout the community. SOSAD provides counseling and training in violence prevention, crisis intervention, multicultural conflict resolution, gang redirection, and peer and bereavement support. The group operates a 24-hour crisis hotline for survivors of homicide and others traumatized by violence and provides crisis response teams to assist in major incidents. SOSAD also trains volunteers and professionals in crisis intervention techniques, grief and trauma counseling, debriefing, and identifying grief and trauma behavior in adolescents and children. The group trains faculty, teachers, students, and community members in peace and conflict resolution. SOSAD also coordinates gun victim impact panels.

Another group led by mothers who have lost children to gang violence is Mothers of All Children, located in Brooklyn, New York, which was founded by Frances Davis. During the past eight years, Frances Davis has borne extraordinary tragedy. In three separate incidents, each of her sons has been killed by gunfire. Ms. Davis turned her pain into service, and in 1993 created her own nonprofit, all-volunteer organization, Mothers of All Children. Ms. Davis recruits, trains, and inspires her volunteers, who then provide other survivors of homicide victims with bereavement counseling or help organize community violence prevention activities for youth, such as the basketball tournament, "Shoot Hoops, Not Guns." Frances Davis deals with her grief and her loss by continuing to participate in victim impact panels before young people at high schools and detention centers throughout the northeast.

The Tariq Khamisa Foundation, located in San Diego, California, was founded by investment banker Azim Khamisa after the murder of his 20-year-old son, Tariq. Tariq was delivering pizzas when four teenaged gang members surrounded him and demanded the pizza. When he refused, an 18-year-old gang leader ordered a 14-year-old to kill Tariq with a 9 mm handgun. Tariq's father joined with the grandfather of the 14-year-old killer to form the Foundation which is dedicated to preventing similar crimes through educational programs in schools. The Foundation is producing a documentary to assist kids in learning about gang violence and its impact. The documentary will feature an interview with Tariq's killer, who is now serving 30 years in custody, and encourages students to seek alternatives to gangs.

E. Public-Private Partnership to Reduce Gang Violence

Effective prevention and assistance programs can be implemented through public-private sector partnerships. One such program is the Wichita/Sedgewick County Neighborhood Initiative in Kansas. It is a public-private effort to coordinate grassroots community organizations; public agencies, including law enforcement, city government, and the schools; and interested for-profit and nonprofit private sector businesses, labor groups, and civic organizations to reduce gang-related violence. The Initiative's primary function is to obtain needed resources to deal with gang violence by bringing all parties to the table regularly, including community police administrators, city and county management representatives, the mayor, legislators, grassroots anti-gang groups, and gang members themselves. For example, when there was a drive-by shooting in which a two-year old child died, the Neighborhood Initiative responded to community requests for assistance by trying to arrange a truce among the rival gangs. The Neighborhood Initiative's project director is on loan to the group from the Boeing Company for three years, and several private sector organizations provide storefront space and volunteers.

Back to Gang Violence Table of Contents