Gang Prevention Quotes

We just need more father figures and more older people to come and school these youth, because there will be a lost generation. And that's what a gang's supposed to be, protecting family and doing what you've got to do for your loved ones.

I've had more students die than I ever thought possible. My husband urges me to quit Fairfield and teach at some school without gang members who live their lives only to die or end up as drug dealers.

Every level of government has a role to play in combating the rise of MS-13 and other gangs, and we must crack down on the aspects of our nation's broken immigration system and other policies that have allowed MS-13 and other gangs to take hold in our communities and stay there.

I do believe in lessons learned. I have learned that you work with gang members and not with gangs; otherwise, you enforce the cohesion of gangs and supply them oxygen.

It's so easy for a kid to join a gang, to do drugs... we should make it that easy to be involved in football and academics.

Gangs are born of a lethal absence of hope, and hope has an address: 130 W. Bruno St. in Los Angeles, CA 90012.

As much as I dislike the suggestion of single solutions to complex problems, jobs are as close as we will get to a single, effective answer to the enormous problem of gangs.

It's tough for kids to stay focused if they don't have something to get them off the streets... that's where the kids can get into the bad things.

Anyone who knows gangs knows that lawmakers cannot conceive of a law that would lead a hard-core gang member to 'think twice.'

Gangs are bastions of conditional love, and one of the ways to counteract it is to offer community, which will always trump gang, and that's what happens at Homeboy Industries.

With gangs, there could be a positive outlook because it takes the older guys to come school these younger guys on the right roles.

What we do best is we target the young men and women who are on the fringe. They could go either way. Maybe they have been in trouble before, but not serious trouble. ... We cherry-pick them and circumvent them away from the gang members and drug dealers ... (and encourage) them to hang out with us and become a Guardian Angel.

You prevent kids from joining gangs by offering after-school programs, sports, mentoring, and positive engagement with adults. You intervene with gang members by offering alternatives and employment to help redirect their lives. You deal with areas of high gang crime activity with real community policing. We know what works.

The idea that any law enforcement agency or person would ever know these gang members better than Homeboy Industries is impossible.

And what is needed to prevent them from joining gangs was ample recreation for boys as well as girls, jobs and internships for training and money, and assistance to allow their families to live in decent homes.

I founded Homeboy Industries in 1988 after I buried my first young person killed in our streets because of gang violence.

What a lot of people don't realize about gangs, in my opinion, is that a gang is not there to attack you. Eighty percent of the people in a gang are there to stop anyone from attacking them. You join a gang for protection, not to go out and hit someone.

I've written a book on gangs, taught a course on gangs at Occidental.

From a parent's right to know what their children are doing, to protecting citizens across the country from the growing threat of gang violence, the House Democrat leadership is simply out to lunch.

We will not rest until being a gang member is a miserable, undesirable life.

In my barrio, jobs work and money saves lives. When I have had the funds to place a gang member on a job site and pay his salary, I've seen him stop banging. When, on the rarest of occasions, an employer has offered a job to one of these youth, I've witnessed kids suddenly have a reason to get up in the morning.

In Los Angeles, the gang capital of the world, we have 1,100 gangs and 120,000 gang members so it is a daunting, complex social dilemma.

The task of dealing comprehensively with gangs belongs to the city, not to law enforcement.

You can't reason with gang violence: you can't talk to it, sit it at the table, and negotiate with it.

Homeboy Bakery is an alternative to kids who have found themselves, regrettably, in gangs and want to redirect their lives.