15-Year-Old Suspect in Murder Case Was a Leader

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At the end of August, when youth violence tends to rise, case workers from the Community Response Network took a group of high-risk teenagers to Yosemite to escape the streets.

A month later, one of the 15-year-olds who participated in the field trip would be arrested in connection with the murder of Gaspar Puch-tzek, the 22-year-old Hog and Rocks cook who was mistaken for a rival gang member.

“[He is] a perfect example of the young men that are a part of these shootings,” said Ricardo Garcia-Acosta, director of the Northwest Community Response Network. “Generally they’re good kids … they’re just trying to prove themselves.”

Garcia-Acosta and his team of outreach workers met the 15-year-old in question for the first time on the Yosemite excursion. The probation department had referred him.

“They were touting him as a success story,” said Garcia-Acosta, and he and his team could see why. “We noticed right away that he was a leader in the group.”

Unlike others along on the trip, the 15-year-old chose to get up each morning to go on the 6 a.m. hikes. He volunteered every chance he got, and by the end of the camp, outreach workers were talking about setting him up with a job and getting him on track to go to college.

So how could a 15-year-old go from hiking Half Dome with his friends to shooting an innocent man in the face a few days later? Those who work with teenagers in trouble attributed it to several factors. They also talked about the ways in which they work with teenagers, and the fine line between a troubled teen and one in a serious crisis, and they caution against condemning a 15-year-old who has yet to be found guilty of anything.

“It’s a result of these kids growing up in toxic environments,” said Garcia-Acosta. “In some situations, these kids are presented with two options: Go on that drive-by or be a punk and put your family at risk.”

Tracy Brown-Gallardo, co-chair of the Northwest Community Response Network, knows the sentiment. “Somehow we failed that kid,” she said. “Anything that happens in the Mission is all of our faults.”

Every time violence flares, the Community Response Network staff are on the street, doing outreach and crisis management. The network, deeply rooted in the community, has been key in keeping one gang shooting from becoming many, according to police and other nonprofit organizations.

“There’s a lot of kids that didn’t end up like him because we spent more time with them,” said Ray Balberan, a consultant to the network. Often, he said, kids will reach out before resorting to violence.

While it is difficult to quantify violence that doesn’t occur, Community Response Network keeps track by filing reports after successful violence interventions. Since 2009, the case studies account for at least 25 instances of violence prevention.

According to one case from 2010, for example, a potential gang war was averted thanks to a series of mediations, led by outreach workers, between members on both sides of a bloody incident.

In March 2010, after a teenage gang member stabbed a Samoan girl in the face on 24th Street, the Community Response Network immediately jumped into action. One staff member went to the hospital to support the victim and her family while others mobilized to set up an emergency meeting with so-called “shot callers” on both sides, who have some control over how allies will react.

Following meetings with the victim’s father and the gang in question, both parties agreed to a truce.

“If it were not for our close community connections, we would not have had the credibility to resolve this conflict,” the report stated.

The strength of the Community Response Network, officials say, lies in its connections to other community-based organizations, including HOMEYSF, the Boys and Girls Club and the Central American Resource Center, which offers tattoo removal to help former gang members start a new life.

The Department of Children, Youth and Their Families funds 19 violence prevention programs in the Mission, including the Community Response Network, which received $1 million last year and $850,000 this year.

The problem, said Garcia-Acosta, is that the organization, which had once received funding to operate as a network, is now funded as a single outreach program, which limits its ability to make and sustain new connections throughout the community.

Diana Oliva-Aroche, policy manager for violence prevention with the Department of Children, Youth and Their Families, agreed that there needs to be more communication between community-driven efforts and City Hall.

“They can’t work in isolation, because it’s the city government that provides the funding … and that’s the reality,” she said.

The reality on the street is something else entirely. Guns, not fists, have been the operative weapon since the mid-1980s.

“When you’re driving a car and … they flick you off … back in the day you would come out and punch them out,” said a former gang member who now works as a parole officer. “Nowadays it’s not that way … it’s violent.”

Oliva-Aroche said the city plans to focus on gun control next year after finalizing the annual budget.

“Law enforcement is not the only solution — the solution is to get guns off the street,” she said. “They’re not just from local vendors, it’s a regional and state issue … and what’s been done is not enough.”

Chief Probation Officer William Siffermann believes that gangs are becoming a more prevalent social institution because they promise wealth in an increasingly depressed economic landscape.

“Gangs provide support, guidance, direction, education and the common thread of a family,” Siffermann said. “These are attractive components, even though it’s a group of individuals whose values are considerably skewed and anti-social.”

Carlos Disdier, a mental health specialist at El Instituto Familiar de la Raza, which last year began offering counseling services in Mission schools, agreed.

“I hear 11-year-old kids say they want to be gang members when they grow up,” Disdier said. “Gangs provide a sense of belonging, a sense of family … and we work with those kids to provide alternatives to that.”

In 2010, 69 Mission juveniles were booked for criminal offenses through San Francisco’s Juvenile Probation Center, according to the center’s annual report. Over half the offenses were either robberies or assaults. That number compares with 75 in 2009 and 66 in 2008.

“By the time they get here, the police are already involved,” said Disdier.

Few think juvenile detention centers are the answer. Youth incarceration, which costs states an average of $88,000 per youth annually, has done little to reduce violence in communities across America, according to a new report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. The report, which is based on 40 years of data, also highlights a 72 percent recidivism rate for youth within the first three years of their release.

Over the past year, Disdier has been working with about 35 minors. Many of his clients are aggressive and defiant toward their parents, he said. Since he started working at El Instituto in 2008, he has noticed a rift between teenagers and parents that is unique to neighborhoods with large immigrant populations, like the Mission.

“Their parents came here with a specific dream and to provide a better life for their kids,” Disdier said. After all they’ve sacrificed, the parents feel that their children are malagradecidos, or ungrateful.

“We’re here to bridge those gaps between children and their parents, to provide a safe space where they can share their story and their history.”

While Disdier works to reconnect troubled youth with their families, Valerie Tulier, director of the Mission Beacon Center, provides a home away from home.

“Who wants cookies?” Tulier asked on a recent Tuesday afternoon, her voice filling the recreation room where a dozen students gathered after school to socialize and do their homework.

“If these kids fall through the cracks, they become that 15-year-old that’s trying to earn his stripes, trying to belong,” said Tulier. “We provide them with a safe environment during the ‘witching hours’ of 3 to 6 p.m.,” she said, referring to the time when she believes most violent activity occurs.

Of the 120 students that Mission Beacon works with, 60 to 70 have risk factors such as low test scores and school referrals, Tulier said.

Edania Rivera, 14, a student at O’Connell High School eight blocks away, comes to Mission Beacon every day after school.

“If I didn’t come here, I’d be on the streets,” Rivera said. “It’s like a family. I call Valerie my auntie.”

Meanwhile, Tulier was preparing to take a group of students on a field trip to an upcoming indigenous festival on Alcatraz.

“We take the kids there to connect to history and to their culture” as indigenous Americans, Tulier said. “It’s about teaching them … to be a warrior for your community, not against it.”