Santa Rosa renaming anti-gang program

Santa Rosa is renaming its decade-old gang prevention program to reflect the evolution of its mission and broaden the appeal of its programs.

The Mayor’s Gang Prevention Task Force, which was formed in 2003 to address the root causes behind a surge in gang violence in the city, will now be called the Santa Rosa Violence Prevention Partnership.

“It’s not necessarily trendy or sexy, but it does honor the past and positions us for the foreseeable future,” Khaalid Muttaqi, the program’s manager, told the City Council on Tuesday.

The new name, which was selected after months of meetings with 170 interested parties, aims to clear up several misperceptions about the city’s anti-gang efforts, Muttaqi said.

“Santa Rosa” replaces “mayor” to better reflect that the program is a city-wide and even regional effort beyond the control of one local leader, who is a member of the City Council voted by his or her peers to serve a two-year term.

The change “takes the focus off the one individual and allows for community ownership” of not only the problem of gang violence but also the solutions, Muttaqi said.

“Violence prevention” replaces “gang prevention” to convey that the programs - which range from youth soccer and boxing to tattoo removal services to family counseling and parenting classes - aim to reduce more than just gang violence.

In addition, some parents have shown a reluctance to allow their children to participate in programs because they doubt their kids are at risk of getting involved in gangs, said Sgt. John Cregan, who heads the police department’s gang crimes team.

By de-emphasizing the gang element, the hope is that more kids will participate in programs that will keep them out of gangs in the first place, Cregan said.

“It’s not just the name change. It’s a whole new push to make these programs more available,” Cregan said.

Finally, “partnership” replaces “task force” because many people in the community have a misperception that the program “is equivalent to a gang unit that goes out and does gang sweeps, and makes arrests and is basically a law enforcement entity,” which is untrue, Muttaqi said.

The program is run out of the city manager’s office, and while it works closely with police, is completely separate, he said. The “partnership” also better reflects the way the city issues grants to various local service providers to provide various enrichment services.

In addition to the new name, the program will carry the tagline, “Community awareness. Youth development. Safe neighborhoods.”

The rebranding campaign includes a new logo and will include a new website and brochures, all of which is expected to be rolled out in early 2015. Funding for the effort will come out of $412,000 the council approved last year.

The city has struggled for years to find the right leader for its gang prevention efforts, which receives about $1.5 million annually from Measure O, the quarter-cent public safety sales tax measure.

Before Muttaqi was hired from Sacramento last year, the city had gone through four managers in eight years. The program also has been criticized for being unable to demonstrate a clear track record of lowering gang crime rates in the city due to the police department’s changing methodologies in tracking such statistics.

Long-term, however, it is clear that the city, like much of the rest of the nation, has seen a significant drop in violent crime, Cregan said.

The city saw a 44 percent decrease in violent crime between 2005 and 2012, and a 30 percent drop in juvenile felonies over that same period, according to Santa Rosa police. Juvenile felony arrests have dropped 33 percent over that same period, with felony arrests falling 41 percent.

By broader and more subjective metrics of “gang-related incidents” and “gang-related arrests,” however, the record is mixed. Statistics compiled since 2011 show three years of relative stability, followed by a 13 percent increase in gang-related arrests through September of this year and a 17 percent increase in gang-related incidents, Cregan said.

It’s hard to say why there is a recent uptick, but Cregan said it is probably a combination of an actual increase in gang activity combined with more accurate reporting of incidents involving gang members, he said.

“It’s been very successful, but we still have a ways to go,” Cregan said.

Mayor Scott Bartley said he’s seen a significant improvement in the program during his term. “This is money really well spent, and I think the taxpayers are owed a debt of thanks for actually voting this in,” he said.

You can reach Staff Writer Kevin McCallum at 521-5207 or kevin.mccallum@pressdemocrat.com. ?On Twitter @srcitybeat.