Funding dries up on effort to quiet gang violence

Supervisor Talia Rivera said she is worried about what might happen to men who have just started to gain a new perspective. (Evan Richman/Globe Staff)

It started out as a typical community meeting. In a stuffy, hot trailer on a recent Saturday, about two dozen Dorchester residents sat in a circle, shifted a little in their seats and set ground rules.

No talking over anyone else. Keep your comments brief. Be respectful.

Then, one attendee, a church elder, made an unusual request.

"No violence, physical or otherwise," he said to nervous laughter.

The suggestion was not out of place.

In the group were seven young men and teenagers reputed to be members of one of Boston's most violent gangs.

For the previous eight weeks, they had been paid $10 an hour by a nonprofit group to reexamine their lives. While other teens spent the summer scooping ice cream and flipping burgers, their job for about 20 hours a week was to understand the consequences of their actions.

The meeting was a culmination of their summer work, a chance to talk to Dorchester residents about how to make the neighborhood better and face the kind of people they have terrified in the past.

Now, their supervisor, Talia Rivera, said she is worried about what might happen to men who have just started to gain a new perspective. Funding has dried up for the program, known as Village Without Walls, and Rivera said she is scrambling to find money to fund the endeavor for the year.

"When you're trying to do anything that's anti-violence, you have to reach those who are being violent," said Rivera, a thin 31-year-old mother of two, who is a network coordinator with the Black Ministerial Alliance. "This program was designed to take those kids that nobody else wants, that nobody else wants to deal with."

During the meeting, the men were friendly, breaking the ice with residents by asking them what their favorites foods are and leading group discussions about neighborhood topics like teenagers socializing on street corners.

"We're going to talk about chillin', being on the streets," one 20-year-old man in a white Red Sox hat told the group. "Why do the city have a problem with all the people hanging out?"

Eight weeks earlier, such a meeting would have been nearly unthinkable.

Rivera and other program leaders were not even sure they would be able to get teenagers and men who can earn considerably more money illegally to show up every day for four hours. But they did, and over the summer the men met with licensed clinicians they called "life coaches," gathered in group counseling sessions at Dorchester's Bethel Tabernacle Pentecostal Church, and spent an hour every week listening to speakers including former gang members.

At the counseling sessions, the men would sometimes sit sullenly in a circle, letting the minutes tick by in silence. But eventually, they became more talkative and some began expressing remorse for past mistakes.

By the end of the program, Rivera said, all of them seemed to trust her and some of them began talking about returning to high school and applying to college.

It cost $30,000 to run the eight-week program, which was funded by Mellon Bank, Arlington Street Church, Church Home Society, and the Boston Foundation. To run it for the year, Rivera estimated, it would cost about $230,000. But it is hard to convince potential funders to donate to a program that focuses on such a small group, she said.

Whether the program will succeed in keeping the men out of trouble is difficult to predict.

One 18-year-old who participated in the program said he plans to return to West Roxbury High School, where he dropped out his junior year. He said he thinks he will be able to stay in school, but he is not sure he can say the same for his friends.

"They're going to go back to what they were doing before," he said.

Ronnie, a lanky, 22-year-old man whom Rivera hired to work with the men, agreed.

"This has been a blessing for them and now that blessing is gone," said Ronnie, who has his own criminal record, which he declined to discuss in detail except to say he had an illegal gun charge.

The Globe agreed to withhold his last name and the names of the others because program organizers said identifying them could expose them to gang rivals.

The program had some setbacks. The group initially started with eight men, but halfway through the summer one of them was arrested for unlawful gun possession.

On one evening, as they were leaving the church to go home, several police officers approached them and asked what they were doing there. They left the men alone after Rivera explained they were working for her. But it was a reminder of the way they are viewed in the neighborhood, said Ronnie, who was also stopped that night.

"That was a total slap in the face," said Ronnie, who said he has become a devout Christian and wears a chain with a thick, silver charm of the Last Supper around his neck.

Their resentment toward police bubbled to the surface at that final meeting.

One of the participants was Boston Police Officer Roland Sandefur, who works in Mattapan and knows most of the men by reputation. He had already met one of them, at the Mattapan district station where the young man was held overnight for gun possession.

At that last meeting, Sandefur tried to convince them that it is OK to talk to police officers when they approach them on the street.

"Have the conversation with police," he said. "We have to address you. We have to look like we're doing our job, like we're engaged in the community."

"That's just harassment," scoffed Ronnie, shaking his head.

Another said that police just want to frisk them for weapons.

" 'Lift up your shirt, lift up your shirt,' " he said, mocking police orders and drawing laughter from his friends.

Sandefur remained calm. He knew he would not convince any of them to talk to police, but they had listened to him and had not interrupted him. He credited the program for the grudging respect they showed.

"Teenagers are really resilient. They feed off everything," he said after the meeting. "They're definitely going to get something out of it. The question is, how long will they able to continue it?"

Maria Cramer can be reached at mcramer@globe.com.