A Los Angeles city-sponsored training academy for gang intervention workers will open at least a year later than had hoped after a collision of philosophies and egos, says the Los Angeles Times, which calls it “a hitch in the city’s effort to modernize its campaign against street violence.” An independent panel selected the Advancement Project, a legal advocacy, civil rights and public policy group, as the winner of a bidding process to run the academy.
That bid was not supposed to occur. The original plan to meld the best practices of two gang intervention programs into an “official” curriculum collapsed. Now, the academy isn’t expected to open until at least the spring of 2010 — a year later than originally envisioned. The head of a group that lost the bid called the selection process flawed and pledged to appeal the decision into next year. The dispute means the continuation of the status quo: “interventionists” fanned out across the city, some skilled and relied upon by law enforcement, but many unregulated, untrained and operating off the books amid dangerous crosscurrents of street politics.