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Spokane schools, city receive federal grant to coordinate response to gang activity

Through the door of his prison cell, Washington State Penitentiary inmate Jimmy McIntosh displays his tattoos Feb 3, 2009. The prison in Walla Walla, Wash., recently built four modern housing units to help reduce gang violence against staff and other inmates. In order to separate rival groups, prison officials closely monitor inmates’ tattoos to determine gang affiliations. (Colin Mulvany / The Spokesman-Review)
By Eli Francovich elif@spokesman.com(509) 459-5508

The City of Spokane and Spokane Public Schools will receive more than $260,000 in Department of Justice grant money to “enhance gang prevention.”

The money will allow the school district, the city, and police to work more closely with other community organizations involved in gang suppression. That collaboration will be known as the Gang Free Spokane Project.

A portion of that money has already gone toward hiring a project manager – Alise Mnati.

A key objective is identifying likely gang activity in schools, and responding appropriately. Initially that work will be focused on four schools: Rogers High School, Shaw Middle School, Garry Middle School and Glover Middle School.

“The hope is … we end up developing a culturally sensitive system of identification that is not mislabeling or stigmatizing of certain groups,” said Oscar Harris, the coordinator for Family Support and Community Engagement for Spokane Public Schools.

Although gang activity may not look like it does in larger urban areas, Harris said it’s still a concern in Spokane.

The project will have several objectives, Mnati said. First the money will pay for an assessment of gang activity in Spokane schools as well as parent and student perception of gangs, Mnati said.

The next effort will be intervention. That may mean talking to students about the reality of affiliating with a gang, or meeting with former gang members, Mnati said.

Then, there would be more active suppression of gang activity, or potential gang activity. Already the school district’s dress code forbids wearing certain clothing items, often gang-connected.

The final effort would be suppression. That would require more direct cooperation with law enforcement and the juvenile court system.

Mnati’s role is to coordinate efforts between the district, the city, the police, the Anti-Gang Task Force, Kingdom Fellowship and other involved community groups.

Eventually those efforts will all be coordinated by an anti-gang steering committee.

Currently, Mnati is working on identifying gang activity or likely gang activity within the school district. Harris said there are different “signs and symptoms.” Those could include wearing certain colors to school, or hanging out in certain areas after school.

One concern is that any effort to label gang activity could be racially or geographically biased, Harris said. That’s why it is important for there to be several community groups working together, he said.

Although the grant has already been awarded, the Spokane City Council has to approve the distribution of money. The council is expected to take that step Monday.

“The great thing, I’ll say again, there has been intervention type work that has been going on for a while now,” Harris said. “Those are the kind of things that we are trying to shore up and even increase by doing this project.”