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Gang situation calls for straight talk, not denials

By Gene Grant
Tuesday, April 17, 2007

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Deny, deny, deny.

What else can we call the reaction from some leaders in Albuquerque about the gang situation in this city?

I would bet very good money that the majority of readers scanning The Tribune's stories last week on gang violence had never heard the names TCK and West Side Locos before. But to many living on the far West Side, those names are familiar.

Law enforcement officials and Mayor Martin Chavez himself wasted no time in disputing the notion that there's a "gang war" going on in this city.

But whatever you call it, the numbers are damning.

The most jolting piece of the coverage was the map detailing 11 gang-related homicides from April 2003 to March of this year. If there was ever a way to document fear and anxiety, it might look like this.

If that isn't enough, local law enforcers estimate the number of Albuquerque's known gang members at 6,000. That should be all you need to know.

I feel for the mayor's position. On his watch, Albuquerque has been on a pretty good roll.

Reputations come hard and go easily. Understood.

But if the administration and law enforcement prefer a silent approach - and we'll take the mayor at his word that there's an initiative of some sort about to be announced - where do the rest of us air this out?

Perhaps less wordsmithing and more straight talk is in order.

Here's an idea: radio.

Two weeks ago, I stumbled across "The Bo Taylor Show," a Los Angeles radio call-in program hosted by Taylor, a former gang member. It airs from midnight to 2 a.m. on Sunday nights. To date I've only heard clips, frustrated by an uncooperative Internet stream.

Even so, it's a provocative array of voices: current gang members looking to get out of the life, grieving mothers, offenders actually calling from prison, you name it. It's a community hot line, a way for anyone and everyone with a stake - or not - to get to the heart of it all.

I love this idea for Albuquerque. Simply adore it.

This is street-level intervention and prevention, not arrests and tears following a tragedy.

It very much reminds me of a radio show that aired during the Õ70s in my home city of Boston named "Drug Hotline." The hosts took phone calls from all manner of folk on the raging issue of drugs. Many of the calls came from phone booths. Sometimes it was dealers, sometimes junkies themselves, hanging on by a thread and staying on the air for the entire hour. It was stunning radio - raw, real and timely.

This was eons before the drug war, and it had an enormous impact on me, a high schooler at the time, with drugs entering my universe. I can still hear some of those voices today.

It beat the heck out of finger-wagging teachers.

Now, the good news. KKSS-FM (97.3), a hip-hop station in Albuquerque, is in talks with its corporate office about the same idea. Chuck Morgan, general manager for the Univison station tells me, "We have talked about it quite a bit."

It's an idea worth supporting.

If the mayor and law enforcement don't want to talk about this, fine. Deny particular words and headlines all you want.

The better idea is to talk about it among ourselves. Without denial.