What follows is a glimpse at about 20 minutes in the life of a state
probation and parole officer who works with gang clientele. It was a day I
chose at random and, as far as the probation/parole officer was concerned,
"A pretty typical Monday morning." I want to give you a taste of some of the
issues facing these officers and their clients.
It's ten o'clock on a beautiful and warm Monday morning. Sharon is a state probation
and parole officer with a caseload of 43 gang members. She's been
doing this kind of work for the past 10 years. Every Monday her
clients report to her in person. On Tuesdays and Wednesdays she visits clients at home, school, and work,
and conducts interviews with their parents, teachers, employers, and others.
Thursdays are spent with clients as they go to court and Fridays are spent
doing paperwork.
Throughout the week Sharon goes from one meeting to another because she
serves on the board of several
community-based treatment agencies. At an annual celebratory dinner
sponsored by a city-wide service organization she was awarded the "City
Service Award" for the year 1999. Her salary in 1999, with 10 years experience,
was $23,000. She worked six to
seven days a week and seldom got home before seven o'clock in the
evening. She was allowed two weeks vacation each year and, not surprisingly,
quit the job
one year after I visited her.
The following vignettes are of the gang clients who were paying
their regular one-day-a-week visit to Sharon.
Denny
Denny has just arrived for his appointment. He is the last of the "Chicago
Boys" - a group of
nineteen African-American gang youth who migrated from Chicago to this
community a few years ago in order to sell crack cocaine. They took
the police by surprise in that their presence took nearly a year to detect. After two years of undercover buys, surveillance, and gathering of intelligence, all but one of the Chicago Boys were
sent to
prison. Denny is that one.
Before Denny's visit Sharon told me "He is a highly assaultive person.
He has a problem with alcohol, too."
He decided to stay here rather
than move back to Chicago. He's dating a local university athlete, a
woman he has beaten several times. She and Denny joined Sharon and I in an
interview room.
Sharon asked Denny "Am I going to be hearing about a criminal violation
this morning?" "Yes," he replied, and Sharon began to read him his Miranda
rights. He told her about several vehicle violations he had accumulated
then handed her the tickets. He said "I
was in Denver buying my son some clothes." While looking over
the tickets Sharon said "The officer that stopped you said you were driving
drunk with a suspended license. He said you ran over a curb and
ran from the police!" "I didn't ride over the curb and I
didn't run from the police," he replied.
She asked him if he had been
helped by the out-patient substance abuse program into which she had placed
him. "It's helped me deal with my anger," he said, "but
it hasn't helped with the drinking." "Well, at least you're
not hitting people any more," she replied. She also told him that, due
to the tickets, he will probably be placed on intensive probation
supervision and that it will require contact with a probation officer
several times a week. She asked him if he was going to fight the charges
against him and he said he would.
She wrote a few things in his file and told him "The problem is that
you are not supposed to drink. It's a condition of your probation. I could send you to a better treatment program, but you
would have to
have to pay for it ... and I don't know how you're going to be able to come up
with the money for that. You need to make a decision in your life ... to
make your life different." Looking at the floor, head hung, he replied "I
know."
The
visit was over. It took about three minutes.
Tyrone
Tyrone came into the room two minutes later. He is a local
African-American who claims membership in a Crip set. He sat in a chair
and tipped his head downward, hiding behind the beak of
his baseball cap. He said precious little during the interview.
An almost constant snicker remained on his face as he fabricated
one story or excuse after another under Sharon's questioning. When asked why he didn't report
that he had moved from his apartment to another, he slid further down in his chair,
crossed his arms in front of his chest, snickered, and said
nothing. Sharon said "I could violate you for this. You know that, don't
you?" "I was only gone a week!," he said, exasperated. "I didn't think I needed to call you.
I didn't move, I just slept
over at someone else's place for a few days."
Sharon gave him a copy of a state-approved booklet outlining the standard
conditions of probation and parole. She had provided him with several copies
since he entered her case load. In it clients learn they
must notify their probation/parole officer "... of any changes in
residency within 48 hours." Tyrone insisted "I didn't
change residence, I just slept someplace else!"
Sharon became agitated and told Tyrone "You know you needed to call. How many copies of this booklet have I given you?
And I've told
you about this before. It says 'Residency is defined as
the location where you sleep and spend most of your time.'" "And I
spend most of my time at home, where you call me!," he replied.
Last week, I joined Sharon for her weekly visits to clients' homes and, in
the process, I met the woman with whom Tyrone normally lives. She told
us she asked him to move out until he got his anger under control. Remembering this, Sharon asked Tyrone "So, what's going on
with you two?" "We got into a fight," he said. "She tries to tell me
what to do too much and I don't like being bossed around. She's more
like a mom!" "Do you love her?,"
Sharon asked. "Yeh," he said, yawning. "Do you want to bring her here with you for your next visit?"
His immediate and emphatic reply was "No!"
"Why not?"
"We already talked."
"And?"
"We agreed not to fight anymore. I don't have any problems.
She's got a problem."
"How did you get here today?" she asked. He grinned
and said nothing. Disappointed, Sharon asked "You drove, didn't you?"
He was arrested for driving while
intoxicated and his license was taken away about one month ago. He is
not supposed to be driving for the next two months. She told him "I could write you up for this, but I'm not going
to. I could do that, you know!" Instead, she increased the number
of visits he must pay to her from once every two weeks to once a
week and closed the session by telling him "Don't drive to work!"
Tyrone left the room without saying a word and Sharon asked the next client to come in.
The appointment took 5 minutes.
Manny
Next up was Manny, a local African-American male who claimed membership in
a Blood set. Manny was placed on State probation for having been in
possession of less than a gram of crack cocaine. That was about two
years ago. He is also on Federal probation for the same offense. The visit
was interrupted before it could even begin by a phone call
from a client with a mentally ill friend. There was a crisis and the
client didn't know what to do. Sharon tried to put that fire out.
After the call is over she turned to Manny and asked "Are you staying out of
trouble." "I'm going to school," he said, "and holding down a regular
job. I'm spending as much time as I can with my girlfriend so I don't
have time to get in trouble!" He began telling Sharon about a situation at work that has become a problem.
A female employee had taken a dislike to
him. It all began when he told her a lie. By prior
agreement with his supervisor, Manny was told that when he was finished with a
project at his work station he could leave that station and do work at another
station.
The female employee didn't know about the agreement and asked Manny why he was
doing the other work. He told her "I just saw it needed to be
done, so I did it." He told Sharon he didn't want to
tell her his supervisor had given him that option because he thought
she would be jealous of the additional latitude he was given. When
she found out the supervisor had previously approved the work, she saw
Manny as a liar and told him so. Since that time she has not trusted
him, questions everything he does, and is telling her boss that he isn't a
good worker.
Manny said he is enjoying the job and, before the
woman was hired (just recently), he had been getting on well with his boss.
The relationship with his boss has become strained due
comments being made about him to the boss by the female employee. He didn't know what to do with this problem and
asked Sharon for assistance. She struggled to find an answer and ended
up suggesting that he speak with the supervisor about it and to ask that the
female employee be present. She thought the three of them might be able to
reach an
understanding.
The visit took four minutes. There were five
other clients waiting to be seen. Another six had already failed to show up for
their appointments. "That's usual," she said.
David
David walked into the room already agitated and began his visit by telling
Sharon "I've been evicted from my apartment because of my dog ...
he weighs over forty pounds. That's my landlord's limit. My dog
weighs like a hundred and twenty. And the landlord is upset about the
punching bag out front."
David was in an anger management group I observed a couple of weeks ago. He has a
severe anger management problem.
He recently learned to take some of his anger out on a punching bag. He
bought a stuffed, leather punching bag, hung it on a
tree limb in front of the apartment house in which he lives and proceeded
to beat the stuffing out of it ... literally. The bag, what remains of it,
hangs limply from the limb and stuffing is now strewn over the yard, driveway, and on the sidewalk.
Sharon told me she recently received a call from a local counseling
center where David is a patient and that they thought he may be schizophrenic. They aren't certain, but they have
recommended he be placed on a medicine which should help him
control his anger. He knows about the medicine and has been taking it
irregularly. Sharon had to step out of the room for a few minutes and, while she was gone,
David told me "I just can't go on being like this! People
are afraid to come up to me. I'm losing all my friends!" I asked him if
the medicine was helping. He said "It makes
me mellow when I take it. Right now, it's like I black out and don't even realize
what I'm doin' when I'm beating on someone."
Back in the room, Sharon told David "If I even
smell alcohol or drugs
on you, you're out. Do you get that?!" He shook his head in the
affirmative and left the room. Sharon later told me that when David starts behaving aggressively he has been drinking alcohol and
smoking marijuana.
The visit took 4 minutes.
Mark
Sharon walked into the waiting room and brought back Mark. "What's up?" she
asked. "Everything is O.K. at home," he replied. "I'm trying
to move grandma to a different nursing home. And I went to court on a
noise violation ... got a one hundred dollar fine."
Sharon told me Mark needs anger management classes but, since he will
be formally off supervision next month, he won't be placed in it because the
classes take longer than that. Mark believes that
"Anger control for me is being on probation. If I screw up,
I'll just get in more trouble."
He's been putting off finishing high school and, instead, is
getting vocational training because he has to take care of his mother (an
unemployed substance abuser), his two brothers, two sisters, and his
grandmother. Sharon asked him "Why are you the one who's left with all these
responsibilities?" "Cause no one else will do
it," he quickly replied. Concerned, Sharon told him "You're taking on a lot of responsibilities and I wonder if they're
going to get in the way of you getting your life on track."
The meeting was suddenly terminated because Sharon received another phone call.
It was from a local couple - the aunt and uncle of a California
gang member. Their nephew's parents are street people and can
not help their son out of his situation. The aunt and uncle offered
to fly the nephew to this community and help him. They don't
know about gangs, the gang life, or anything related to it, so they called
the probation and parole office for some advice. Their call was
transferred to Sharon.
She explained to the Aunt and Uncle a little about gang life and about the difficulties
they are likely to face if they take on this responsibility. While she was talking to them I began thinking about how gangs are sometimes formed by migrating gang members - some of them
purposely moved to live with a relative in another community in hopes they
will get out of the gang lifestyle. Having spent more time on the phone than intended,
she ended the call and the interview with
Mark was terminated. He left the room as Sharon followed him to the
waiting room and called out "Who's next?"