Look no further than the front page of today’s Free Lance for a reason why Hollister’s growing gang violence problem must be addressed at its core.
The weekend before a special forum this Wednesday – set up to educate parents on their rights and responsibilities in battling the problem, on how to strengthen family life – another young Hollister resident was killed after a needless exchange of words escalated into a spate of violence with shots fired.
Whether 21-year-old Robert Barraza was a gang member – his family says he wasn’t, and police contend he may have been – the circumstances surrounding his death point to another sign of the cultural decay attacking Hollister’s children and young adults, and leading to the kind of gang-like mayhem on display this past weekend.
Violent crime is on a relatively steep rise in Hollister. So far in 2007, there have been 18 shootings, most involving gang members. Before last weekend, there had been three homicides this year, and police confirmed at least two of them have been gang related.
Wednesday’s forum being put on by the Gang Task Force Advisory Board is a small fraction of the solution, but a needed one at that. Parents are, after all, on the absolute front lines of this battle. So the more education available on curtailing the problem where it starts, the better.
In this difficult financial time for Hollister government, it becomes even more crucial, though, that the message find its way to the families most vulnerable to this lifestyle. Because of budget cuts, police staffing is depleted – there are 29 sworn officers, two detectives – and the department has dissolved its programs for gang prevention and intervention.
John Delgado with the Hollister Youth Alliance noted in Saturday’s story about the forum how parents don’t always realize their kids are involved in gangs. And that’s where a forum like Wednesday’s can help – if enough voices are heard and, from there, circulated throughout the community.
The forum is free and starts at 6:30pm at the Veterans Memorial Building. Telling by the level of participation – as of Friday, 19 organizations had been committed to attending – those affected along a spiral of outer rings surrounding that core understand the problem’s severity.
But education is just one part of the solution, and the accelerating pace of violence is this once-quiet town likely won’t diminish without two major changes of course: Families need to take a more proactive role in the fight, and Hollister police must get the necessary dollars, through a “yes” vote on November’s ballot proposal for a sales tax increase, to hire more officers.
