If Los Angeles leaders take the advice of Controller Laura Chick, a minister from Idaho who has studied philosophy would soon be responsible for reforming a dysfunctional bureaucracy that spends millions of dollars on unproven anti-gang programs.
Jeff Carr was chosen by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa last year to bring a fresh eye to gang problems in a city seen nationally as a launching pad for bands of violent youth. But the new director of gang reduction and youth development programs does not control more than a dozen city departments that award contracts for anti-gang services.
Chick, who last week assailed the city for taking such a decentralized approach, said that placing all programs under one entity in the mayor's office would make it easier to judge their effectiveness.
Carr, who supported Chick's conclusions, developed youth programs for the Bresee Foundation, a nonprofit organization in Los Angeles, for 17 years. He holds a degree in religion and philosophy from Northwest Nazarene University.
Last week, Carr, 44, talked about what he has seen and done on the job thus far. His comments were edited and condensed:
What have been the surprises of this job?
I didn't really realize just how big the city of Los Angeles is and how very unique it is. Every community is different.
People live probably in two extremes. . . . The vast majority are anesthetized to the violence. They have no clue it happens. I mean, a week ago Friday you all had a brief little [news] story about the recent spate of violence in South L.A., in Watts. But on the day we had a press conference with the mayor and the chief [of police], we talked about the fact that there had been 10 shootings, four homicides and 17 people wounded in the span of about 72 hours that week.
I went home that night and looked at the headlines online at latimes.com. The two big headlines that stuck out to me were Britney Spears' mental health situation and . . . then right underneath that was that the City Council had voted to make sure every 4-month-old cat and dog was neutered. Way, way down was a story about some recent violence and arrests in South L.A.
Well, so the vast majority of citizens in Los Angeles don't have any idea that that even occurred.
Meanwhile, there was an entire community that was traumatized by that situation and in some ways, paralyzed . . . .
