Diversion Programs

Aaron Sorkin, the Emmy Award-winning creator of the hit NBC television series "West Wing," pleaded guilty Tuesday to three drug possession charges and entered a two-year diversion program for first-time offenders. If he completes the program, the charges will be dismissed, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Natalie Adomian. If not, he faces three years and eight months in prison.

For the dozen "Junior Troopers" making bracelets in a Pico-Aliso community center, the time here potentially prevents them from being exposed to drugs on the streets of the Boyle Heights housing project. For years this and an array of other programs here and at seven other public housing projects operated by the Los Angeles Housing Authority have aimed to combat drugs. But the $1.9-million federal grant that helps fund such programs is in danger of being eliminated.

California's effort to prevent its young from becoming criminals or crime victims is haphazard and underfunded and often fails to help those most in need, a state oversight panel concludes in a report released Tuesday. Despite a steady decline in juvenile crime, the report calls youth violence a crisis and says prevention programs must no longer be viewed as a luxury by lawmakers and taxpayers.

Over the objections of Trabuco Canyon residents, county supervisors Tuesday began the process that may lead to a new access road into Joplin Youth Center and the possibility that a much-debated second youth facility known as Potrero Leadership Academy will be built. Residents have fought the proposed academy, saying its construction and the traffic it would bring could endanger hikers, horseback riders and children who play along narrow Rose Canyon Road.

No sooner had major league baseball and the Dodgers announced Tuesday a first-of-its-kind, $10-million sports academy for at-risk youth than Lake View Terrace neighbors of the project's site in the Hansen Dam Recreation Area raised objections. Some area residents are not sold on the multimillion-dollar Youth Baseball Academy, questioning how at-risk youth in Los Angeles will be identified and selected to attend the facility and fearing the criteria will be exclusionary.

When shootings erupted in a corner of Santa Monica two years ago, the left-leaning city embraced a progressive solution: Give money to three young grass-roots activists, including a former gang member, and let them find a way to steer kids from violence. But the effort has fallen apart. The young black and Latino activists who spearheaded the effort have dissolved their partnership. More than $300,000 of city funds bought little but bad feelings.

As Los Angeles County officials prepare for the July 1 implementation of a new law that dramatically changes the way drug offenders are treated by the courts, two matters have become abundantly clear: They need more time and they need more money. "It's a monumental undertaking," said Los Angeles County Public Defender Michael P. Judge, who serves on local and statewide planning groups gearing up for the changes required under Proposition 36, which was passed by voters in November.

When it comes to the struggle against drugs, Americans have become addicted to despair. The searing movie "Traffic" portrays the flow of drugs into America as virtually a force of nature, as irreversible as gravity or the tides. In a national poll last month, three-fourths of those surveyed said the nation was losing the drug war. Yet the share of Americans who use illegal drugs is half today what it was in 1979--just 1 in 14 now, compared with 1 in 7 then.

When Michael Baca worked in the emergency room of St. Francis Medical Center in Lynwood, there was one type of wound he could not get used to seeing. Bullet holes in young men. So, after five years on the trauma team assisting doctors, Baca helped the hospital open a new, unusual ER--the Earn Respect gang intervention program. "These kids used to come rolling in here like they were frequent fliers," said Baca, who turned in his stethoscope to be the program's coordinator.

At the top of Mike Jaramillo's wish list are steady salaries and health insurance for members of the Aztecs firefighting crew based in Boyle Heights. A few miles away, in South Los Angeles, Kevin Nelson speaks of providing a van, uniforms and other equipment for the Highlanders crew. The two men, who run independent programs affiliated with the U.S. Forest Service, want desperately to help young men and women stay away from Los Angeles gang life and out of prison.