CHICAGO INNOVATIVE IN BATTLING GANG LIFE.

Byline: Beth Barrett Daily News

Officials in Chicago have taken innovative law enforcement, intervention, and prevention steps against gangs - including using a variety of behavioral strategies to change the violent ``norms'' of gang life - to cut shootings in half in targeted areas.

Overall, homicides are down this year in Chicago 22 percent, but even steeper declines were registered in some of the worst gang-infested neighborhoods where intense gang-intervention strategies were used.

Chicago Police Department spokesman David Bayless said the force, under new Chief Philip Cline, has combined state-of-the-art gang-fighting enforcement techniques, improved intelligence gathering and bullet-proof surveillance cameras with stepped-up intervention and other programs.

``A lot of our strategies were based on visits to Los Angeles and New York, and then we did it Chicago style,'' Bayless said, noting the city now uses a computer statistics tracking system similar to the one pioneered by Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton.

Chicago police also have a strong working relationship with CeaseFire, a non-profit group that sends outreach workers into communities to work with gang members before violence erupts, and to break the cycle of shooting and retaliation that has held many inner city communities hostage.

``They've been our partners in it,'' Bayless said.

Dr. Gary Slutkin, director and professor of epidemiology and international health at the University of Illinois at Chicago and executive director of The Chicago Project for Violence Prevention and CeaseFire, said gang violence is a learned behavior that can be changed.

``It's become normal to break all norms. It's a parallel reality to the world that you know. They're co-existing in a parallel world. Everything is more frantic, desperate and life has less value. Everyone expects everyone else to act nuts. It's a lot like war.''

Chicago's CeaseFire effort has seen drops of an average of 51 percent in six of the city's worst neighborhoods where the project was introduced between 2000 and 2003.

The high-crime West Garfield Park area saw a 67 percent drop in shootings, with others showing between 30 percent and 70 percent declines, according to Chicago Police Department statistics.

Mayor James Hahn met with Slutkin and gang outreach workers this summer in Chicago, concluding the CeaseFire program was ``quite successful,'' his spokeswoman Julie Wong said.

``He is always looking for what other cities are doing to address gang violence, and what best practices we might learn from here in Los Angeles.''

The decreases in the Chicago killings were achieved as the police and intervention teams worked together more closely than they do in many cities. For example, CeaseFire representatives sit in on weekly meetings where the police command and field staff analyze crime trends and work on suppression strategies.

While CeaseFire interventionists work confidentially with the gangs, there is a high level of trust nonetheless that's developed between them and the police.

``I think the relationships were built in the field,'' Bayless said.

The intervention workers augment the police by trying to alter behavior patterns patterns in areas where many groups long have accepted violence - shouting, beatings, stabbings and shootings - as a commonplace part of life.

``They saw it growing up; they saw their friends doing it,'' Slutkin said. ``The norm is what most people do, what they see others doing. Everyone since they were six months or a year old tells them what's wrong with them. People yell about what's wrong whether it's their mom, a brother ... They're living in a pressure cooker.''

Normally, he said, society tries to change this learned behavior by adding ``more violence, more pressure, more shooting, more 'don't do this,' more punishment.''

Instead, university staff members oversee an elaborate network of 60 to 70 outreach workers and their supervisors, themselves mostly former gang members.

The outreach workers are trained to let gang members ``vent,'' at the same time gradually offering help and alternatives. There also is a sustained advertising campaign - including billboards, fliers, buttons, bumper stickers and other material - urging people to help stop the violence, specifically by not resorting to guns and reporting those who seem in danger of doing so.

Outreach workers are trained to listen, to show understanding and to slowly guide people to see the futility of the violence when other options are available to them.

``Somebody has to make sense to them about what's going on,'' Slutkin said. ``They get to vent, but as enough time goes by they see the shooting and killing is not of value, as they have time to think. They get a little help - no one has ever helped them before. It's a gradual process.''

About two-thirds of the outreach workers are ex-gang members who served time and know the streets. They are screened for the program, including by the police, to eliminate certain kinds of offenders, including those with convictions for sex crimes or crimes against children.

Supervisors get together weekly for training and briefings, with all the outreach workers also assembling regularly.

Outreach workers are assigned in groups to neighborhoods, where they learn the needs of the community, keep track of shootings and other violence, and can report back to the group, where brainstorming on interventions takes place.

Beth Barrett, [phone]

beth.barrett(at)dailynews.com