OFFICIAL'S ARREST RAISES QUESTIONS INCIDENT HIGHLIGHTS STAFFING DILEMMA.

Byline: RACHEL URANGA

Staff Writer

The recent arrest of an administrator for the San Fernando Valley's largest gang-intervention program raises questions about the practice of funding organizations that employ former criminals and ex-gang members.

Mario Corona, 30, a former gang member and director of job development for Communities in Schools, was arrested Wednesday when police investigating a Panorama City drug house pulled him over and said they found him hiding a pound of methamphetamine underneath his clothing.

Critics say the arrest reveals the inherent problems of hiring former gangsters to mentor current ones -- with many of them keeping one foot in the old lifestyle.

And it comes as Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is set to release his prevention and intervention plans as gang violence soars, especially in the Valley.

"I don't buy into the theory that you need ex-convicts and ex-gang members to do gang intervention," said Gary Nanson, who oversees the Los Angeles Police Department's Valley gang enforcement detail. "The real sad thing is that Corona was being paid with Los Angeles city money."

But his co-workers expressed dismay, saying they never suspected Corona -- a former bad boy gang member named Spider who had been in and out of Juvenile Hall as a youth and who served time for possession of firearms -- might have slipped back into a criminal life.

"He was our poster child," said Bobby Arias, president of Communities in Schools, which has a working relationship with the LAPD. "There is no question that this is a huge disappointment. But in this line of work if you are not working with people with a high possibility of risk, you are not working with the right people."

Last year, Communities in Schools received about $700,000 in city and federal funds to run a "hard-core" intervention program focusing on neighborhoods where shootings had occurred. Under the plan, 10 "interventionists" -- seven of them former gang members, many with criminal pasts -- attempted to quell tensions in the neighborhoods and prevent retaliation.

The city funds three other similar programs, spending $3.7 million last year on intervention.

"The mayor certainly does not believe that former gang members are the only individuals with a license to operate effective intervention programs," Villaraigosa spokesman Matt Szabo said. "They may be part of the solution but not the ultimate solution."

Corona, who helped train and place youths in jobs, was paid through city and federal job development funds, Arias said. He is on administrative leave without pay pending the outcome of his case.

"You can't cast a net on all former gang members to exclude them from such work. But I think where they are involved, it is good to have oversight as well as evaluation of the program," said Tom Ward, professor of anthropology at USC and a gang expert. "Unfortunately, most of the programs don't have an adequate evaluation component built into the project."

Civil rights attorney Connie Rice, whose $500,000 study earlier this year on the city's ability to fight gangs found the efforts piecemeal, inefficient and lacking oversight, described the arrest of Corona as one bad apple.

"I think this was a case of somebody living a double life," said Rice, who called Communities in Schools one of the best such programs in L.A. And though Corona was not an intervention worker, she said many of the programs need former gang members.

"If you are talking about hard-core gang intervention or managing gang conflict in prison, you don't have any choices," she said. "The social system and gang culture require credibility. The only one who is going to have credibility to speak to gang members and shot-callers are people that have been in that life."

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