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Shrider column: Former drug dealer now part of solution

Batch Data Processor | Friday, Mar 30 2007 9:10 PM

Last Updated: Friday, Mar 30 2007 9:21 PM

Once upon a time Manuel Carrizalez was a tough-talking, heroin-shooting, drug-peddling participant in Bakersfield's growing gang problem.

Now he's part of the solution.

The baby-faced former gang member was on hand Monday night when county supervisors and City Council members jointly approved an ambitious plan to run gangs out of Kern County.

It's been a long time coming, says Carrizalez, director of Stay Focused Ministries, a mentoring program for at-risk kids.

"There's always been a lot of talk about gangs, but this is the first time we've all come together to deal with it," he says. "I think now this is something that will work."

Carrizalez should know. It took police, prison, prayer and a near-death drug overdose to drag him back from the brink of gang-dependent destruction. Now, he and his ministry are part of an east-Bakersfield coalition of community activists and faith-based groups that astute city and county officials say they can't do without in the war against gangs.

"This east Bakersfield coalition really got my attention," says Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood. "The faith-based people are the movers and shakers and the doers. At our first community meeting we had over 600 people show up. These people want change."

With a strategy that unites the efforts of local government, law enforcement, and community-based groups, they just may get it. City police and county deputies have fought valiantly against the rising tide of gang growth for decades, but often without that all-important cop-community cooperation. The result is a gang problem that's reached epidemic proportions.

Local law enforcement agencies report the vast majority of murders committed in the city and county are gang related. Officials estimate there are about 6,000 gang members in Kern County, though Carrizalez believes that's a conservative number.

"When I was a kid, the gangs were mostly in the neighborhood," he says, referring to the Cottonwood Road area where he grew up. "Now the gangs are all over town."

Carrizalez and his volunteer corps of mentors spend countless hours in local schools and on the streets, sharing Carrizalez's own nightmarish story -- he was running drugs and shooting heroin at 14 and by 18 was an inmate at Soledad Prison -- to turn at-risk kids away from gangs. In public schools his message is carefully secular, but at rallies and on the streets he speaks of the life-saving power of prayer and his faith in Jesus Christ.

"I have a praying grandma and aunt," he says. "When I overdosed on a speedball and was in ICU, they called in a Catholic priest, a Mormon elder and a Christian pastor to pray for me. I guess they thought I needed a lot of prayer."

Those prayers eventually took hold and changed his life, says the 42-year-old Carrizalez, whose regular visits to his old neighborhood inspire old friends who still live there.

"We need more people here like him," says childhood chum Homer Morales. "Things are already changing here. The cops are stopping everybody, maybe people that don't need to be stopped, but there's not as many ambulances out here, so I guess that's OK."

While Stay Focused Ministries and other faith-based and community-based groups will concentrate on the prevention segment of the plan, local law enforcement agencies pledge to ably, and forcefully, handle the suppression end.

"If Johnny is out at 11:30 at night and gets stopped, don't call the Sheriff's Department because Johnny should have been home by that time," Youngblood says. "When we see three or four juveniles cruising around with an agenda we're not aware of, they're going to be stopped. We will stay within the law, but we're going to be aggressive."

Supervisor Michael Rubio said at Monday's meeting there are those who have criticized the level of faith the community groups bring to the plan.

Unbelievable. We've got gang members shooting each other on the streets of Bakersfield and critics are worried about using faith to help curb the violence? Shame on them. Including faith-based groups in the strategic mix finally makes for a complete plan. One that might actually make a difference.

Marylee Shrider's column appears on Tuesdays and Saturdays. Reach her at 395-7474 or mshrider@bakersfield.com.