Clark County’s Gang Intervention Team helps get youth off streets

The odds are stacked against kids like Andrew Alvarez.

Raised by a poor single mother in a gang-infested east Las Vegas neighborhood, Alvarez thought he had nothing to lose when, at 13, he decided to join the Little Angels.

A tall, husky kid with a bad temper, Alvarez quickly became a "shot caller" -- or major player -- in the street gang.

Along the way he sold drugs, was arrested for assault and was expelled from school.

He figured his future was pretty much laid out.

"There's two ways to leave (a gang): die or go to prison," he said.

But, with plenty of intensive help from Clark County's Gang Intervention Team, Alvarez, now 21, managed to navigate another way.

Today, Alvarez is a married, employed father of a chubby 6-month-old boy. He hopes to some day become a firefighter, and hasn't associated with the gang in three years.

The county's intervention team has for years helped "high-risk" youth such as Alvarez avoid or escape membership in local gangs.

The team this year was inducted as an "unsung hero" into the Nevada Education Hall of Fame for its work getting former gangbangers back to school.

"At first I thought, 'Do we really belong here?'" Melvin Ennis, the team's program administrator, said of the induction. "But I know if we didn't get them back into school, they couldn't do anything with them. We got kids in college."

Ennis, 44, is technically the leader of the team, which consists of three full-time staffers and 14 part-timers. But his duties overlap with those of the two other full-timers, Alex Bernal and Kevin Niday.

Together, the team has mentored thousands of children from high-risk neighborhoods in its Back on Track program, building relationships through sports and educational programs, cultural activities, community service projects, and lots of one-on-one and family counseling.

"We don't get immediate gratification, but we get to see kids from the projects maturing and building skill sets," said Ennis, who was raised in public housing in Las Vegas.

The team works closely with 70 to 80 kids at a time.

Las Vegas police say there are 10,788 known gang members in Southern Nevada, representing 491 known gangs.

Ennis, Bernal and Niday say they see more success stories than failures among the kids they work with, but the failures always sting.

"I've seen a lot of kids make it," said Niday, 51. "I've seen seven or eight funerals, and maybe 100 in prison."

The team says roughly 80 percent of the kids in the program are either working or in school.

Initiated in 2002, the team sprung out of the county's New Directions for Youth program, which focused on preventing kids from joining gangs in the first place.

Program staffers noticed plenty of resources were available that helped kids before they got into trouble, but few that worked with gang members who wanted to change their lives.

"It wasn't something that everyone would want to do, go find gang members and work with them," said Shannon West, regional homeless services coordinator for the county.

West, formerly the assistant director of parks and community services, oversaw the intervention team's work during its early years.

West also nominated the team for induction into the Nevada Education Hall of Fame, a program of the Nevada Public Education Foundation.

The award was created to honor people and organizations who have positively impacted Nevada through contributions to public education.

"The team works tirelessly as advocates for those young men," West said. "They help them get back into school. I think that's one of the most significant things that can ever be done."

The team catches some of the kids early enough to prevent them from ever joining a gang.

Such was the case with Alfonzo McNeal, now 22.

Team members reached out to McNeal when he was 13, shortly after he moved with his mother and two siblings from Kansas City, Mo., into a Las Vegas public housing complex.

"It was all single mothers, kids running around wild, gang members," McNeal said. "The team kept me busy, always. They started putting a basketball in my hands."

McNeal started playing in the team's popular late-night basketball league at a local community center.

He wound up earning a basketball scholarship, and is now a senior at North Dakota's Mayville State University.

The 6-foot-6-inch tall McNeal will be the first person in his family to graduate from college. He wants to be a teacher.

The team has to work harder with other kids, such as Alvarez, who have been involved in gangs for years.

Alvarez's first contact with Bernal came when the boy was 15. His mother called the team, desperate for help controlling her angry, troubled son.

"Alex came to talk to me," Alvarez remembered. "He was straight up. He grew up the same way."

Bernal, now 40, was himself a "high-risk" youth. Ennis was his mentor.

"Melvin saved me," Bernal said. "Now, it's like, 'Pay it forward.'"

Alvarez started hanging out with Bernal, and working out at a community center late at night instead of running the streets.

"Alex broke me up from my homeys," he said.

When it came time to completely sever ties with the Little Angels, Alvarez said it was easier for him than it might have been for many gang members.

"I told them I was my own man," the 6-foot-5-inch, 270-pound Alvarez said. "Nobody's going to mess with me."

Watching kids leave gangs and eventually succeed is the most rewarding aspect of being part of the Gang Intervention Team, Bernal said.

"I got the best job in the world."

Contact reporter Lynnette Curtis at lcurtis @reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0285.