Representatives from area gather for gang awareness training

KENNETT, Mo. -- More than 58 people gathered in the Fellowship Hall of the Slicer Street Church of Christ recently to take part in gang awareness training. Community members from Kennett, Holcomb, Malden, Caruthersville, Charleston, East Prairie and Stoddard County were in attendance.

"The community assessment survey conducted by the C2000 and First Step behavior units found that gang awareness was one of the issues community members wanted to bring in," said Jessica Metheny, prevention specialist with the Regional Support Center.

Metheny had attended gang awareness training in Poplar Bluff, Mo., similar to the one given in Kennett, and felt it would provide the information requested by members of the communities surveyed.

John Gibbons and Rick Stewart, led the eight-hour training. They are employees of the Missouri Division of Youth Services and work at a youth center in Poplar Bluff.

The two have worked with youth who are involved in gangs at their center to obtain information about gangs in Southeast Missouri, how to identify gang paraphernalia and how the structure of gangs operate.

"We put all of the gang members (in their facility) in one group," Stewart said. "The kids taught us about gangs and we taught about true belonging and importance."

Stewart and Gibbons are also members of the Youth Council on Gang Awareness that presented the training seminar.

Trainers' goals

The council has three goals:

Inform and dissect the basic human needs, such as identity, recognition, belonging, discipline, love and money, which led young people to become involved in gangs.

"It touched me to learn that to the kids that gang is family and they usually do not have a base support group at home," Kennett Middle School counselor Susan Rouse said. "It is so sad that these kids will allow themselves to be beat into a gang just to be accepted."

Work to establish personal relationships with gang members and once the relationship is established attempt to understand the allegiance to the gang.

"The OG is their surrogate father," Stewart said. "He is the role model they never had to begin with."

The OG, or original gangster, is the head of the gang. But as Rouse learned the OG gives acceptance and love but not without expecting something in return.

Provide community leaders with knowledge and insight into the gangs to possibly stop the gang in the first generation.

"The training will help to recognize signs in kids," Rouse said. "I look at the training as a preventative measure as well as awareness."