His mom committed suicide when he was 5 and his father was a gangbanger who spent more time in prison than on the outside with his son. This was the life the boy was born into.
Foster care became his home, but it wasn’t the answer he needed to avoid becoming his father. A relative finally agreed to take him in, but she had one requirement.
He had to join the Jeopardy Program at the North Hollywood police station. He had to make the effort not to become his father. She knew he had a rough early childhood, but it wasn’t too late to save him from gangs.
Somebody just had to care enough to try.
Estefanie Jimenez was 12 when she decided she wanted to be a police officer. Gang violence was no stranger to her East Los Angeles neighborhood. She grew up in a strong, loving family, but every extended family had one black sheep in it.
Hers begged her not to do what he did, to do the opposite. She joined the police cadet program at Hollenbeck Division and spent six years watching kids headed for gang life graduate from the Jeopardy Program and enter the Cadet Program.
They didn’t all want to become police officers, but they knew what they didn’t want — to become another gang homicide statistic. Last week, Los Angeles Police Department Chief Michael Moore announced that homicides were up 14% in its Valley Bureau.
“Gang-related homicides represent more than half of all homicides in Los Angeles,” he said.
We’re not winning this war.
Estefaine Jimenez became that police officer she wanted to be — a youth services officer whose job is to get these kids before the justice system does. To mentor the next generation of potential gang members and show them it’s a dead-end life.
You do that with trust, she said. It’s the only way. She knew she couldn’t force the boy whose mom had committed suicide and dad was in prison to listen to her without that mutual trust.
When it comes, it’s a beautiful thing to see.
“One day we were sitting there, in silence,…
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