The new Euclid offices of reNOUNce deNOUNce Gang Intervention program still have their moving boxes out.
Angela Douglas, and her husband Laron just moved last week and are still settling in, but they are both excited about the location, at 26155 Euclid Ave, which has apartment complexes and a basketball court nearby where many youths gather in the summer.
Many of the kids are already in their program which makes it slightly easier for them to gain traction in the community.
“We wanted to fly high and also being in our last building we weren’t able to do much for the community,” Angela said. “But here that’s our parking lot, so we can do our community pop-ups and put out our flyers.
“The kids around here are at risk, a lot of the kids we are already servicing.”
Laron started the program in 2009, while he was serving his 23-year sentence in prison..
“I went to jail for a gang-related murder,” he said. “And my first decade I was still off the hook, still doing gang stuff in prison. But over the next couple years, when I was in isolation, I got a revelation. I wanted God to help me to change my life around while I was in the hole.”
Now he serves his community, with Angela, whom he met in high school. The former Cleveland Metropolitan School District teacher is serving as program administrator and website developer.
They run a few programs, including having “Violence Interrupters” go directly into areas where youth might be gathered and make sure a friendly face, and someone that kids feel comfortable to approach are on site before anything else happens.
“We are dealing with it on the retaliatory end, so no innocent kids and other people are shot and killed,” Laron said.
“The police, they have their detectives to take away the bad guy, but we are trying to resolve it before it gets to somebody getting killed.” Angela added.
They also offer a 10-week program where youths ages 10 to 25 can be enrolled. Many classes are taught that go over anger management, de-escalation tactics, cognitive thinking and even going as far as helping get their driver’s license.
“These youth they are in the gangs out here right now,” Angela said. “And they are committing these harsh crimes and things like that, but they need to know these things, if they don’t know then they will go out and commit crimes in these gangs.
“But if you educate them then they know, ‘oh this is the RICO Act, man I’m not going to do this.’ They start thinking different when they are educated.”
“We have what we call Phase Two,” Laron said. “And what do in Phase Two is we help them get all of their documents. They come in and they don’t have their birth certificate, Social Security card and help them get their temps or driver’s license. And also, we have resources for the mother. Say she doesn’t have her lights on or something, we have resources to give her as well.”
Laron finds that his programs help isolate the individual which helps them to be more open to accepting help, or to seeing a different point of view. That can be hard when many of their peers are faced with gang violence or violence within the household from a young age and see little other prospects.
“A lot of them they are cold killers when they are all together,” Laron said. “But when you get them and isolate them and make them individuals then that’s how we are able to teach them here.
“They want to learn; they are just like little kids,” he added. “We go into these neighborhoods and also in this program we eat together. All these guys in our program are in different gangs and different sides of town even in Euclid. So, after every session we break bread together.
“There’s a concept in the penitentiary that you don’t just sit down and eat with anybody,” he said. “So that’s what we do we sit down and eat together.”
Now the Douglases hope that their new offices will bring in new people as well. Information about when their food drives and food wrap services are available can be found at their website, www.renouncedenouncegangprogram.org, or by calling 440-723-8190
