2007: Advancement Project California (now Catalyst California) leads the implementation of GRYD through research for gang reduction zones

Long before the 2007 publication of A Call to Action, Advancement Project California’s report on gang violence in Los Angeles that would change how the city approached the problem, our co-founder, Connie Rice, spent months laying the foundation for its reception. 

Two years earlier, she had met with Martin Ludlow, then a city council member, to lay out a community strategy. Over nine months, he led public meetings to hear first-hand community stories of living—and dying—amid gang turf wars. 

Those meetings led the city council eventually to hire Advancement Project California (APCA) to research the problem. Rice brought together a heavyweight policy team that treated the issue as a public health threat, rather than a crime problem, generating more than 100 recommendations. 

As publication neared in January, she lined up support from law enforcement leaders she had previously worked with (and sued): Police Chief Bill Bratton, County Sheriff Lee Baca, City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo, District Attorney Steve Cooley, and California Attorney General Jerry Brown. 

“I resigned myself to the fact that I was going to have to learn to love these cops if I was ever going to get them to follow me in change,” Rice told The Intersector Project, a public/private collaboration resource hub.  

The report sparked a flurry of media attention, but the work was really just beginning. Gang intervention, in a region with more than 1,000 gangs and about 86,000 members, was a sore subject for elected officials. No consensus existed. 

Some felt uneasy about the city possibly hiring gang interventionists who had been in “the life.” At that time, gang intervention was very informal, often conducted by former gang members who had gone straight and were trying to counsel the generation after them, to keep them from getting shot. 

Other people felt the recommendation to create a dedicated office under a “gang czar” would mire an urgent problem in endless bureaucracy. Could better coordination of existing resources fix the problem? Yet, one of those existing programs, L.A. Bridges, was a favorite bone of contention because of its growing budget and meager results. 

Eventually, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, initially a skeptic, endorsed the report, and the Mayor’s Office of Community Safety opened to implement what today is known as the Gang Reduction and Youth Development Program (GRYD). The pivot had begun. APCA used its data maps to identify six “gang reduction zones” that the city could cover with wrap-around services to address needs young people tried to fill by joining gangs. 

“The idea was to get rid of silos and focus on where the need was,” said Chris Ringewald, then a new research analyst at APCA, now Senior Director of Research and Data Analysis. “Place-based initiatives like this were gaining favor across the nation because they showed results.” 

The Harlem Children’s Zone had been using that model in a 97-block area of New York for a decade, and the resulting student test scores and college entrance rates attracted praise. In Los Angeles, First 5 LA used the playbook with young children, and LA Promise Zone focused on improving youth opportunities in neighborhoods like Pico/Union and Koreatown. 

In the months after the report launch, APCA worked intensely with city officials to set boundaries for the gang reduction zones, in places like the area encompassing the Ramona Gardens public housing complex in Boyle Heights. When the numbers revealed new hot spots, another zone was born. 

On a parallel track, APCA’s Urban Peace program, which later spun off to become the Urban Peace Institute, developed a rigorous gang intervention certification program lasting several weeks to give those informal counselors real training and better tools. Many graduated in community celebrations. 

“Their families came with graduation balloons,” said Amy Sausser, our Director of Development, who attended one such event. “Some of them said, ‘This is the first graduation I ever had.’ It changed their lives, gave them a chance at a career as trained professionals.” 

Today, GRYD has 23 zones and programs ranging from gang intervention referrals to Summer Night Lights basketball, with a budget of $41 million in 2023-24. 

“This was a new department, and we wanted it to succeed, not to die with the next administration,” Ringewald said. “I’m thrilled to see what it continues to do for Los Angeles’ youth.”