Throughout the whole movie, Dent reiterates to everyone he meets that he leaves things up to chance as he flips a two-headed coin that inevitably comes to represent the contrary truth that he makes his own luck.
The heart of the film’s premise poses the question, “How does a good guy turn into a bad guy so quickly?” But on a more complex level, the question is put to the viewer, “Where does the community go wrong, as Commissioner Jim Gordon puts it, in ‘betting it all’ on one man to save Gotham?”
Sparks and Reno, by no means, have the enormity of blight and hopelessness that Gotham does – phew! – and we have no single-savior complex upon which we could pin our problems.
But our gangs dilemma falls under the same notion and the same questions apply: Where do our youth go wrong and on who or what do we as a community bet it all to stop our teens from engaging in gang activity? Moreover, do we just leave it all up to the “white knight” or do we collectively take up the call and do something to help?
Recognizing the root cause of the problem is an important step, as my colleagues and I sought to do during our recent gangs series. We asked ourselves how it came to be that kids like Pelón are the shot caller, or how kids like Juan Guillen get jumped in or how foster teen Bianca Belts got so entangled in the gang lifestyle. And in trying to answer that question, we also asked, “Who — or what — is to blame?”
I would argue fear and complacency, like the citizens of Gotham, have gripped our own community. The often downbeat and downright nasty comments on media Web sites, even that of the Tribune, with rants and attacks on the issues show there is a lot of steam being blown but it doesn’t strike me as being generated into anything productive.
We’re left with two problems:
1. Local teens have shared a common response with the Tribune in the past three months about why they join a gang: boredom.
2. Local law enforcement officials, government leaders and community activists in the last three months have said gangs are a problem and that teen members need to make better choices about what to do with their time.
Ay, there’s the rub.
Too many misconceptions and miscommunications exist among citizens and public servants about the presence of gangs in the Truckee Meadows and how to address them. Like the chaotic world of Gotham in “Batman Begins,” when fear seizes the city, everyone’s out to save themselves without focusing on how to overcome it.
In Sparks, truth be told, there are things to do in the city. There are people who are making efforts to effect change.
The teens themselves will always cry out for more things to do, even with services like those of the Boys and Girls Club (BGC) available to them. The BGC offers teens a reasonable annual membership fee of $20 — no strings attached, no hidden fees on top of that fee. The bonus is a payment plan can be worked out through dollars or service. And what is $20 but money spent on the latest DVD that’s watched, what, maybe once or twice with its special features, then left to gather dust on the shelf?
If the BGC isn’t satisfactory enough, then there’s the Sparks Parks and Recreation Department. There are sports teams. There are bowling alleys and skating rinks. In my mind, I can already hear a chorus of criticisms saying such activities are too expensive in these down times, but there are much cheaper options as well. One just has to be willing to be creative.
There are steadfast people like Roberto Nerey and Pastor Pepe Gonzales who work on an individual basis to help our youth clean up their act, become productive and give them the confidence they don’t get at home.
But it’s not enough and no matter how much good is going on in the community, someone will always find something to criticize.
Residents will always complain about the graffiti at their parks, local retail stores and schools and they will always complain police response time is slow. They’ll complain there’s too much violence on the streets and that the police spend too much time on other things or just don’t care.
The police, too, will always protest that resources are limited or that citizens don’t fully appreciate their services or that parenting is to blame for the activities of teens on the streets.
Volunteerism is a sorely needed tool right now. A couple of hours a week or a month with the kids or cleaning up the community would make a huge difference. But complaining about the issue will hardly get us anywhere. Involvement will make all the difference in the lives of our youth — and remaining positive and hopeful that things can change for the better.
Think of these activities as superpowers. Superman had supernatural strength and could fly. Spider-Man could climb up walls, generate webs to catch villains and use his “spidey” senses to save the day. These powers are marvelously effective at putting away the villain, saving the life of the romantic interest or preventing the world from complete annihilation, but they don’t keep the next criminal from coming along — hence, sequels. It’s never enough without the will to keep going.
All the superpowers in the world won’t obliterate the gangs of our cities and even if they could, they’d still be on our doorstep the next morning unless we collectively are vigilant and motivated to work with our teens, to be part of the solution rather than add to the problem.
Wonderful people and organizations in our community, like the Children’s Cabinet, Christ Bethlehem or Victory Outreach, the Regional Gang Unit and Sparks City Councilwoman Julia Ratti, work hard to make a difference and keep kids off the streets and out of trouble. But, as they all explicitly acknowledged in the last three months, they alone can’t do the work.
I wish many Tribune readers could have journeyed in the shoes of my colleague Cortney Maddock, my editor Nathan Orme and myself throughout the three months of research we dedicated to this series.
Perhaps they would have wanted to cry alongside Roberto Nerey when he tried to explain how he felt as a father when his son was shot by a gang or when he described how it felt to be a free man after being released from prison on murder charges.
Perhaps they might have been angered by looking at defaced property in the Neil Road area in a ridealong with Sgt. Magee from the Regional Gang Unit and wondered how it can all be stopped.
I’m no superhero, but I learned to care about why our teens think they have nowhere else to go or nobody to turn to or don’t believe in themselves enough to walk away from a lifetime of delinquent behavior.
I have a small contribution to make and that is to arrange a meeting among a handful of our community leaders who are running programs or are just initiating programs dealing with our youth gangs. Hopefully, some productive conversation — and action — will arise. But whatever the case, I’ll make sure the word is passed on and just maybe, multiple shining knights will come and save the day.
Jessica Garcia is a reporter for the Sparks Tribune. She can be reached at jgarcia@dailysparkstribune.com.
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