For some reason, the City of Santa Ana’s public safety committee continues to ignore requests by the EPIC/Gang Commission to fund a much-needed gang study, so we can assess exactly what we are dealing with in Santa Ana. One of the arguments against such a study, that has been proffered by both anon posters and one of our former bloggers, is that the study will somehow result in money being paid to gang bangers.
Now the researcher responsible for the proposed study has apparently posted a comment on a story about this study explaining the truth about the study. Here is his comment:
William R Wood has left a new comment on your post “Santa Ana Clowncil Members ignore Supervisor Janet Nguyen’s offer to help fund gang study.”
I am the researcher that was responsible for the proposed EPIC study. I am uneasy about posting a response in this forum, but I feel the need to clarify the mistaken belief that our research team was going to “pay gang members” for their participation. It was made clear throughout the research proposal process that we would pay researchers (undergraduate and graduate students, and trained community members), not gang members, for work not conducted directly by faculty members at CSUF. We do not and would not pay people
Who is going to identify the gang members to interview? How are you going to insure honesty on the part of the interviewed gang member?
What is the goal of the study? And once we have all this data, where will the money come from to fix the now identifiable problem?
I’m glad someone is finally going to talk to our youths.
They are the leaders of tomorrow. I think the first step to stopping gangs is stepping up and supporting the school bond. We need good schools to stop gangs.
Dear anon:
You ask,
William,
I appreciate your candid comments. Sorry you did not like the headline. I just changed it. Hope the new one works for you.
Mr. Wood, I understand the point of your original blog and clarifications, but I don’t think my questions are “political”. I was only attempting to understand the goal of the research and how it would translate into solutions.