In the early 1990s, Rocky Delgadillo easily could have been a character on the then-hit television series L.A. Law. A Harvard- educated Latino from Los Angeles who briefly played pro football, he was working as an entertainment lawyer for a multinational law firm in the city.
One day in late April 1992, Delgadillo looked out his office window and saw thick black smoke rising from the direction of South Central Los Angeles. Four white police officers had just been acquitted of assault in the notorious beating of black motorist Rodney King, and three days of rioting had just begun. By the time it was over, 55 people had been killed and thousands more injured. Entire city blocks were in ruins.
"My life changed that day," Delgadillo recalls. "I felt a great sense of shock that night and the next few days, but also a great sense of purpose. Coming from the neighborhood I did, I felt fortunate for the opportunities I had been given. And my parents always taught me I had an obligation to give something back. I knew it was my time to go back and help my community."
Within a month, Peter Ueberroth-- the former baseball commissioner and organizer of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics-- had recruited Delgadillo to join Rebuild L.A., a nonprofit group Ueberroth formed literally hours after the riots were quelled to spur investment in the city's most neglected and now devastated neighborhoods. Mayor Richard Riordan later appointed Delgadillo as his deputy mayor for economic development. In 2001, Delgadillo won his election campaign for city attorney on a platform of improving public safety and quality of life by getting city prosecutors out of their offices and into neighborhoods where they could work with citizens, police, and judges to solve problems as partners.
"Neighborhoods know how to solve problems, they just don't have the resources," Delgadillo says. He cites the recent example of a graffiti "tagger" whom police caught vandalizing an empty swimming pool. "Normally, we would have prosecuted the guy, sent him to jail, and in no time he would have been back doing it again," he explains. "People in the neighborhood told us that sending him to jail wouldn't solve the problem. So working with them and the judge, we figured out a way to make his punishment meaningful and preventive." The culprit was placed on probation and ordered to spend the next 40 Saturdays cleaning the facility for eight hours a day. "For him, the real punishment was having to get up every Saturday at six in the morning."
"What the neighbors knew that we didn't was that this guy was part of a tagging team," Delgadillo continues. Since the man began his sentence, the pool and surrounding park have not been vandalized. "The reason is that he knew that if his friends continued to tag it, he would be the one who would have to clean up after them," Delgadillo notes. "And now he's spending eight hours a week with recreation department workers who might be able to help him turn his life in a different direction."
A former teacher and coach for the Los Angeles Unified School District, Delgadillo has also joined forces with his former employer to fight the intertwined problems of truancy and gang violence. "Police and our gang prosecutors always tell me they have never known a gang member who wasn't a truant first," he says. Under his joint Operation Bright Future program with the schools, his office sends letters to the parents of chronic truants summoning them to assemblies where their personal legal responsibilities for their children's education are described. "It's amazing what kind of attendance you get when parents get a letter from the city attorney," he quips.
"We give parents plenty of opportunities to solve the problem on their own, but ultimately we will prosecute and they will serve jail time," Delgadillo continues. Four out of five truants return to class immediately after their parents attend the sessions.
"If we can keep them in school," Delgadillo says, "there's a good chance we can keep them out of a life of crime."
