Do you need to 'give your head a shake?'
Glenda Luymes, The Province
Published: Monday, September 17, 2007

"It's only a phase."

Each time Frank Roffel hears someone minimize gang involvement by calling it a "phase," he feels himself get a little hot under the collar.

The student services director at Yale Secondary in Abbotsford remembers a student in a gang that identified itself through tattoos. Guys were inked on the chest and the back of the arms. Girls were inked on the back of the neck.

"Is joining a gang a harmless phase?" asks Roffel. "No. First, the best statistics tell us that in the very worst neighbourhoods only 10 per cent of kids will join a gang, so that tells you this is not some kind of phase that all kids go through . . . and second, if you think having a tattoo removed with a cheese grater is harmless, then you need to give your head a shake."

Unlike many educators and experts, Roffel does not blame dysfunctional families for gang involvement. "All our families are dysfunctional to some extent," he says. Rather, he blames dysfunctional communities.

"Gangs love a community where adults are in denial. They're looking for a community where police, courts, schools [and] parents are not educated about them, that don't know how to respond," he says.

"If we normalize gangs, if we decide that some losses are acceptable, we will increase the number of kids involved in them.

"We're very quick to put our heads in the sand and say it's not happening here . . . but to make a difference, to save our kids, we have to get our heads out of the freaking sand."