BAY MINETTE, Ala. — The Bay Minette Police Department is working on several projects to enhance the quality of life in its community through the Project Safe Neighborhood Committee.

Lt. Ruffin Crook said two major projects are the Homeboy Industries Gang Prevention Program and the Take Back Douglasville project.

"There has been a noticeable increase in the drugs being sold and traded in the Douglasville Community," he told those gathered at the monthly Project Safe Neighborhoods meeting Feb. 4 at City Hall. "We want to increase officer presence in that neighborhood, but not just through increased patrols."

Crook said officers will begin taking time to get out of their cars and talk with local residents, getting to know them and finding out what their needs are.

He said the patrols will not be formal foot patrols, but will merely allow the officers to stop and "intermingle" with the residents of that community.

Increased drug activity can sometimes be an indicator or precursor for gang activity. While Crook said Bay Minette does not have a gang problem yet, the police department and city want to be proactive in their approach to the issue.

"We have seen the incidents of graffiti grow in some neighborhoods in the last five months," he said, noting that the vandalism had been seen in the Douglasville Community, in Ulmer Park and other places.

"It's happening right before our eyes," Crook said. "We need to get a stronghold on it before it gets bad."

That stronghold will come in the form of anti-gang training for officers, but primarily from educating the residents of the community - from children through the elderly, through a gang prevention program called Homeboy Industries.

Homeboy Industries is a program in Los Angeles, begun informally in 1988 by Jesuit priest Greg Boyle, that offers gang members an alternative to the destructive lifestyle they are living.

"Homeboy Industries is an organization currently involving more than 8,000 young men and women who formerly belonged to around 700 gangs across Los Angeles County," Bay Minette Police Chief Michael Rowland said.

"Homeboy's mission is to assist at-risk and former gang-involved youth to become contributing members of the community."

The group has already visited the Alabama Village, a very poor and criminally active area of Prichard, for three consecutive years, invited there by Jon Eades, director of youth enrichment services for Volunteers of America and founder of Light of the Village Ministries in Alabama Village.

"In the eight years (Light of the Village) has been there, 38 people have been shot within 200 yards of our facility," Eades said. He said that community is the most dangerous community in the southeastern United States.

"Out of 200 kids every one of them has seen someone killed - not just known someone who was killed, but witnessed it," he said. "We have one nine-year-old boy who has seen three murders and he can recount to you in detail what he has seen."

Eades knew he had to do something, so he began researching groups that could help.

"(Homeboy Industries) is the nation's best anti-gang initiative," he said. After a visit to their home turf in LA, Eades invited the group to Alabama and a relationship was born.

Now, through Project Safe Neighborhood, he is bringing their message to Bay Minette.

"The program will be presented by former hardcore gangbangers who utilize their experiences and talents to turn at-risk and/or gang-involved youth from a life of crime and despair to become valuable members of the community," Rowland said.

The group will speak to students at Baldwin County High School Monday, Feb. 22 and Bay Minette Middle School Feb. 23, followed by a community presentation at the Civic Center Thursday, Feb. 25.

"They will tell what (being in a gang) is like, why they joined and why they shouldn't have," Eades said. "They're very good at fielding questions. A lot of students want to glamorize (gang life), there is no glamour."

Indeed, a 2008 LA Times documentary on the group and its involvement in Alabama included interviews with the former gang members, with one noting the dead-end life of being in a gang.

"There are only two destinations — prison or death," the man said.

Thursday's program will be aimed at community  members, discussing "issues that lead our youth into gang involvement, identify warning signs for families to look for and tell what families can do to prevent further involvement or to provide for intervention," Rowland said.

The program is free and open to the public.