News-Record.com

Somebody once defined a consultant as someone from somewhere else who we pay to tell us things we already know.

Consider the case of Greensboro Police Detective Ernest Cuthbertson, a nationally recognized expert on gangs whose deep knowledge and understanding of street culture appears to be valued and respected anywhere but here, in his hometown.

Maybe they'd listen if he were from Chicago or Detroit. Then again, maybe they wouldn't listen to anyone.

Cuthbertson, 36, is a former Marine who grew up in the Morningside Homes and Ray Warren Homes public housing communities. If fate hadn't been kind, he might well have become a gang-banger himself. Instead he chose to use his early exposure to gang culture to fight it.
As a Greensboro police officer since 1993, Cuthbertson has interviewed hundreds of gang suspects and has built an impressive archive of information on gang culture, some of it gleaned from the gangs' own detailed "handbooks." He has been interviewed by MSNBC and USA Today. He has conducted workshops for educators, social workers and other police officers.

In fact, on Feb. 24, he will be a plenary speaker at a conference of Canadian police officers, probation and parole officers, school officials and youth organizations in Niagara Falls.
But his toughest audience remains the Guilford County school board, some of whose members expressed skepticism at his presentation last October about a growing pattern of gang signs, graffiti and dress in local schools.

"We just don't see it, this Crips and Bloods stuff," school board member Amos Quick, who grew up with Cuthbertson, said last fall at a forum on school discipline.

Some principals bristled that he'd dare suggest a gang presence in their schools. Board member Deena Hayes said that the presentation unfairly stigmatized minority youth. A teacher disputed his contention that gang graffiti had been spotted at her elementary school. Never mind that he had photos.

"If we're going to arrest the problem, then we have to have accurate data," Hayes said in recent interview.

Yet, after the tempest of indignation and denial that followed, the school board did nothing. Although he seemed obviously frustrated that some school board members disputed his facts, Cuthbertson said this isn't about him. And he acknowledged that there isn't a serious gang problem here. Yet.

That's the whole theme of his message: Heed the early warnings. Deal with the problems now while they're still small. "At some point, we'll all have to bear the cost of what's going on with our young people," he said. "Either upstream or downstream."

Someone else who ought to know says Cuthbertson's absolutely right. "I agree 100 percent with Ernest that it is a small problem," said Cpl. Lindsay Welch of the Guilford County Sheriff's Department, who has been a school resource officer at Southern Guilford High School for 12 years. "But if the parents don't open their eyes, if the administrators don't open their eyes and see that we've got a small problem, then someday we're going to be like Los Angeles County and Aurora, Colorado."

Welch also agrees with Cuthbertson's call for preventive steps. Right now. "Don't wait for it to happen," Welch said.

In separate interviews, both Cuth­bertson and Welch lamented the lack of parental involvement and even worse, parental awareness of their children's activities. In February of 2005, Cuthbertson even tried to do something about it, proposing a "School Watch" program that would have partnered the police with schools and communities.
The program's goal: To build awareness about the threat of gangs and crime among teachers, parents and students. And to help youth realize that police are there to help, not harm students.

Some school board members charged that the initiative was designed to recruit student "snitches." "It's asking students to be lookouts," Quick said, suggesting that the program should focus strictly on training teachers, parents and volunteers.

Instead, nearly a year later, the school board simply has done nothing. When asked whether School Watch is dead, Cuthbertson shrugged. "I honestly don't know," he said.

What he does know is that as a young man he had many choices, most of them bad. He chose to be a cop, he said, because a pair of Greensboro police officers, Ed McDonald and Berkley Blanks, took an interest in him as a youth. "They gave me a different outlook on life," Cuthbertson said.

Now he'd like to give others that same chance. If only we'd let him.