- [Narrator] Chasing the Dream: Poverty and Opportunity

in America is an ongoing public media reporting initiative.

(calm, hopeful music)

- In West Fresno, traditionally,

there's two black gang alignments,

and the gangs fall under each one of those alignments.

And so if your dad was so-and-so,

then a good chance you're probably gonna be like your dad.

If your brother was so-and-so,

good chance you're gonna be like your brother.

And those gangs will put pressure on you

'cause they know the history.

And so, this goes back decades.

Gang crime dictates violent crime in Southwest Fresno.

And that's gonna be our gang violence,

that's gonna be our shootings.

Last year, Southwest had a shooting every two days,

171 shootings.

It's capable of having a shooting a day,

and so this year, one of my...

What I'm happy about is that we've had

a 28% reduction in shootings this year.

We're doing a combination of three things,

prevention, intervention, and enforcement.

- Fresno Street Saints is a grassroots organization

with a mission to create a safe and healthy community.

About 17 years ago, coming out of this very room here,

me and several pastors made a commitment to see

what would happen if we stayed here 20 years to build a...

Organization that would belong here in West Fresno.

- [Captain Salazar] What we've done with our partnerships,

we have a partnership with every community center

in Southwest Fresno, the Fresno Street Saints,

the West Fresno Family Resource Center,

the Boys and Girls Club on the west side in Fink-White.

We've never had partnerships with those groups before.

We also have officers at every Southwest elementary school

with the Fresno Unified Mentoring Program.

I'm at Columbia.

My officers were at Kirk, at King, at Sunset, at Lincoln.

So we're providing role models

at the schools, at our community centers,

and what we're seeing is maybe not a lost generation.

- I was born and raised in Chicago,

spent 28 years in a gang.

By nine, I was smoking weed,

hanging out in all the drug houses.

I had caught my first armed robbery in eighth grade.

I was a full-blown heroin addict

by the time I was 14 years old.

By the time I was 21, I was homeless,

walking around on the street corner, ready to die,

went and cleaned myself up, came back to the streets,

and became one of the biggest drug dealers

and gang members in the city.

- The gang members, they woo 'em.

They go in there, they talk up the lifestyle,

they're around it, they see it, they hear it.

You start seeing that...

They're hanging around, and then it gets more serious

when they get into middle school.

In middle school, that's when they grab 'em

a little bit more and say, "We need you to do something."

- To build these relationships

with these different community partners,

allowing kids, so when we go out now,

instead of just seeing what we were seeing,

we're seeing kids dream to be bankers, to be police,

to be things instead of Crips and Bloods.

When you describe West Fresno, it's unique,

but it's prideful and it's a place where...

We can really...

Become famous as a city for the turn around

and what we can do here in West Fresno.

(calm, hopeful music)

- [Narrator] Funding for Chasing the Dream is provided by

the JPB Foundation and Ford Foundation.