When the Aurora Police Department`s Gang Intervention Unit took its roadshow to southeast Aurora last October, fewer than 100 people took part in the gang awareness meeting.
But when a 15-year-old neighborhood youth who had been involved with gangs was gunned down near his home on Aug. 13, it got the attention of local residents in a big way-it was the first gang slaying in that part of town.
Monday night, more than 400 southeast side residents crowded a small school cafeteria to attend another special gang awareness session.
Eleven days earlier, Gary Lee Beasley was fatally shot only a block from the school.
”It doesn`t matter who you are,” Mary Loeb, Beasley`s mother, told the crowd. ”You can be living on the west side in a $300,000 home. But if you don`t pay attention, your kids could end up being so involved that it`s too late for them.”
Loeb, 46, who was participating in the city`s anti-gang crusade long before her son was killed, also admonished the teenagers attending Monday`s meeting.
”Please, kids, don`t listen to them,” she said. ”They paint you a pretty picture, but they don`t mean you any good.”
Loeb said that her son, after two years of gang involvement, was working hard to turn his life around. The improvement came after a concerted effort by Loeb and her husband, Roger.
Loeb`s impassioned pleas and her promise to continue fighting gangs came two hours into the three-hour meeting Monday, during which Gang Intervention Unit commanders familiarized residents with the city`s nine active gangs, their symbols and rivalries, social service agencies that try to turn members around and methods of police intervention.
Police Chief David Stover praised Loeb`s effort. ”Her statement was crucial in that very often the victim`s family can get their point across better than just police officers,” he said.
”She was simply saying, `Look, don`t give up on your kids,` ” Stover added. ”It was clearly a case where the parents tried to do everything they could, and their kid still became a victim of violence.”
Beasley was walking west on Seventh Avenue, approaching Jackson Street, at about 10 p.m. Aug. 13 when he was shot nine times by an unidentified assailant. He died about an hour later.
Two of the three other teenagers with Beasley, none of whom had ever been associated with gangs, also were struck by gunfire. They have since been released from Copley Memorial Hospital.
Beasley`s death was the fifth this year resulting from gang violence, out of eight murders citywide, Stover said. Last year, seven of 13 murders were attributed to gang violence.
Despite the apparent similarity in statistics between 1991 and 1992, Stover insisted during Monday`s meeting that the new ”high-impact” gang strategy in conjunction with community-oriented policing was working.
Since June 1, more than 2,000 arrests of gang members have been made, he said.
”That means we were arresting them multiple times, and that`s part of our zero tolerance policy,” said Stover, who will mark one year as chief Friday. ”Every time they turn around, we`re in their face. We arrest them for any reason that we can.”
But Stover conceded there have been tragedies, and that the recent falloff in violence ”doesn`t mean that 24 hours from now, the picture can`t change.”
Loeb said that Beasley, after two years of gang involvement, was working hard to change his life.
She and her husband sent Beasley to a military academy and to two psychiatric hospitals that specialized in teenagers who are involved in gangs. Last March, he came home from H.C. Riveredge Hospital in Forest Park and cleaned the gang symbols out of his room, threw out his gang clothes and started hanging out with new friends.
”He had completely turned around,” she said. ”His grades were back up. He was trustworthy. He was being honest.”
Meanwhile, Loeb, the mother of four other adult children and a former Sunday school teacher, had joined citizens patrols to combat gangs. She took part in anti-gang rallies and worked with Judy Maves, former president of Aurora Mothers Against Gangs.
And she preached to the neighborhood non-believers, many of whom until this week weren`t listening.
”There`s quite a few kids in our neighborhood who are still associated with gangs, but their parents are still in a stage of denial.”
Three weeks before his murder, Beasley told his mother the gangs were pressuring him to join again, Loeb said.
”Mom, they`re really putting the pressure on me,” she said, recalling the conversation with her son. ”It`s getting harder and harder.”
To escape the pressure, he spent some time out of town with his sister and brother-in-law. Shortly after he returned, he was shot down.
If Loeb made a mistake, it was in denying her son`s involvement during the early stages of his gang affiliation, she said.
”My husband told me something was wrong,” she said. ”I said, `Oh no, not my Gary.` By the time I recognized it, it had been six months.”
