NEWS
An Honest Conversation
Local law enforcement, formerly incarcerated mentors talk criminal justice with county youth By Iridian Casarez
iridian@northcoastjournal.com Panelists (from left to right) Roberto Gomez, Tony Wallin, Ray Watson, Joshua Bates, Tyler Parr and Humboldt County Sheriff William Honsal. Courtesy of Humboldt Independent Practice Association
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lmost a year after the death of George Floyd and the ensuing national calls for police reform and accountability, a group of Humboldt County law enforcement officers sat with a couple of ex-convicts for a discussion on criminal justice with local youth. For the Humboldt Independent Practice Associations’ Boys to Men support groups, the discussion started weeks before they recently met with the panel at the McKinleyville Middle School gym for a conversation about justice. “This is very hard and much needed work in our community, and areas across the nation,” Vanessa Vrtiak, the schoolbased health center program coordinator, said in an email to the Journal. “It was wonderful to see both sides be courageous, model vulnerability and transparency. Our goal was to provide some healing and humanize both worlds and I felt like we did that. ... It’s very important that we use this as a jumping off point and continue to have conversations on justice. It’s one of the many ways we can put a dent in the school-to-prison pipeline and empower our youth.” The panel discussion fit the group’s mission of promoting healthy relationships, this time among law enforcement
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agencies, to mitigate high trauma rates among local youth. On a Monday earlier this month, the McKinleyville Middle School gym was filled with 30 male-identifying students from McKinleyville Middle School, McKinleyville High School and the Humboldt County Office of Education Court and Community School’s Boys to Men support groups, who’d readied questions about the criminal justice system for both officers and the formerly incarcerated pannelists. The Humboldt IPA’s school-based health center on the McKinleyville Middle School Campus was first established in 2019 and primarily focuses on providing support services through empowerment groups for students. The Boys to Men group was one of the first and has since expanded to include groups at other local schools. The groups meet weekly and focus on developing stronger peer-to-peer support systems, promoting leadership skills, encouraging emotional wellness and fostering a deeper sense of community, which program leaders believe will lower absenteeism rates and better prepare students to transition into adulthood. The goal of the conversation on justice was to promote honesty and help students understand how both sides of
NORTH COAST JOURNAL • Thursday, May 27, 2021 • northcoastjournal.com
the justice system work and feel, exposing them to the perspectives of those who enforce laws and some people who used to break them. The panel featured Roberto Gomez and Tyler Parr, two Boys to Men mentors who have spent time incarcerated in their lives but reached a point where they felt it was time to make a change. Speaking of their personal experiences, both men said their time in jail had been intimidating and scary. “Thank you for your honesty and vulnerability,” Tony Wallin, the discussion’s moderator and a formerly incarcerated Boys to Men mentor, said to Gomez and Parr. “It’s hard to admit something like going to jail is scary, right? We don’t tend to say things like that but it is. It’s scary as hell.” Both Gomez and Parr said their criminal paths began with a lack of places to go and clubs to join that offered positive and supportive role models and mentors. With few positive options, both turned to hanging out with the “wrong people” and, eventually, to drugs. Humboldt County Sheriff William Honsal participated in the panel and agreed that having support and someone to turn to for guidance are important factors missing for too many kids locally.
“It’s tough — it’s difficult growing up in Humboldt County,” he said. “One thing we have to recognize is that we have some of the highest (rates of) adverse childhood experiences within our county, which means that our kids experience more trauma when they’re young than other places in the state, and so we have to recognize that and offer things for our youth. One thing that’s always been there when I was a kid — and currently — our kids are bored, right? There’s nothing to do. So, we must create things for our kids. But … what’s much more important is to have someone believe in you.” That is something Gomez utterly understands: the dire need of having a positive role model in a child’s life. He’s now trying to be what he didn’t have, and his discussions with students focus on prevention and acceptance, as he hopes to help students avoid making the same mistakes he did. Gomez and Parr also talked about how having a criminal record has made it more difficult to find good paying jobs, affected child custody battles and changed the way they perceive themselves. “I think one of the biggest ways having a record affected me was having an impact on my self-esteem because, no matter Continued on page 13 »
