Scorpio, who is known by this name, is Terrance Carpenter, 26. He is one of a dozen or so young men who volunteer unofficially each week at the pool, which sits amid an area long fractured by hostilities among gangs like the Bloods, the Crips and the Latin Kings. Some of the volunteers are gang members, but others have turned their backs on crime...I don't have much to add, but I do think it's interesting that this story departs from the normal idea that you need to get the kids out of the gangs before you set them up as mentors.
The volunteers have no enforcement powers; their duties are not clearly defined. But at the enormous pool full of excited — sometimes overexcited — children and teenagers, they provide extra ears and eyes for the officials charged with maintaining order. When the children violate the no-diving rule, they scold them. When horseplay gets too rowdy, they tone it down. When they see loiterers looking for trouble on the streets outside the pool, they swagger over to ward them off.
“This is my block,” Mr. Carpenter said. “It’s my love. It’s my family.”
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Nice to have a little ray of sunshine on to light the abyss we must be in if I'm reading this in the NYT:
Britain should no longer rely on assurances by the United States that it does not torture terrorism suspects, an influential parliamentary committee said in a report released Sunday.
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