In recent weeks the Pico Neighborhood has once again captured the public eye as several gang-related shootings have rocked the area. Today marks the first installment in a four-part series that chronicles an unprecedented biracial effort to bring peace to Santa Monica's most troubled, and often-neglected, neighborhood.

Part I -- At Risk: Hopes for Building Collaborative for Pico's Youth Hang in the Balance

By Teresa Rochester

On a hot cloudless day last June Snoop Doggy Dogg blared from a boom box in a church parking lot on Pico Boulevard as a group of black and Latino teenagers hung out waiting for the afternoon's barbecue to begin.

Over and over to a pounding beat, Dogg asked the question, "What's the difference between you and me?" The teenagers had gathered at Santa Monica Christian Center that day in search of an answer. The "Unity Barbecue" was their idea, born of a wish to ease long-standing racial tensions that had erupted in violent confrontations at Santa Monica High School.

"These people are our future, our present," said Oscar de la Torre, a former student counselor at the high school, who helped organize the event. "They can make a difference in the community."

Just months earlier, de la Torre, along with fellow Santa Monica High School classmate Manuel "Manny" Lares and City employee Ed Bell, had won the City's blessing and money to bring the youth's idea to life.

Christened the Pico Collaborative, the group was comprised of three fledgling organizations -- Parachute Program, Proyecto Adelante and Barrios Unidos --, that would offer a safe haven and a network of services for older youth and young adults in Santa Monica's most racially diverse, poor and chronically underserved and underrepresented neighborhood.

When the three men opened the doors of the group's Youth Center at the church in February, they had big plans. In addition to offering counseling services and job training to youth between the ages of 16 and 23, the program would teach them first aid and CPR and how to dress for court and navigate the justice system. It would take them rafting in mountain streams and teach them how to record Hip Hop music in the center's own studio.

"The City of Santa Monica doesn't even know what's going to hit them," a grinning de la Torre said at the barbecue in June.

But the enthusiasm would soon give way to disillusionment, then strife, as the plans quickly unraveled. By summer's end, the City would cut off the $350,000 in annual funding earmarked for the collaborative, $40,000 of which was used to rehab a room in the church that would sit vacant due to code violations. By September, the doors of the center would be closed and the equipment packed up and put in storage.

At a time when a spate of gang violence has once again rocked the neighborhood, the future of the Pico Collaborative hangs suspended amid allegations of impropriety, poor planning, missed deadlines, a dubious lease and building friction between its leaders.

"I'm calling for a divorce," said de la Torre, the founder of Proyecto Adelante, who hopes to launch a single entity to offer the services. "There's no point to salvaging this thing. It's unworkable."

But Bell, an employee of the City's Water Division and founder of Parachute Program, disagrees. He wants to keep the collaborative intact.

"I think it's working very well," said Bell. He added that replacing the collaborative with one organization would be a grave mistake. "It would be a travesty of justice.

"That's the history of the Pico Neighborhood -- at the first sign of trouble, you break ranks," Bell said. "I'm staying the course. The need is there.... I'm a very patient man."

City officials have notified de la Torre, Bell and Lares that they would take stock of the situation this month based on a recommendation by Los-Angeles based Community Partners, the non-profit organization hired by the City to help form the collaborative.

"We're doing some of the work that didn't get done during the planning process and talking to some of the service providers in the community," said Julie Rusk, director of the City's Human Services Division. "We'll come up with our recommendations."

Meanwhile the violence continues. Since the unprecedented bi-racial organization formed to help forge unity and provide alternatives to gang life has ground to a halt, one of the teenagers has died, four have been incarcerated, one was shot in his driveway and another stabbed