Stopping the gun kids
Communities struggle to find solutions amid rash of violence
A string of violent episodes involving children and teenagers has left New York reeling, as neighborhoods search for answers to try and tackle a complex problem.
The slew of high-profile episodes over the last month has taken the lives of two New York City public school students, Nyheem Wright, 17, in Brooklyn and Josue Lopez-Ortega, 15, in the Bronx. Other teens have landed in the emergency room; others are facing arrest.
The reasons behind the attacks are varied. Jeremy Eusebio was stabbed in the Bronx in what was believed to be a fight over a girl. A 16-year-old was arrested last week for killing a 15-year-old after he allegedly asked the victim what gang he was in.
While local organizations have launched a number of preventive programs and support services in their communities aimed at quelling the violence, they know there are no easy answers to getting a lid on the crisis. The run of recent violent episodes has magnified a longstanding problem.
“The children — these kids — are victims. The ones that survive are traumatized; the ones that don’t survive, it’s such a loss to the families and people who love them,” said Mona Davids, a Bronx parent and founder of the New York City School Safety Coalition that’s putting on a resource fair later this month.
“But also on top of that, we’re losing the kids who are perpetrators, because their lives are done,” she added. “We’re losing them, because it’s going to take a miracle to get them back, for them to turn around their lives.”
The violence prompted Schools Chancellor David Banks last month to declare a “state of emergency,” hosting city officials and community activists to brainstorm solutions. But spokespeople for his office said they do not yet have any concrete plans to share.
Working with kids at Public School 288 — the school attended by a 13-yearold student arraigned on Monday for fatally stabbing Wright after school on Coney Island — Derick Scott runs a youth mentorship and conflict mediation group. Students play games, basketball and Play Station 5, while Scott works to make them feel “wanted” and “celebrated,” address their mental health, and provide them with positive role models.
“These kids they didn’t come out the womb acting like this,” said Scott, program manager at Operation H.O.O.D., an acronym for “Helping Our Own Develop. “They learn all that other stuff as they grow up in the environment around them. That’s how they become who they become, and we’re not doing our due diligence as parents, as lawmakers, as local politicians, as merchants in the store.”
“We deal with the at-risk, but he wasn’t on our radar,” saidScott. “We have a whole bunch of [PS] 288 kids that come to the office with one of my outreach workers that brings them. This gentleman wasn’t on our radar, because had he been, we would have been talking to him.”
The city school system announced its own initiative known as Project Pivot in October, providing selected schools with a variety of local youth support services, and violence interruption and prevention activities.
Most of those schools are in the Bronx or Brooklyn — nearly two-thirds of its 144 participants, according to a Daily News analysis of budget documents. Another 27 schools are in Manhattan, while fewer are in Queens and on Staten Island.
More than $8.3 million in federal stimulus has been sent to schools so far, selected based on the frequency of physical altercations, serious infractions, suspensions, chronic absenteeism, and at the request of field staff, the documents show.
But those on the ground say more resources are needed.
“There’s been funding put in place, but that funding, it’s not really adequate,” said Lance Feurtado, executive director of King of Kings Foundation, a Queens-based vendor through Project Pivot.
Feurtado stations his team outside schools during arrival and dismissal, and provides mentorship and workshops on gangs, anger management, and drugs. King of Kings Foundation has 16 schools on its roster, but its programs are only up and running in half of them so far.
“We’re in communities, we’re putting out fires constantly. And then we have to take some of our staff who have a caseload, and say we need everybody over at schools,” said Feurtado. “We’re on social media tracking it also. But we’re under man-power.”
Another Project Pivot vendor, Brownsville Think Tank Matters in Brooklyn, is reaching out to the local neighborhood after a 12-year-old was accidentally shot on Tuesday by friends playing with a gun in the building lobby.
“They don’t see the seriousness,” said Al Mathieu, the executive director of the organization, which partners with two schools in community to offer workshops, career programming, and mentoring.
“They’re seeing it on the news. People are pulling out their phones when they see fights. Instead of breaking up the fights, they’re pulling out their phones and recording it, putting it on YouTube. They have Facebook Live where you can see a fight in real time — I think it’s very harmful,” he added.
There are no clear solutions to the teen violence issue, and advocacy groups say are doing what they can to mitigate the problem.
“No one can really say why, we can’t know what’s going on in someone else’s head,” Mathieu said.