Part III of III on this week’s City Hall meeting, “Gang Violence: Real Problems and Real Solutions for Puget Sound”
By Marsha Kuykendall
Community members attending Tuesday night’s meeting on gang violence eagerly shared their concerns and disappointments.
The audience applauded comments by Moni Tep, a youth organizer, who criticized the meeting organizer for not actively including youths in the discussion. “The solution is not just getting adults to care. It’s about mobilizing youth. Gangs need to be moved in a different direction, said Tep. “Gang (members) don’t want to live this life, but they’ve been systematically conditioned. We’re not yet at the root of the problem.”
Liz Ali, mother of 18-year-old Perry Henderson who was killed in gang violence last year, suggested the Youth Violence Initiative solicit input from individual community members as well as community groups. “You need to have the right people at the table, and that includes people like myself, families who have been directly affected and youths.” Addressing Lt. Wilson, Ali said, “You talked about law enforcement making better cases. We can’t arrest our way out of this situation. When are we going to reward police officers for diverting youth away from prison?”
Wilson agreed with Ali, but defended the Police Department by noting, “There are some folks who are simply too dangerous to be out there on the street. And those are the folks we need to be focusing on with this Initiative.” Nevertheless, Wilson agreed, law enforcers should also focus on prevention. “It’s just a tough job. We’re doing our best.”
“We hear that all the time,” an audience member shouted back, noting that communities of color were tired of that explanation. She also criticized the fact that no youth was included on the panel. “We need young kids of color who can talk about what they’ve been through. It’s very hard for us to hear from people who are so disconnected from the situation telling us what they think the solutions are.”
After a round of applause, the woman continued, “I’m frustrated as a mother, I’m frustrated as a woman, I’m frustrated as a community worker, because we hear the same thing, ‘We’re doing the best we can.’ Meanwhile children are dying. We need not to hear the rhetoric. We need to know what a mother’s going to do. These are our children!”
Several parents expressed frustration with the school system, complaining that school officials were not listening to kids and that teens were being pushed through and out of the system without a basic education. Some expressed deep concerns about dwindling financial resources available to fight the problem due to the current economic recession. Others expressed skepticism of the long-term effectiveness of the City’s two-year Youth Violence Preventive Initiative as possibly too little, too late.
Youth organizer Moni Tep criticized meeting organizers for not actively including youths in the discussion. Photo/Marsha Kuykendall
Related:
- Stop Youth Violence – Get Involved! (Part II) (6/4/09)
- Seeking A ‘Cure’ for the Growing Pandemic of Gang Violence (Part I) (6/3/09)
Who to know, where to eat & what to do in one of America’s most diverse zip codes!
{ 19 comments }
It’s still going to take law enforcement to step up the arrests on gang members. This is an interesting article from today’s LA Times:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-southla-rollout7-2009jun07,0,280768.story
I thought this was interesting:
“Last month, the LAPD began rolling out an injunction restricting the movements and activities of gang members in a 13.7-square-mile stretch of South Los Angeles — the largest such injunction in state history.
All told, the six targeted gangs, which include Florencia 13, one of the largest and most powerful in Los Angeles County, have at least 3,000 members. The injunction’s territory, south of downtown and the University of Southern California, is nearly twice the size of the city of Santa Monica.
The area, home to more than 250,000 people, is a rambling patchwork of the city’s core: century-old bungalows; abandoned factories and weed-choked brownfields; venerable neighborhoods like Vermont Square; storefront churches; bustling stretches of mom-and-pop barbers, auto body shops and taquerias.
The area is poor and transient, creating a vacuum where a gang “ecosystem” has formed, according to the city’s 276-page court filing supporting the injunction, “where each gang enables and affects the existence of other gangs.”
Police see the injunction as a critical tool in the already formidable arsenal they’ve been given by courts and legislators to tackle gangs. The injunction makes it a crime, in itself, for gang members to be together in public — leaning against a backstop at a park, for instance, or standing together on a street corner.
“It makes it a crime — an arrestable crime — to hang out together,” said Sgt. Alex Vargas, who leads a Newton Division gang unit.
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Personally, I feel like the city and its leaders, including law enforcement have absolutely no idea how to tackle gang violence, which has so commonly been mislabeled as “youth violence.”
Excellent piece above! I doubt Seattle could do this with the current “elected officials” so time to vote out the current political people…
Lt Daniels from “The Wire” said something really wise. You need to build a really good police force that is a real deterrent to crime. Just arresting people is not the answer.
Of course, he was forced out of the dept in season 5…
@twoyoots – why do you believe that all youth violence is gang violence? To me that seems misinformed.
Also, why do you state that no one in City government knows how to tackle gang violence? Are you just trolling?
@Anonymous – always with the air quotes! Do you mean that the officials were not actually elected, or that they are not officials?
@trellis, show me data that says differently regarding “youth” crime/ gang violence. The articles I’ve read for the past year detailing young hispanic and black males involved in shootings under the age of 19 have been gang related.
Why do I believe no one in city government knows how to tackle gang violence: the absurd $8 million stay in school campaign targeted at 50% of at risk youth.
“It’s very hard for us to hear from people who are so disconnected from the situation telling us what they think the solutions are.”
So where are the ones who are connected? Seems they feel doomed to Fate. And perhaps they are, since they don’t seem to feel empowered in any way to change their lives. That’s no one’s fault but their own, since we are all born the same way, and we all end the same way. Equal opportunity abounds and everything else is your own projection which you must own because it’s yours and yours alone.
You can’t force people to help themselves. They have to want it. And if they don’t want it, you have to work around them and treat them like the furniture they want to be.
Prediction: We’re going to see some race divisions in the South End, where affordable homes are plentiful, and those who have brainwashed themselves into thinking that life is a living Hell are also plentiful.
I wonder why the Asian gangs, deadly deadly gangs, are rarely mentioned. It’s always black and Hispanic.
I agree with twoyoots’ statement “Personally, I feel like the city and its leaders, including law enforcement have absolutely no idea how to tackle gang violence, which has so commonly been mislabeled as “youth violence.””, except for the labeling of all youth violence as gang.
Argh, hit something and it sent, I’m not through. I was on the bus after this article came out and there were 2 guys and a girl discussing it. The guys sported the look, saggin pants, ala lil Wayne.
They were laughing about all those ” crazy white people” who are going to show them how to behave and their mission to get kids out of gangs. “Those foos don’t know nuthin bout what we is, ain that right, dog?” that was the jist of the converstation. I wish I could have recorded it to play it at one of those “white people” meetings.
@twoyoots said:
>@trellis, show me data that says differently regarding “youth” crime/ gang violence. The articles I’ve read for the past year detailing young hispanic and black males involved in shootings under the age of 19 have been gang related.
Fine. I think that one data point is sufficient. Here it is: Columbine. Done. Not all youth violence is gang-related.
I didn’t realize Columbine was in Seattle. We are talking about Seattle, correct? But tell me this, isn’t the “Mayor’s” Youth Violence Initiative directed at the pandemic of gang violence? The gang problem was referred to as a pandemic, wasn’t it? Gang violence, youth violence, I could really care less about the label, honestly. I guess it’s more PC to refer to gang violence as youth violence, her in Seattle.
@ Trellis – my hunch is that if you took a look at all of the shooting related events that involved shooters between the ages of 14-23, you’d find the significant majority are related to some type of gang related activity.
@ Edna: As far as Asian gangs are concerned, they’ve toned down over the last several years and generally don’t seem to be the type to hang around on street corners or mini marts. However, they were a lot more active and agressive in the late 80′s/early 90′s – it was a very different scene then.
If I recall, the Asian Community and elders got involved to work the issues from the inside out. Three strikes and tougher sentencing guidelines may have also helped. In any case, there are very few Asian shootings nowadays.
The comments you overheard on the bus makes me sad. It doesn’t matter if someone is white, black, yellow, red, or opaque – if you live in the valley it is your community and it is your reality. Further, just because someone isn’t in a gang now it doesn’t mean they don’t understand the issues. Dismissing someone’s opinion merely because the color of their skin happens to be different illustrates the divide that is being created. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize the people involved in these activities need hope, education, jobs, and infrastructure (housing).
One point I cannot contest is your comment regarding our elected officials. The people at City Hall think they know how to solve the problems but they really don’t. Council Member Burgess is heavily involved in the youth gang initiative, and I believe he cares, yet he seems more focused on his next political seat than he does working the issues. By his choice he is going to be short-lived as a Council Member………it is sad because he had a lot of potential. He probably would have taken on the Mayor this year if he thought he could win.
SSSL
Anonymouse also said — “That’s no one’s fault but their own, since we are all born the same way, and we all end the same way.”
What a completely distorted point of view! There are some ways possibly, that we are all born the same — like naked and covered with fluid, but other than those we are mostly born different. Like some with two parents and some with none…. etc. Get a clue!
Here is a good read, if you have the time:
http://www.justicepolicy.org/images/upload/07-07_REP_GangWars_GC-PS-AC-JJ.pdf
“Youth crime in the United States remains near the lowest levels seen in the past three decades, yet public concern and media coverage of gang activity has skyrocketed since 2000. Fear has spread from neighborhoods with longstanding gang problems to communities with historically low levels of crime, and some policy makers have declared the arrival of a national gang “crisis.” Yet many questions remain unanswered. How can communities and policy makers differentiate between perceived threats and actual challenges presented by gangs? Which communities are most affected by gangs, and what is the nature of that impact? How much of the crime that plagues poor urban neighborhoods is attributable to gangs? And what approaches work to promote public safety?”
I live here; I don’t have a clue. I know that good parents end up with children in gangs, as hard as that is for me to accept. But once you know your kid is in a gang, aren’t there things that you can do? Officer Mark Solomon just went through this. And I am certain that all gangsters do NOT have good parents, who is there for them?
I like the idea of making it illegal for gangsters to congregate, but with such a small police force, it’s not very enforceable. Sadly, what usually galvanizes a force to solve the problem is a big tragedy. I was hoping the shooting in the back of the two non-gang members would have done it. I guess not.
Denise -
You believe in the power of playing the victim. The truth is that Mother Nature cares nothing about any of us. Mother Nature doesn’t care how many parents you had or what color your skin is. You are here and she wants to now see if you can survive and thrive, given what you have. You assume it’s better to have two parents. Is this better for the species, for all of humanity, for the next million years? How could you know? You don’t. You get what you have, and you use your brain to make the most of it while you are here. Anyone who has a problem with that is having a love affair with the “victim” role. No one owes anyone anything in this lifetime. You are on your own and you always will be — in life and in death. If you get anything beyond that, it was a gift, and that’s it. Just a gift. Be happy with your gifts, but don’t grow to expect them.
Anon, who are you anyway? Didn’t your parents give you a name? Was it really anonymous they c alled you?
I am in love with my husband, not playing the victim or any other dramatic role. It’s not about “playing the victim” silly; it is about having compassion for others and both realizing and accepting the facts. We may all be born wet and naked and that’s where it stops. You bring up brains — well some have more capacity than others — at birth; another counterpoint to your theory. Yes, we receive gifts and I am happy for those I receive. No Mother Nature doesn’t care what color your skin is, but this society does.
Anon — a couple of other things I believe in
the power of love
the strength given by commitment and hard work — persistance
growing your community through helping one another
You are less of a victim because you think everyone has equal capacity and opportunity? Yea, right…..
Anon —
I haven’t seen Mother Nature carrying guns around the Valley — why did you bring her into the discussion? I’m fairly certain that if Mother Nature had her way there would be no guns.
I ride the bus very frequently in So Seattle and had the best conversation with a black older teen. We talked about hip hop music genres and his life in the ‘hood. He had a good point that he feels that the only people he can connect with on keeping on the straight and narrow are people of his race and not too much older (no more than late twenties) because there is a generational gap. His idea on the mayors announcement is that they really need to have people that are not too much older and of a similar background to connect with.
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