To End the Violence, Act as if Their Lives Matter*
Dealing with the level of violence taking a
heavy toll on New York’s minority communities requires more than slogans.
By Efrem Sigel • Jan
29, 2021
To see the published version with photos at fairobserver.com, click: https://www.fairobserver.com/culture/efrem-sigel-author-nyc-gang-gun-violence-education-inequality-news-17279/
When I took my seat as a
juror in The People v. Abraham Cucuta, a murder trial in Manhattan several
years ago, the first question on my mind was, why the delay?
Two young men were
shot to death in a New York City Housing Authority project in East Harlem 10
years earlier. Why had it taken so long to bring the defendant to justice?
After hearing from the two
eyewitnesses, we had our answer. For years, both had refused to testify, even
though they saw the victims get shot, even though they knew the perpetrator
well. As gang members, they felt constrained by an oath of silence — and
by fear of retribution. Only when they were facing long sentences in other
cases did they agree to testify, in exchange for reduced jail time. Their
testimony was key to our jury’s vote to convict the accused, Abraham Cucuta, and to his later sentencing
to life in prison.
That trial, and my account of how young men grow up in East
Harlem, are the subjects of my just-published book, “Juror Number 2: The Story of a Murder, the Agony of a
Neighborhood.”
Troubled Neighborhoods
These days, I
think a lot about my jury experience as we close the books on 2020, a year of
horrific violence in American cities. In New York,
in addition to a near-doubling of shootings compared to 2019, from 777 to
1,531, there were 462 murders, a 45% increase. At the year’s end, about half
were unsolved. Other cities have experienced similar surges in
killings: Chicago,
with 769 murders, the most of any city, saw an increase of 55%. Milwaukee, New
Orleans, Memphis, Minneapolis and Phoenix registered increases in murders
ranging from 52% to 95%.
Whether it’s COVID-19 deaths
or the victims of violent crime in our own cities, we are besieged, and
ultimately numbed, by statistics. It’s all too easy to forget that behind every
crime statistic is a life cut short — and often a young life at that. In
the month of July 2020, in New York, Shatavia Walls, 33, was shot to death in the
East New York neighborhood of Brooklyn, three days after confronting men
setting off fireworks near children. Anthony Robinson, 29, was gunned down crossing Sheridan Avenue in the
Bronx while holding the hand of his young daughter. One-year-old Davell Gardner was
killed by gunmen spraying bullets at an outdoor family cookout in Bed-Stuy,
Brooklyn.
In New York City, a handful
of police precincts in troubled neighborhoods account for an outsized share of
violent crimes. These include Precinct 75, East New York, Brooklyn; Precinct
73, Brownsville, Brooklyn; Precinct 44, Grand Concourse-Bronx Terminal Market;
and Precinct 23, East Harlem. Like Shatavia Walls, Anthony Robinson and Davell
Gardner, the great majority of murder victims in these and in similar
neighborhoods are black and Latino.
Precinct 23 was the scene of
the murders in the trial of Abraham Cucuta. In the early morning hours of June
7, 2007, five young men were playing dice in the courtyard of East River Houses
when another man entered the courtyard and started firing. Two of the dice
players were shot dead in a matter of minutes. A third man, the intended
target, got away, but was killed five years later in a shootout with police.
The two other dice players, the eyewitnesses in the trial, have been in and out
of jail multiple times in other cases; one will be in prison until his mid-50s.
And the sixth, Abraham Cucuta, will spend the rest of his life in a New York
state prison.
The toll of
that dice game, what preceded it and what followed, is stark: six young men,
six ruined lives. Meanwhile, the violence in East Harlem continues. In the
first 11 months of 2020, there were seven murders in Precinct 23 versus two in
2019.
More
Than Slogans
In the
aftermath of the trial, my search for why — why the young men caught up in the
murders and the trial were cutting schools, joining gangs, selling drugs,
getting arrested and spending time in jail — took me into housing
projects, police precincts and schools in East Harlem.
That search, and the months of shootings and killings in New York as I was
writing “Juror Number 2,” have convinced me that dealing with this level of
violence requires more than slogans. The cry to “defund the police,” for example, was an understandable reaction to the
horrendous killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. But with violence taking a
heavy toll in minority communities, what is needed is a three-legged approach:
safe streets, outreach to potential offenders, and true educational opportunity
for today’s children.
To achieve safe streets, the first leg requires not less policing but better
policing: improved recruitment and training, genuine police engagement with the
communities they serve. But equally necessary is support by community residents
for the legitimate role of the cops in protecting neighborhoods. When witnesses
refuse to identify perpetrators of violence, in effect they are giving shelter
to those who kill while denying safety to future victims.
The second leg is exemplified
by the city’s Cure Violence programs, with leaders like Tara Brown-Arnell and
Freddie Charles of Bronx Connect, Erica Ford of LIFE Camp in South Jamaica and
Omar Jackson of SAVE in
East Harlem. Their outreach workers seek out young men prone to violence,
urging them to put away guns and embrace alternatives like paid internships,
jobs, education.
Ford’s motto, “Peace is a
lifestyle,” is an umbrella for her organization’s work in mental health
counseling, feeding hungry people, education and outreach. Jackson and his
small staff are “credible messengers” who draw on their own experience of
criminal activity and jail time to establish rapport with those at risk of
settling scores with knives and bullets. “You can’t tell these guys nothing,”
he explains to me. “They have to trust us 100% because if I won’t trust you,
I’m not sharing anything with you.”
I’m a big fan of these
organizations, but at present, they cover only a fraction of the most dangerous
neighborhoods, and it takes months to recruit and train the right violence
interrupters. Expanding these programs is a no-brainer, as long as we
understand that they won’t produce instant results.
The third leg offers a
long-term payoff in reduced violence: targeting children in grades prek-8 and
insuring they attend schools that succeed. Of the 23 regular schools in
District 4, East Harlem, only at six are
the majority of pupils proficient in English. Normal attendance in District 4
is poor; in the Department of Education’s haphazardly organized remote learning
environment, it’s been a disaster.
Until we’re serious about
fixing failing schools, too many children will grow up lacking needed skills,
tempted by gangs and crime, and without knowing in their bones that a
neighborhood undisturbed by violence is every person’s right. True, improving
schools will be a long and arduous process. It won’t be achieved by appointing
some miracle-worker chancellor from out of town to impose change from on high.
This approach of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s yielded little.
Instead, success will require
recruiting exceptional principals and giving them the autonomy to organize
their schools and pick their teachers free of bureaucratic hamstrings. We have
such principals today. In “Juror Number 2” I single out, in East Harlem alone,
Dimitres Pantelidis of PS 171, Bennett Lieberman of Central Park East High
School and Tara Stant of Success Academy Harlem 3. We just need a lot more of
them.
Shatavia Walls was killed because she had the temerity to
confront men who were endangering children. Davell Gardner, a toddler, died for
no reason at all, other than to be in the wrong place when young men were
brandishing guns. The wrong place? As Omar Jackson said to me after another
accidental shooting death at another barbecue in another borough, “Who brings a
gun to a cookout?”
It’s past time to act as if their lives
mattered.
____________________________________________________
Efrem Sigel is the author of two novels, "The
Kermanshah Transfer" and "The Disappearance," as well as more
than 30 short stories and memoirs published in The Antioch Review, MacGuffin
magazine, The Journal, Nimrod, The Jerusalem Post, Congress Monthly and Xavier
Review, among others. His latest book is "Juror Number 2: The Story of a Murder,
the Agony of a Neighborhood." Sigel served as a Peace Corps volunteer in
Ivory Coast and holds a BA from Harvard and an MBA from Harvard Business
School. He is a project coordinator for the Education Committee, Harvard
Business School Club of New York, and directs pro bono consulting projects to
nonprofits in greater New York. Sigel also sits on the board of Futures and
Option.
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*originally published in: www.fairobserver.com
posted by efrem sigel @ 2:55 PM
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