'A vulnerable position'
NAACP head says coalition needs to follow through to head off summer violence
By André Coleman 06/18/2009
Using as a gauge an increase in gang activity, combined with a faltering economy and a lack of summer school programs, local officials and community leaders say they are gearing up for a potentially bloody summer — one perhaps on a par with 2007, when 11 people were killed in gang-related violence.
But even though city officials are taking steps to quell escalating violence mostly through community meetings, along with subsidized job and education programs, a frustrated NAACP President Joe Brown said the time for talk has passed.
“We don’t sit down and make sure that the stuff we talk about is going to be accomplished,” said Brown, who was publicly criticized for supposedly not being more forceful with local police over an officer-involved shooting death of a local man in February. “We don’t have a timeline and all we do is end up running from press conference to press conference. Then, because we are not ready, we say to law enforcement, ‘You handle it,’ and then after they handle it, we turn around and say to law enforcement, ‘You handled it the wrong way.’”
Brown admitted that he was still stinging from criticism leveled against him following the death of 38-year-old Leroy Barnes, who was shot 11 times — seven times in the back — by Pasadena police officers after allegedly pointing a gun at them from the backseat of a car. Some complained that Brown failed to vigorously attack Pasadena Police Chief Bernard Melekian, who originally stated that Barnes had left the car before shooting at officers, which turned out to be untrue. The chief later recanted the statement. As it turned out, even though Barnes was armed, he did not fire at the two officers. The case is still under investigation by the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office and the US Justice Department.
But death by police has been the exception this year. Over the past two months, there have been two gang-related shootings in Altadena, one of them fatal, and one fatal shooting in Pasadena. On May 29, Lancaster resident David Crosby, 32, was shot and killed in Atlantis, a Pasadena restaurant, hours after attending a funeral for 24-year-old Darryl Stephens at a church in Altadena. Pasadena detectives arrested Dwayne Rice, 26, of Pasadena in connection with the murder, which officials say was gang-related. Rice is being held without bail and scheduled to be arraigned June 16.
In another incident on June 5, two suspected members of the Pasadena Denver Lanes gang wounded an 18-year-old man in a drive-by shooting on Lincoln Avenue in Altadena. Sheriff’s deputies arrested Dalonte Andrews and Terence Bonds in connection with the shooting. Andrews was released after posting $50,000 bail and is scheduled to appear in court on Aug. 6. Bonds — already on parole for a burglary conviction — is being held without bail.
That incident occurred almost a month after John Muir High School senior Jerrill Dulaney was shot and killed on Altadena Drive while walking home from a friend’s house. Dulaney was not a gang member, according to authorities, who have yet to make an arrest in connection with the May 10 murder.
Unlike the summer of 2007 — when most homicides were between African Americans and Latinos — most of the violence now appears to be incidents of black-on-black crime, a subject Brown says is “taboo” among many in the black community. “[That] has caused me some anguish, because some black people tell me we should not talk about that publicly,” said Brown, who has since boycotted a number of recent public events aimed at allaying fears of gang violence. “If we cannot talk about that, we cannot talk about how the system is treating us.”
Police also have concerns about the potential of increased violence this summer, Melekian said Monday.
“There is a lot of street talk about that and we are putting a number of things in place to try and head that off. We work incredibly closely with the Altadena Sheriff’s Department. I think it’s one of the reasons we have been able to keep the violence down to the levels we have,” Melekian said.
Melekian said the department is now better able to combat violence thanks to the Fugitive Apprehension Unit, which deals only with known hardcore felons and has already taken more than 200 people into custody since it began in 2007, as part of Operation Safe Cities, another police program targeting known criminals.
On June 7, the Pasadena/Altadena Vision 20/20 Coalition, led by Pasadena City Councilwoman Jacque Robinson and comprised of residents and officials with a number of agencies, gathered at Pasadena City Hall to call for an end to the violence.
“It’s our intent with this press conference today to let the city of Pasadena residents and business owners and anyone who’s involved in our livelihood to know that gang violence will not be tolerated here in Pasadena, that every life is priceless and important, and it needs to stop right here, right now,” Robinson said at the event.
Coalition member organizations include Neighborhood Outreach Workers, Moms on the Move, El Centro de Accion Social, the Western Justice Center, the Harambee Christian Youth Center and the NAACP. Brown declined to attend.
“Just as Dr. King and others had an objective before they marched — like the right to vote — we need an objective before we step in front of a microphone,” he said. “King never marched just to march or talked just to talk, and I won’t do that either. That’s my position, and I have taken a lot of blows and hits for it, but I stand by it.”
The city, wrote Coalition member Martin Gordon of the ACLU Pasadena/Foothill Chapter, has increased funding for the Neighborhood Outreach Workers program that works with youth in gangs, added 50 summer youth jobs and partnered with businesses to pay a percent of the salaries of some of them. “I am sure that there are some people out there that might say this is not enough. I agree. But, let’s give credit where credit is due.”
“To say we need jobs or social services for young men who are not ready to go to work, and don’t even want to go PCC, leaves them in a vulnerable position and will put them right back on the streets,” said Brown, “and the city of Pasadena cannot underwrite everything.”
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The cocktail that creates gangs has been well known since the first studies of the Bowery Boys in the 1880's. The cocktail is:
A demeaning educational system that encourgages males to drop out by mistreatment
lack of education
lack of social networks that can help a yopung person rise socially
lack of jobs that pay a decent livable wage
It is disgusting to note, but these conditions have been created willfully by the policy makers of Pasadena. The PEFand ACT who have ruled Pasadenas education policies for three decades now have destroyed that system. And while it is now working for some people, it still is destroying African American children and refusing to attempt to educate them. The rhetoric is sweet, the actuality is something more like Missisippi in the early 1920's.
In City Policy, ACT, Pasadena Heritage, City Employee unions and many others have combined to form policies that drive out blue collar workers and affordable housing. Young kids may not know who is behiend these policies, but they feel to the depth of their bones that they are not welcome and their is no place for them in their home city. They know they are unwanted by those who rule the City, no matter how polished the lies are. They are poor, but they are not stupid.
Meetings, hard work by the NAACP and the ACLU and the churches can not solve this problem. Only changing the classist racist policies of the City of Pasadena can change this problem. Thats going to require that either the present City Council and School Board repent or are replaced.
The first step of any twelve step healing process is to admit you have a problem. The second step is to study what it is.