No Shootings or Killings for 363 Days, but the Fight Is Far From Over (East New York)

[theworldismine13]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/19/nyregion/no-shootings-or-killings-for-363-days-but-the-fight-is-far-from-over.html?_r=0

In the storefront window on Van Siclen Avenue, an electronic sign shows a running total of how long it has been since the last shooting took place in an area of roughly 20 square blocks in East New York, Brooklyn.

As of Thursday afternoon, the sign read:

363 Days No Shootings No Killings.

This week one year ago, a neighborhood development organization, Man Up!, began to send people into the streets to figure out where the violence was going next so they could hit the pause button. Mediate. Listen. Talk.

Some workers in the project had been street criminals themselves; others had been victims of violent crime, losing partners and children to it.

“You get tired of going to people’s funeral that you grew up with, or their kids’ funerals, from gun violence in the street,” a member of the group, Athena Collins, 43, said. The father of her five children was murdered.

At twilight on Wednesday, a boy biking through the grounds of the Boulevard Houses, a city housing project, saw five people from Man Up!, easy to spot by their T-shirts and the ID cards dangling from their necks.

“Hotep!” the boy hollered.

“Hotep,” replied Kenneth Watson, one of the group. It is an Egyptian word meaning peace, Mr. Watson explained. When Man Up! connected with young people — especially boys — it encouraged them to think and speak with pride in ancient African principles adapted to Brooklyn 2013.

The boy, De-Ron Jones-Gibbs, 14, said workers from Man Up! had come to his classroom months ago at J.H.S. 166 George Gershwin. “All the bad students would go in that one classroom,” De-Ron said.

Was he a bad student?

He giggled and nodded. “They’re brothers, mentors,” he said, adding that they pushed him to avoid fights “and to go straight home after school.”

The founder of Man Up!, Andre T. Mitchell, said the group was trained in public health approaches developed first in Chicago by the Cure Violence Initiative. The creator of the initiative, Gary Slutkin, an epidemiologist, advocated fighting violence as if it were an epidemic, so that it was essential to interrupt its spread — just as a contagious disease is contained or prevented.

“People think the violence is just about gangs, but it’s not really,” Mr. Mitchell said. “The majority are interpersonal disputes: ‘Why you looking at me?’ ‘No, why you looking at me?’ Our job is to get them before they reach for the gun.”

Man Up! is paid for mainly by the Young Men’s Initiative, a cluster of city programs intended to help young black and Latino men who were most likely to fall behind and to be victims of crime or involved in it. Those programs are heavily supported by the private philanthropy of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and the Open Society Foundation.

The area targeted by Man Up! is bounded by Linden Boulevard, Ashford Street, and Pennsylvania and Cozine Avenues, which includes three projects and three schools, and about 20,000 people, Mr. Mitchell said.

The streets felt relaxed. “It’s more productive out here since they came,” Craig Pruitt, 16, said, pausing from a playground basketball game. “You don’t have to worry about the violence.”

Asked Thursday about Man Up!, officials in the Police Department did not reply.

Mr. Mitchell said that safe streets required a strong police presence, but that the community had a primary role in keeping the peace.

“Everybody is responsible,” he said.

The authority of the Man Up! workers is “based on trust,” Mr. Watson said. “That people don’t see us as police officers. We don’t share any information with the police. Our job is to stop the shooting and killing. Minimize it.”

As a younger man, Mr. Mitchell said, he sold drugs, then went to prison for a manslaughter that he said he was not involved in.

A salesman in his drug business, Tislam Milliner, went to prison for an armed robbery. He is now known as the rapper Tiz and has the job with Man Up! of talking to people in the hospital after they have been shot.

“If they say, ‘I never seen you in my life,’ I’m going to tell you who I am,” Mr. Milliner said. “I’m who you are. I was once what you are.”

In the days before the group began, there were three homicides in the Man Up! zone, Mr. Mitchell said.

Were they tempting fate by talking about 363 days without shootings?

“If we happen to not make it, then we just work on our next year,” Mr. Milliner said. “Once you start believing that just because you made a year, we done solved this whole big problem, you’re a fool.”

 

[88m3]

A girl just got raped and thrown off a roof a couple days ago...

 

[radio rahiem]

nonsense
4th of july a cop got shot doing his patrols
bullets are the currency in ENY

 

[concise]

I heard something that sounded familiar to this at Schomburg yesterday, props on link

 

[Hiphoplives4eva]

Another win for stop and frisk?

 

[tru_m.a.c]

nonsense
4th of july a cop got shot doing his patrols
bullets are the currency in ENY

A girl just got raped and thrown off a roof a couple days ago...

maybe that area was 21 square blocks away

 

[LionofJudah]

nonsense
4th of july a cop got shot doing his patrols
bullets are the currency in ENY

Good.

 

[tru_m.a.c]

I was dead ass trolling, but you nikkas are right, this article is BS

so I did a quick google search between the address in the first line and the july 4th shooting (which had 2 addresses in articles)

either way.......

 

[theworldismine13]

I was dead ass trolling, but you nikkas are right, this article is BS

so I did a quick google search between the address in the first line and the july 4th shooting (which had 2 addresses in articles)

either way.......

wow you went through all that trouble for nothing

the article says

The area targeted by Man Up! is bounded by Linden Boulevard, Ashford Street, and Pennsylvania and Cozine Avenues, which includes three projects and three schools, and about 20,000 people, Mr. Mitchell said.

the cop was shot in cypress hills housing

ired the blast that hobbled Police Officer Jamil Sarwar, 30, as he and his partner Javier Solos ran to a shooting inside East New York's Cypress Hills Houses.

Read more: Police bust teen gunman who shot cop in Brooklyn housing project on the Fourth of July: sources - NY Daily News

i dont got time to post the pictures but if you map the Man Up area and cypress hills, cypress hills is outside the area, so the article isnt full of shyt, you are

but anyways, im surprised at the negativity, i find it disgusting

this is exactly what people need to be doing and we need more of this, i think it looks great and by the look of the website they are doing a lot of things Manupinc.org

 

[Spatial Paradox]

nonsense
4th of july a cop got shot doing his patrols
bullets are the currency in ENY

I'm pretty sure that 4th of July shooting was in Cypress Hills Houses, which isn't in the part of ENY described in the article.

I was dead ass trolling, but you nikkas are right, this article is BS

so I did a quick google search between the address in the first line and the july 4th shooting (which had 2 addresses in articles)

either way.......

If that's supposed to be the outline of the area talked about in the article, you're way off...

 

[Spatial Paradox]

The area outlined in the lower left is the area being discussed in the article. The area in the upper right is where the July 4th shooting took place.

 

[illadope]

All I got from this is people know how to use mapping software.

 

[tru_m.a.c]

wow you went through all that trouble for nothing

the article says

the cop was shot in cypress hills housing


i dont got time to post the pictures but if you map the Man Up area and cypress hills, cypress hills is outside the area, so the article isnt full of shyt, you are

but anyways, im surprised at the negativity, i find it disgusting

this is exactly what people need to be doing and we need more of this, i think it looks great and by the look of the website they are doing a lot of things Manupinc.org

God you're fukkn stupid.

The first sentence says "In the storefront window on Van Siclen Avenue, an electronic sign shows a running total of how long it has been since the last shooting took place in an area of roughly 20 square blocks in East New York, Brooklyn."

So all I did was quickly type in van siclen ave in google maps. Because there is no specific address, google maps is just going to pinpoint the "center" of your search request. That is what Circle B is. See my explanation for Circle A and C below.....

We were fukkn joking you dweeb. We aren't calling the groups activities bullshyt.

I'm pretty sure that 4th of July shooting was in Cypress Hills Houses, which isn't in the part of ENY described in the article.

If that's supposed to be the outline of the area talked about in the article, you're way off...

No b, that's not an outline. Circle A and Circle C are taken directly from the following article. I used to work in BK, trust me I know that that is not the full area.

Sarwar and his partner, Javier Solis, reached the scene and took cover in a nearby building at 365 Fountain Ave.

“When they’re inside, they realize that officer Sarwar had been shot,” Kelly said.

Cops found shell casings on the roof of the Fountain Ave. building while searching it and were combing 1200 Sutter Ave. early Friday, he said.



Read more: NYPD officer shot while on patrol in Brooklyn, remains in stable condition - NY Daily News

Either way, the joke that went over both of your heads was, if you expanded the arbitrary 20 block count, to like 21.....ah fukkn forget it....this shyt should not have had to be explained

 

[theworldismine13]

God you're fukkn stupid.

The first sentence says "In the storefront window on Van Siclen Avenue, an electronic sign shows a running total of how long it has been since the last shooting took place in an area of roughly 20 square blocks in East New York, Brooklyn."

So all I did was quickly type in van siclen ave in google maps. Because there is no specific address, google maps is just going to pinpoint the "center" of your search request. That is what Circle B is. See my explanation for Circle A and C below.....

We were fukkn joking you dweeb. We aren't calling the groups activities bullshyt.



No b, that's not an outline. Circle A and Circle C are taken directly from the following article. I used to work in BK, trust me I know that that is not the full area.



Either way, the joke that went over both of your heads was, if you expanded the arbitrary 20 block count, to like 21.....ah fukkn forget it....this shyt should not have had to be explained

yo are you retarded? van siclen ave isnt near cypress hills and it goes right through the man up area and the man up area is about 20 square blocks, everything in the article makes perfect sense

your joke would only make sense if you have bad reading comprehension

you are the one that went out of your way to not only troll but you actually went to google maps and proved your lack of reading comprehension and map reading skills, stop embarrassing yourself, log off and come back another day

 

[Spatial Paradox]

No b, that's not an outline. Circle A and Circle C are taken directly from the following article. I used to work in BK, trust me I know that that is not the full area.

Either way, the joke that went over both of your heads was, if you expanded the arbitrary 20 block count, to like 21.....ah fukkn forget it....this shyt should not have had to be explained

It did need explaining because as you pointed out, Google Maps just gives you the mid point of the street you put in if you don't give a specific address. The thing is, the part of Van Siclen that's at that midpoint is about 20 blocks from A & C (where the July 4th shootings took place), but it's not in the area talked about in the article

As for the bolded, you said you were trolling, but then said the article was BS. I was just pointing out that, outline or not, that's not the area in the article