![]() ![]() New York began pursuing the strategy, called Cure Violence, in 2014 and today the city has around 30 nonprofits doing the work, which varies from job training to reentry services for people coming home from prison. The surge in shootings is testing the premise that critics of policing have argued for years: Gun violence can be prevented without throwing more cops at the problem, by using workers such as Scriven. At least 34 people have been shot in the neighborhood this year so far, and violence interrupters like Scriven struggle to keep up.ģ35 Sutter Ave, the site of recent shootings. Just recently, stray bullets have killed Shalimar Birkett, a 32-year-old mother attending a vigil in Brownsville, and Justin Wallace, who was sitting in his house in Far Rockaway just days shy of his 11th birthday.Īfter a year of relative peace before the pandemic, COVID caused what Scriven described as “a backlash.” Shootings in Brownsville increased nearly 200 percent from 2019 to 2021. While most other major crimes are down, murders in the city jumped by 45 percent in 2020, when 462 people were killed - the most since 2011 - and this year is already outpacing 2020, like dozens of other major U.S. New York City is asking the same question. “Our kids come to us sometimes and say, ‘You telling us to put our guns down but you’re not telling them to put their guns down? So when they come over here and kill us, what we supposed to do?’” ![]() When the shooting comes in our neighborhood, it usually comes from another neighborhood,” Scriven said. There are only eight or nine of us, we’re dealing with kids from four or five projects. “Our biggest issue is that there’s not enough of us. Other times it means waking up to texts and calls at 2 a.m., pleading with angry teenagers to not shoot each other, showing up on corners until everyone calms down. ![]() Sometimes this means giving them some money or a gift card so they have something to eat, getting them a job at a shop on Pitkin Avenue, or helping them get their driver’s license, laying foundations for a more stable life. “Over and over again, you hear people say, ‘those kids, those kids, those kids,’ forgetting when they were kids, and the stupid things they did.” “The first thing you need to have to do this job is empathy,” Scriven said. On the block he goes by Mellow (“Because I’m cool” he explains, a little sheepishly) and has tried to steer young people in his neighborhood away from using their guns. For the past five years, the 55-year-old has worked as a counselor for Brownsville In, Violence Out, the anti-violence arm of a nonprofit that gets funding from the city. When someone has been shot or is about to shoot someone in Brownsville, there is a good chance that Darien Scriven knows who they are. Jamal Glasgow and Anthony Green of Elite Learners in Brownsville, Brooklyn. ![]()
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