How 'Violence Interrupters' Are Trying to Stop Gang Shootings in Brooklyn

 

By John Surico

Note: This article was originally published on December 16, 2015. 

I first got a sense of what it means to interrupt violence in early September, at a vigil for a slain teen in Far Rockaways, Queens. The boy, NeShawn Plummer, hadn't even graduated high school when he was shot on a corner late one night while hanging out with friends. He died two days afterward, and detectives eventually determined the attack was likely over a minor dispute Plummer was involved in—gang-related retaliation for an earlier fight.

While elected officials and local activists berated youth violence on the corner where NeShawn was killed—in a terrible coincidence, it wasn't far from where his older brother had been killed three years before—I was approached by two teens from a nearby group called Rock Safe Streets, which formed earlier this year and is dedicated to ending the violence in the neighborhood.

The first teen, almost the same age as NeShawn, told me that she joined the group because she was tired of what she had seen, and kept seeing. "The only time that we come together as a community is when something tragic like this happens," she told me. "But we need to take a deep look at what's going on here. Gun violence is only a symptom of the system.

"It hits home, though," she continued, "when a 16-year-old has to have his life taken away," 

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Source: VICE