Gun discussion aims to reduce shootings
ByWilliam Kaempffer, New Haven Register Staff 07/10/2006
NEW HAVEN —NEW HAVEN — Jammal Cunningham said little, but the button on his shirt, emblazoned with the pictures of a half-dozen dead young men from his neighborhood, spoke volumes.
Fallen soldiers, it read. Jammal is 14.
"Do you know what a bullet feels like?" asked Herman Badger, sitting at a cafeteria table with the group of youths, the eldest 16. "When they pass through your body, they’re hot."
He was blunt.
"Most of my shootings, most of my homicides, involve guys your age," said Badger, a New Haven police lieutenant who is African American and heads the investigative services division.
"Young black male. It doesn’t make any sense. Why are you all shooting each other?" he asked earnestly.
If only for a short time, the young men laughed.
About a dozen teens showed up for the gun prevention workshop recently at Wexler-Grant School in the Dixwell neighborhood as part of a summer youth program run by CT RIBAT, an organization founded by Shafiq Abdussabur, a city police officer, community activist and local artist.
The group sponsors camping trips, movie outings and trips to the Thimble Islands in Branford, and has paid enrollment fees for Little League and youth football programs.
But there’s a catch. The youths also are required to attend a tour of the Whalley Avenue jail, drug lectures and anti-gun workshops.
The latter is a dose of prevention, Abdussabur said. The former is to, hopefully, instill some hope and the skills to cope in an urban center, to show the youths that there’s more to life than joining a gang, going to jail and dying young.
"A lot of kids, they never really break the New Haven County line. Their world is small," Abdussabur said.
On Friday, he laid down some ground rules. No gang signs. No three-time hand slaps. No doo-rags, earrings, gang colors, gold chains or bling-bling watches.
Courtney Gayle, 27, a program coordinator for CT RIBAT and a father of two, is going to Southern Connecticut State University to finish up his accounting degree.
"I’m here to show these guys that you don’t need to run in the street to be a man. It’s not about that," Gayle said.
It was hard to say if the young men were at the workshop by choice or obligation.
Michael Douglas, of Bristol Street, and Antwan Turner, of Hamden, both 16, said they came to "stay positive" and "stay off the street."
But Turner also has a favorite saying: "Everybody got to die someday, whether it’s natural causes or gunplay."
Replied Douglas: "He’s telling the truth."
Abdussabur said nearly 50 young men enrolled in the summer pilot program. About a dozen came to the gun violence session. Roughly 200 boys and girls are involved with the group overall.
According to Abdussabur, CT RIBAT was formed about three years ago to help fill the void left when the Dixwell Q-House, a longtime provider of youth services, closed after drowning in debt. RIBAT is Arabic for retreat. The retreats, he said, are the camping trips, where youths can hopefully cleanse their minds and bodies by leaving the chaos of the city streets.
The youth programs will run year round, working to filling the gaps on weekends during the school year and offering more extensive sessions in the summer.
While the organization is scratching by on donations, Abdussabur is thinking big.
"I’d like to think as an artist, this program would be my Mona Lisa to the community."
Tiffany Franklin, who had three sons at Friday’s event, hoped so too.
She lives in the Dickerman Court apartments, where 13-year-old Jajuana Cole was fatally shot last month when youths from a rival neighborhood fired into a crowd at a party.
She signed up Jammal and his two brothers, 13 and 16, so they could hike and camp and not be on the street.
"I’m scared for my kids and I’m very protective of my boys," she said.
©New Haven Register 2006
