VIOLENCE ON THE STREETS

Attacking The Problem Of Black-On-Black Crime

Editor's Note: Society pays a high price for violence - in lost lives,
dashed hopes, lost wages and the cost of caring for victims and their
families. This is the second in a two-part series looking at the human and
financial toll. Read Sunday's report, "Violence: a costly 'disease,' " at
www.star newsonline.com.

Business owner Darryl Brown sat in his dimly lit Castle Street insurance
office one recent Thursday afternoon, recounting how the street life of his
22-year-old son, Terry Green, had cost his son his life.

Mr. Green was gunned down earlier that day, June 24, on Glenn Drive in what
Wilmington police believe was a drug-related shooting. It was the fourth
time he had been shot - the third time this year.

Mr. Green's death was part of inner-city warfare in Wilmington that has
resulted in 15 reported shootings this year. Fourteen were in the northwest
section of the city.

All 15 victims were black, as were all but one of the suspects.

"If people can learn from this that living in the streets is not a badge of
honor, if his death can save one life, then maybe he didn't die in vain,"
Mr. Brown said of his son.

The 15 shootings shed light on a self-destructive street life that has
loaded the New Hanover County jail and emergency rooms with black men,
created a violent-crimes task force, caused the local NAACP to pressure the
Wilmington police for more drug crackdowns and sent black community leaders
looking for answers.

The shootings also terrified residents. Several bullets lodged in the walls
of a home with children inside near the 1200 block of South Ninth Street
when a man stepped out of a car June 28 and began firing at another car.

A few days earlier, Louise Moore found bullet holes in the side of her home
at the corner of 14th and Glenn streets.

"I grew up in this neighbor-hood, but it ain't never been this bad," Ms.
Moore said a day after the incident.

The statistics on black-on-black crime are grim. Racial statistics on the
victims and assailants in all gunshot assaults in Wilmington are not
recorded, but the U.S. Department of Justice does keep records on
homicides. In the 80 homicides reported in Wilmington between 1993 and
2002, the most recent years on which the statistics are available, 58
victims - nearly 73 percent - were black. Yet blacks make up only 25.8
percent of the city's 92,000 residents.

In the cases of 37 black victims, the suspected killer also was black. In
19 of the cases, the race of the suspects was unknown. In two cases, the
offenders were white.

Linda Rawley, public information officer with the Wilmington Police
Department, said the cost of the shootings can be seen in the giant holes
they leave in the fabric of the black community.

"It rips at the very fiber of the family and surrounding community," said
Officer Rawley, who is black. "It angers family members, it embitters
neighbors and causes great tension in the community."

Many of this year's shootings in Wilmington were sparked by drugs or an
argument, including one over a woman. Armed robbery is suspected in at
least three of the shootings, including the only one with a white suspect.

"Most shootings are usually over drugs, money or women," said Barry Coburn,
an analyst with the police department who compiles the city's crime statistics.

All the suspects in this year's shootings are men, except for one in which
gunfire ended a March 5 argument between two women at Rankin Terrace.

James Johnson, a professor of psychology at the University of North
Carolina at Wilmington, said men have always tended to be more violent than
women. But he added the violence displayed by black men tends to be
excessive in the inner cities. He said the violence has spread and been
promoted through rap music and violent black images in the media.

"There's this perception out here that violence is a badge of black
manhood," said Dr. Johnson, who is black. "Some people feel, to be a real
black man, you have to be violent."

Officials with the local chapter of the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People point to poor socioeconomic conditions in
many black communities that, they say, has left many there feeling they
have no choice but to sell drugs. It's a career the New Hanover County
chapter's political action chairman, Bernard Robinson, believes triggers
many shootings.

"We have to stop letting people use our neighborhoods as safe havens for
drug dealers," Mr. Robinson said.

Some officials and groups say they are working hard to combat the
problem. NAACP officials have been attending meetings with police, trying
to persuade the department to place more officers in drug-infested areas
and sponsor more community programs.

"We need to build stronger neighborhoods, not more jails," Mr. Robinson said.

Drugs as well as limited education, poverty, chronic unemployment, lack of
hope, disenchantment and negative images in the media have all been cited
as underlying causes of black-on-black crime, community leaders and public
officials said.

Terry Jones, pastor at Warner Temple AME Zion Church, said black-on-black
crime isn't a simple issue to solve.

"There are too many underlying causes involved," he said. "It's going to
take a lot in our communities to fight this."

Officer Rawley praises a local effort for trying to get a tighter grip on
gun violence. The Violent Crimes Task Force is a partnership of the
Wilmington Police Department, the New Hanover Sheriff's Office, New Hanover
District Attorney's Office and other law enforcement agencies.

They work with federal prosecutors to get more severe sentences for
criminals committing violent acts with guns, said Jon David, an assistant
district attorney.

"We believe getting more guns off the street is the answer," he said.

It's not clear how many men have been siphoned from society to
incarceration by urban community warfare. But according to a New Hanover
County jail official, of the building's 392 inmates in jail Saturday, 223
were black.

Patricia Thomas, who recently served as a chaplain for the Pender
Correctional Institution, stressed that more classes and programs in
conflict resolution and anger management need to be introduced into black
communities to keep more black men out of jail.

One city program aims to keep inner-city youngsters from ending up in jail.
On Saturday nights, when many teens are out on the street, the gym at the
Martin Luther King Center on Eighth Street is filled with at-risk black and
white children trying to stay out of trouble.

They participate in various activities, including basketball, swimming,
tennis and listening to motivational speakers.

Sponsored by the Wilmington Police Department with the help of community
residents, the Youth Fitness and Mentoring Program was created to target
children who were at risk for making poor choices regarding violence, said
Officer Verna Atwood, who runs the program.

"This not only gives them something else to do but something positive to
think of when they are not here," Officer Atwood said.

It is one of a number of community efforts to curb violent crime in the
inner city.

Various community organizations are working to solve some of the underlying
issues of black-on-black crime. But some people, such as Dolores Moore,
president of the New Hanover County chapter of the NAACP, argue that not
enough is being done by individual residents.

"This problem is occurring in the black community, and black residents must
take more of a personal lead to fight it," she said.

Officer Donnie Williams, who grew up in the public housing community of
Creekwood, added it shouldn't be just a police effort but a community effort.

Some police officers added that it is up to parents to get more involved
with their children.

"A lot of the shootings could be prevented if there was more parental
guidance," Sgt. Kevin Hargrove said.

It should be noted that the overwhelming majority of murders recorded
across the nation are between people of the same race. According to the
latest numbers on murders in single victim/single offender incidents
released by the U.S. Department of Justice, 92.3 percent of black victims
were killed by black offenders in 2002, and 84.7 percent of white victims
were killed by white offenders.

It also should be noted that the death of Mr. Green was the only murder
this year in Wilmington that involved black suspects and black victims. But
proportionally, blacks in the United States are more likely than whites to
die a violent death.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, 48.7 percent of murder victims
in 2002 across the nation were white, and 48.5 percent were black -
although blacks made up only 12.3 percent of the country's population in 2000.

One solution to stopping the shootings in urban American may begin with
simply talking about them. Many in the community cried out in recent years
after several shootings of black men by law enforcement officers.

But despite the number of deaths it causes, black-on-black crime is a taboo
subject in many circles. It's often considered politically or culturally
incorrect for blacks to criticize their own people, Officer Rawley said.

Some view the term "black-on-black crime" as a cliche and wonder why no one
talks about white-on-white crime.

"It's a term that perpetuates the negative images of our black youth," said
Johnnie Fields, an official with the Castle Street Association, a merchants
group for the surrounding community.

"Too many black men already are surrounded by negative stereotypes that
assume they are trouble," Ms. Fields said.

Chaplain Thomas said she feels that crimes involving blacks tend to be more
publicized in the media. Mr. David, the assistant district attorney, said
he looks at the issue as a social issue rather than a "black" issue.

Dr. Johnson thinks it's important to bring the problem of -black-on-black
crime to the forefront.

"If these victims had all been shot by whites," he said, "the black
community would be up in arms by now, demanding an investigation."