'Our young men are dying' Pt 2

BY ANDREA ROBINSON
arobinson@MiamiHerald.com

Dwight Jackson longs for those days 30 years ago when young black men settled their disputes the old-fashioned way: with loud trash talk and occasional fisticuffs. When the dust- ups were over, the combatants walked away and went home.

Not anymore. Simple disputes now too often turn deadly.

Jackson, 47, sees it in the back room of the Liberty City mortuary where he makes mangled bodies presentable for public viewing. Jackson, owner of Richardson Mortuary, receives at least 10 young, black homicide victims a month; that's more than there were, say, 20 years ago, other longtime employees there remark.

''Inner-city [boys] are being killed over silly stuff . . . built on hate and envy,'' he said, shaking his head.

Forty years after the Kerner Commission report -- in the wake of the Watts riots in Los Angeles -- tried to sort out why young black men were killing each other, Jackson keeps wondering how things could have gotten so bad in South Florida and the nation.

A new, first-time Florida initiative seeks to find the answers and save at-risk black males -- who state Sen. Frederica Wilson, D-Miami, calls ``an endangered species.''

''This goes beyond public safety and prevention. It's public health. It goes to our mental condition,'' said state Rep. Frank Peterman, a St. Petersburg Democrat.

Peterman and Wilson sponsored legislation to create the Council on the Social Status of Black Men and Boys, which former Gov. Jeb Bush signed into law last June and which first met in February. The council, located in the Attorney General's office and budgeted at $200,000 per year, will study a litany of condi- tions that negatively affect black males: escalating homicide, arrest and incarceration rates, poverty, violence, low income, the breakdown of the family structure and school performance and health issues.

And it will produce yet another report -- like so many other commissions have done around the nation over the past 40 years -- that will propose ways to change the driving forces that have left so many black males in prison or dead from Miami and Fort Lauderdale to Orlando and Jacksonville.

Wilson said the council will recommend legislative action to address the issues of concern. The first report is due by the year's end.

Peterman promises the Florida commission won't be a ''touchy-feely exercise'' and said it will examine the breakdown in the black family and the heavy toll it is taking on males. To do that, it will need solid information of the sort requested by council chairman Levi Williams last week. In a teleconference on Wednesday, Williams, a Fort Lauderdale attorney, asked the heads of state agencies for data on racial and ethnic disparities.

SCOPE OF THE PROBLEM

Black males, Wilson said, are like Florida's panthers and manatees: dying young and at the mercy of human predators.

''We're so disproportionately affected by all of this [black-on-black male violence]. There are no men available to teach black boys how to become responsible men,'' Wilson said.

That sentiment is echoed by Beverly Colson Neal, executive director of the Florida NAACP office in Orlando: ``Our young men are dying. This didn't just start.''

Florida is among a handful of states, including Ohio and Indiana, to have panels looking for ways to stop the rising violence that is a festering national problem, one the U.S. Conference of Mayors also hopes to tackle. The mayors' meeting was held last month in Miami -- an appropriate venue to discuss violence because South Florida is a region under siege.

Consider:

• Figures provided by local law enforcement agencies lay out the scope of the carnage. Broward had 95 homicide victims in 2006, up 50 percent from the previous year. Miami-Dade had 258 homicides last year, up 40 percent from 2005. About 165 of those victims in Miami-Dade and Broward were black, the overwhelming majority male and younger than 35.

• Another telling figure, Wilson said, that spurred creation of Florida's council: Black males make up 51.2 percent of inmates in state prisons and 62 percent of the jail population. She cited figures from the Florida Department of Corrections.

• Nationally, it is difficult to determine overall numbers of black-on-black crime because police agencies do not keep such statistics. But in 2004 -- the latest year for which figures are available -- victimization rates for blacks were six times higher than rates for whites. Rates for black perpetrators were seven times higher.

THE CAUSES

There are a myriad of reasons, authorities say, for the uptick in local violence: poverty, a population spike for young men, police departments stretched thin on the streets, a proliferation of weapons. Police officials also lay blame on two key federal policy changes: the end of a ban on assault weapons, which put more high-powered guns on the streets; and the loss of funding for community policing and other programs that put more officers into neighborhoods.

Neal and fellow NAACP member Jamal Rose also blame much of the violence on the breakdown of black communities. Gone are many of the athletic and after-school activities that gave children something to do, Rose said. Gone too are many of the mom-and-pop stores, often replaced by chain convenience stores.

''The funds are being drawn out of the neighborhood but not being put back in,'' Rose said.

Too many successful blacks have left their old stomping grounds in favor of integrated suburban areas, Neal noted, leaving the poorest children often living among jobless felons recently released from prison.

Recognizing that, several successful blacks try to serve as role models for children. ''We know the challenges. Those stats are disturbing,'' said Willie Johnson, leader of a mentoring program at Koinonia Worship Center in Hallandale Beach's Carver Ranches community.

Johnson said the church and other segments of the black community must step up and fix the problem: ``The village ain't doing too good right now.''

For Jackson, the mortuary owner, the search for answers starts a lot closer than the mythical village: ``It's deep-rooted, and it starts in the home.''

Jackson sponsors and coaches Optimist football and basketball teams. He figures if boys are busy with school or sports, they have less time to get involved in seamier pursuits. Other civic leaders have hosted town hall meetings and teamed with local police departments in gun-buyback programs.

But individual efforts like these won't be enough to change things, social scientists say. What's needed, they say, is help from the system -- and that's something the new state council could eventually help.

For example, Harry Holzner, Georgetown University professor of public policy, says a sustained, comprehensive effort that begins with educating and mentoring boys as young as 3 years old is required so they don't fall off the radar screen when they reach adolescence.

''When they leave high school, you can plug them into services,'' he said.

FIRST-HAND VIEW

For young black men who have no formal job skills and no high school diploma, chances are slim of landing a job with a livable wage and benefits. Many of them don't expect traditional employment, said Miami native Gene Gesch, 27. Growing up in the inner city exposes them to deadly shootings. By the teen years, he says, they're desensitized to death and destruction.

Gesch should know. Instead of getting a low-wage job at a fast-food joint when he was a teenager, he opted for fast bucks. He started as a lookout for drug dealers, the way his Overtown and Liberty City friends did.

''That's the mentality of the youth,'' said Gesch. ``They want a Benz, a 745 -- the only way these young children think they're gonna get it is sell to work for someone else, selling dope on the corner or as a look out.''

Gesch came of age during the 1990s, when the infamous John Doe drug gang ruled the area. Gang members were his friends. He found a role model in a guy named ''Convertible Bert,'' a local drug dealer who drove around Liberty City wearing flashy garments. Gesch wanted the same things. He saw himself as a popular poet/rap artist who also had a fatalistic bent.

``I didn't care. I was Tupac . . . it was you and me against the world.''

That attitude landed Gesch in Florida's adult prison system at 16. He served five years for aggravated assault with a firearm. He was in solitary confinement a lot, he says, because he often got into fights with other inmates.

Salvation of sorts came when he transferred to the Dade Correctional Institution. A pair of older inmates believed he was better than his past behavior indicated, and they directed him to the prison library. There he was eventually inspired to turn his life around. He even became a mentor: He lectured middle- and high-school students in Wilson's 5000 Role Models of Excellence Project, counseling them not to follow his path.

After prison, Gesch moved hours away from Miami, to St. Lucie County.

He said kids have to know they can make money legitimately instead of selling dope -- if they change their environment. In his former community, he said, ``they have no hope in their mind.

``They see people get robbed, get killed. A lot of people have been to prison in that community. It's real hard. It's an ongoing struggle.''

Success stories such as Gesch's are the ones that council member Christopher Norwood of Miami Lakes wants to highlight as the group does its work.

''Too often we concentrate on the failures of black youth and do our research based on the failures. We don't spend a lot of time focusing on the successes,'' Norwood said. ``There's not enough research on the resiliency in black men. That's what I want our research to focus on.''