Southeast Queens leaders call for investment, accountability to end gun violence
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Queens College Student Association President Zaire Couloute said young people can talk to each other to address violence. Eagle photos by David Brand
By David Brand
A few hundred community organizers, elected officials and Southeast Queens residents demanded deeper community investments to stop gun violence at a rally in Roy Wilkins Park Sunday, as the city contends with a recent spike in shootings.
The event attracted several local leaders, including U.S. Rep. Gregory Meeks, State Sen. Leroy Comrie and Councilmembers Adrienne Adams and Donovan Richards. Brooklyn Borough President and mayoral candidate Eric Adams also attended the event, where he mingled with Queens’ Democratic leaders.
Meeks said stopping gun violence takes social investment by governments and private institutions, as well as the efforts of community members.
“As we reform police, we want to reform education, and we want to reform healthcare and we want to reform unity in our community,” Meeks said. “We as a community can’t just sit at home watching television and say we want things to stop.”
U.S. Rep. Gregory Meeks spoke during a rally against gun violence in Roy Wilkins Park Sunday. Eagle photo by David Brand
Ending gun violence, he said, “can’t happen if you don’t participate in our society. It can’t happen if we don’t work together to ensure those who would do us harm are reported … The gang we want young people to be involved with is us.”
The event was organized by Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz, who called for more police accountability in her remarks, and Acting Borough President Sharon Lee in response to a rise in shootings throughout New York City over the past several weeks. Lee delivered a fiery speech urging wealthy New Yorkers to “invest in our children” to uplift low-income communities and end violence.
In the NYPD’s Queens South patrol area, the number of shooting victims increased from seven between July 6 and July 12, 2019 to 26 between July 6 and July 12 of this year. There were five shooting incidents in that time frame last year compared to 23 during the same period this year.
Despite the spike in shootings, murders actually decreased between July 6 and 12 this year and the same week last year, NYPD data shows. Murders are also down from 17 between Jan 1 and July 12, 2019 to 15 during the same period this year in Queens South.
Though the rise in violence has only lasted a few weeks, Adams, the Brooklyn borough president and a former police officer, told the Eagle he feared the city returning to the high crime era of decades past.
“I grew up in this part of Queens and I know what it was like in the ‘70s and we can’t return to that,” said Adams, who spent part of his childhood in South Jamaica.
Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, a candidate for mayor, attended the rally. Eagle photos by David Brand
A number of young leaders attended the rally to ensure New York City never sees that same level of violence again The demonstrators included Khaleel Anderson, the 24-year-old Democratic nominee for Assembly District 31, and Zaire Couloute, 20, the president of the Queens College Student Association.
“It’s important for the youth to get involved in community-led events because young people have to speak to each other,” Couloute said.
Prominent anti-violence activists, including Life Camp Inc. Director Erica Ford, spoke out against years of disinvestment in Southeast Queens, which has exacerbated poverty among Black and Latino communities and fostered the conditions that lead to gun violence. She, too, called on leaders and institutions to nurture young people and hand over the reins of leadership to a new generation.
“We’ve got to commit to a new day and time in Southeast Queens,” she said, before ripping the condition of the Roy Wilkins Park Community Center.
“We stand in a park that looks like a third-world country that is led by the people who don’t have the interests of young people in Southeast Queens,” she said. “That building is disgusting. Peace means giving an oxygen mask to our children and an oxygen mask is state of the art community centers.”
Erica Ford and K. Bain.
Richards, who leads the vote count in the Democratic primary for Queens borough president, addressed Ford’s criticism during his speech. The city has committed $92 million to renovate the Roy Wilkins Park community center, he said, but that money has come at the expense of a new police precinct in the area.
Assemblymember Alicia Hyndman criticized that sort of either-or investment in Southeast Queens in an interview with the Eagle July 1.
“We want good policing. We want to be able to pick up the phone and call 911 and we deserve to feel safe,” Hyndman said. “We also deserve parks. So to put one in front of the other, I don’t understand why that had to be cut.”
