<font size="5"><center>School deaths that stunned black America</font size><font size="4">
After four model students were gunned down in a playground, outrage spread: if the brightest and best are not safe, then who is? Paul Harris in New York reports on the killings that have galvanised a community </font size></center>
Sunday August 19, 2007
The Observer
Newark is a 25-minute train ride across the Hudson River from the skyscrapers of Manhattan. But its tough streets, scarred by violence and drugs, feel a world away.
Now, after a brutal multiple murder in a school playground, Newark is at the centre of a bout of national soul-searching about life in urban America and the violence that marks so much of the experience of inner-city black youth.
The crime has caused shock across the nation not because the victims were involved in a tit-for-tat piece of ghetto violence, but because they were not. They were four young black Americans who had done everything right to grow up unscathed by Newark's social problems. Beating the odds, they had emerged with clean records, bright futures and university degrees ahead of them. But even they could not succeed.
That fact has added to a growing sense of crisis in black America. The deaths came in the same week as a Justice Department report revealed that half of all murder victims in America are black, yet black people make up just 13 per cent of the population. It followed the brutal murder of black newspaper editor Chauncey Bailey, gunned down in broad daylight in San Francisco, who was known for his investigative work. Many are now calling for a national effort to combat violence and poverty in black America. 'It is a social epidemic and it is going to take a multiple-front war of effort to confront this issue,' said Marc Morial, president of civil rights group the National Urban League. 'Unless that happens we are on a slope going down.'
But for now the focus remains on the tragedy in Newark where it seems even the brightest and best of black America cannot avoid falling prey to the plague of street violence. The four victims - two male, two female - were all 'good kids' who had stayed out of trouble. Yet on 4 August they were shot, execution-style in the head, in the innocent surroundings of a school playground.
Only one survived, a bullet still lodged in her face. The reaction to the murders has been a mixture of disbelief and outrage, even in Newark, which has long been a byword for urban blight and a sky-high murder rate. The city's fortunes have been in a rut since it was scarred by race riots in 1967 which saw 26 people killed and ended with massive white flight. Though it is trying to reinvent itself, the latest deaths have raised questions about how much has changed. 'We can't live like this any more. Hopefully, it's a watershed moment in the city,' said Garry McCarthy, its police director.
The four friends - Terrance Aerial, 19, Natasha Aerial, his 19-year-old sister, Dashon Harvey, 20, and Iofemi Hightower, 20 - had gathered in the playground of Mount Vernon High School in a middle-class Newark suburb on a Saturday night. As they played music at around 11.30pm a group of men approached them.
What happened next is not clear but it is certain that the four knew they were in trouble. They sent each other text messages in their last minutes. One hurriedly typed a poignant last message that simply said: 'Let's get out of here.' It was too late. Natasha Aerial was shot first, collapsing from a bullet to the face near a set of sports benches. The other three were then marched behind a low wall, forced to kneel down and shot in turn.
The sheer pointlessness of the deaths is shocking. All four were models of hard work and good results. Three were students at Delaware State University and another had applied to go. They worked to raise extra cash; none had a police record; three played in a student marching band and one even guided prospective students around Delaware as an ambassador for the university. All of that is gone now. 'It's wrong. They had a goal, they had a purpose, they had destination in life,' said Renee Tucker, mother of Natasha and Terrance Aerial.
But amid the grief some have sought to draw a wider message. James Harvey, father of Dashon, has spoken movingly of the need for parents in the inner city to look at how they are raising their children. 'It's on the parents. When you raise your kids up you teach them right from wrong ... innocent people are dying, needlessly, unnecessarily and for what?' he said. 'I blame the parents of America.'
That is a sentiment shared in the streets of Ivy Hill Park, the suburb where the deaths occurred. The area is one of Newark's middle-class success stories. Its lawns are clipped, its houses sturdy and its crime rate relatively low.
Now its streets are swarming with police cars, stop-and-search operations and almost every tree bears a poster offering a reward for information. 'Stop the killings in Newark now!' blares one sign which has sprouted, mushroom-like, into almost every front garden.
Residents appear united in grief and anger. A little memorial has grown up at the playground spot where the four were gunned down. It is covered in flowers, balloons and candles. A pile of empty buckets marks the area where work crews had to scrub the blood away from the concrete. It is a scene too common in Newark where police investigations usually hit a wall of silence.
In fact Newark, along with several other East Coast cities such as Baltimore and Philadelphia, has been the centre of a notorious 'stop snitching' campaign. Often led by rap artists and linked to drug dealers, the movement has warned local black communities not to talk to the police. But this time is different. 'People are rightfully outraged. That's not a sentiment I've always felt,' said McCarthy.
The result has been a lightning-quick investigation. Already three men are under arrest. One is Jose Carranza, 28, an illegal immigrant from Peru who was already out on bail on sexual assault charges. A key part of the case is information from the sole survivor. Natasha Aerial has been helping police from her hospital bed, including looking through pictures of suspects. She is under constant armed guard to protect her from the witness intimidation attacks that have been a hallmark of the stop snitching movement.
Unlike many violent crimes in Newark at least these murders look as though they will be solved. Not that that will be any consolation. The killings have been a disaster for Newark and for its new mayor, Cory Booker. Booker is also one of the country's best-known rising black politicians. In the era of Barack Obama, the popular young mayor is seen as a dynamic role model for black politicians. When he first joined the city council he won plaudits for a 10-day hunger strike living in a tent outside a drug-ridden building to highlight the crime problem. He also spent five months living in a trailer home that he would park on street corners known for drug dealing. He became hugely popular and the subject of an Oscar-nominated documentary. He finally won election to the mayor's office last year.
Typically, he has taken a high-profile stance over the killings. He spoke about the crime to a huge crowd at a local baseball game and was present when Carranza was brought in for interrogation. He also visited Natasha Aerial in her hospital bed. 'We will either rise as a community or fall apart. Our city is stronger than these challenges. We will come together,' he said.
There are signs that is happening. Incredibly it seems that these murders have succeeded where 40 years of politics have failed. Newark, at last, is showing signs of forcefully tackling its problems. Booker unveiled a tough local gun law last week. It could eventually include setting up special 'gun courts' to deal specifically with gun crimes. A new $3m (£1.5m) network of surveillance cameras and gunshot detectors is planned, partly funded by a flood of donations from Newark's citizens.
Even more significant have been the actions of ordinary people. Some young black men, dressed in gang clothes, have signed pledges to put down their weapons. A local anti-violence group called Stop Shootin' is selling its T-shirts and badges as fast as they can make them. Police tip-off lines have been flooded with calls. Local clergy have formed a new youth mentoring programme and more than $150,000 has been raised for the victims' families.
There is still a long way to go. Speaking after one press conference, Booker emotionally vented his frustrations. 'I'm very angry right now,' he said. 'We were on our way towards having one of our best summers in years.'
That statement alone shows how bad things have been. So far this year, there have been 64 murders in the city. Seventeen people have been killed since 12 June. In Newark, a 'good summer' is a relative concept.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2151747,00.html
After four model students were gunned down in a playground, outrage spread: if the brightest and best are not safe, then who is? Paul Harris in New York reports on the killings that have galvanised a community </font size></center>
Sunday August 19, 2007
The Observer
Newark is a 25-minute train ride across the Hudson River from the skyscrapers of Manhattan. But its tough streets, scarred by violence and drugs, feel a world away.
Now, after a brutal multiple murder in a school playground, Newark is at the centre of a bout of national soul-searching about life in urban America and the violence that marks so much of the experience of inner-city black youth.
The crime has caused shock across the nation not because the victims were involved in a tit-for-tat piece of ghetto violence, but because they were not. They were four young black Americans who had done everything right to grow up unscathed by Newark's social problems. Beating the odds, they had emerged with clean records, bright futures and university degrees ahead of them. But even they could not succeed.
That fact has added to a growing sense of crisis in black America. The deaths came in the same week as a Justice Department report revealed that half of all murder victims in America are black, yet black people make up just 13 per cent of the population. It followed the brutal murder of black newspaper editor Chauncey Bailey, gunned down in broad daylight in San Francisco, who was known for his investigative work. Many are now calling for a national effort to combat violence and poverty in black America. 'It is a social epidemic and it is going to take a multiple-front war of effort to confront this issue,' said Marc Morial, president of civil rights group the National Urban League. 'Unless that happens we are on a slope going down.'
But for now the focus remains on the tragedy in Newark where it seems even the brightest and best of black America cannot avoid falling prey to the plague of street violence. The four victims - two male, two female - were all 'good kids' who had stayed out of trouble. Yet on 4 August they were shot, execution-style in the head, in the innocent surroundings of a school playground.
Only one survived, a bullet still lodged in her face. The reaction to the murders has been a mixture of disbelief and outrage, even in Newark, which has long been a byword for urban blight and a sky-high murder rate. The city's fortunes have been in a rut since it was scarred by race riots in 1967 which saw 26 people killed and ended with massive white flight. Though it is trying to reinvent itself, the latest deaths have raised questions about how much has changed. 'We can't live like this any more. Hopefully, it's a watershed moment in the city,' said Garry McCarthy, its police director.
The four friends - Terrance Aerial, 19, Natasha Aerial, his 19-year-old sister, Dashon Harvey, 20, and Iofemi Hightower, 20 - had gathered in the playground of Mount Vernon High School in a middle-class Newark suburb on a Saturday night. As they played music at around 11.30pm a group of men approached them.
What happened next is not clear but it is certain that the four knew they were in trouble. They sent each other text messages in their last minutes. One hurriedly typed a poignant last message that simply said: 'Let's get out of here.' It was too late. Natasha Aerial was shot first, collapsing from a bullet to the face near a set of sports benches. The other three were then marched behind a low wall, forced to kneel down and shot in turn.
The sheer pointlessness of the deaths is shocking. All four were models of hard work and good results. Three were students at Delaware State University and another had applied to go. They worked to raise extra cash; none had a police record; three played in a student marching band and one even guided prospective students around Delaware as an ambassador for the university. All of that is gone now. 'It's wrong. They had a goal, they had a purpose, they had destination in life,' said Renee Tucker, mother of Natasha and Terrance Aerial.
But amid the grief some have sought to draw a wider message. James Harvey, father of Dashon, has spoken movingly of the need for parents in the inner city to look at how they are raising their children. 'It's on the parents. When you raise your kids up you teach them right from wrong ... innocent people are dying, needlessly, unnecessarily and for what?' he said. 'I blame the parents of America.'
That is a sentiment shared in the streets of Ivy Hill Park, the suburb where the deaths occurred. The area is one of Newark's middle-class success stories. Its lawns are clipped, its houses sturdy and its crime rate relatively low.
Now its streets are swarming with police cars, stop-and-search operations and almost every tree bears a poster offering a reward for information. 'Stop the killings in Newark now!' blares one sign which has sprouted, mushroom-like, into almost every front garden.
Residents appear united in grief and anger. A little memorial has grown up at the playground spot where the four were gunned down. It is covered in flowers, balloons and candles. A pile of empty buckets marks the area where work crews had to scrub the blood away from the concrete. It is a scene too common in Newark where police investigations usually hit a wall of silence.
In fact Newark, along with several other East Coast cities such as Baltimore and Philadelphia, has been the centre of a notorious 'stop snitching' campaign. Often led by rap artists and linked to drug dealers, the movement has warned local black communities not to talk to the police. But this time is different. 'People are rightfully outraged. That's not a sentiment I've always felt,' said McCarthy.
The result has been a lightning-quick investigation. Already three men are under arrest. One is Jose Carranza, 28, an illegal immigrant from Peru who was already out on bail on sexual assault charges. A key part of the case is information from the sole survivor. Natasha Aerial has been helping police from her hospital bed, including looking through pictures of suspects. She is under constant armed guard to protect her from the witness intimidation attacks that have been a hallmark of the stop snitching movement.
Unlike many violent crimes in Newark at least these murders look as though they will be solved. Not that that will be any consolation. The killings have been a disaster for Newark and for its new mayor, Cory Booker. Booker is also one of the country's best-known rising black politicians. In the era of Barack Obama, the popular young mayor is seen as a dynamic role model for black politicians. When he first joined the city council he won plaudits for a 10-day hunger strike living in a tent outside a drug-ridden building to highlight the crime problem. He also spent five months living in a trailer home that he would park on street corners known for drug dealing. He became hugely popular and the subject of an Oscar-nominated documentary. He finally won election to the mayor's office last year.
Typically, he has taken a high-profile stance over the killings. He spoke about the crime to a huge crowd at a local baseball game and was present when Carranza was brought in for interrogation. He also visited Natasha Aerial in her hospital bed. 'We will either rise as a community or fall apart. Our city is stronger than these challenges. We will come together,' he said.
There are signs that is happening. Incredibly it seems that these murders have succeeded where 40 years of politics have failed. Newark, at last, is showing signs of forcefully tackling its problems. Booker unveiled a tough local gun law last week. It could eventually include setting up special 'gun courts' to deal specifically with gun crimes. A new $3m (£1.5m) network of surveillance cameras and gunshot detectors is planned, partly funded by a flood of donations from Newark's citizens.
Even more significant have been the actions of ordinary people. Some young black men, dressed in gang clothes, have signed pledges to put down their weapons. A local anti-violence group called Stop Shootin' is selling its T-shirts and badges as fast as they can make them. Police tip-off lines have been flooded with calls. Local clergy have formed a new youth mentoring programme and more than $150,000 has been raised for the victims' families.
There is still a long way to go. Speaking after one press conference, Booker emotionally vented his frustrations. 'I'm very angry right now,' he said. 'We were on our way towards having one of our best summers in years.'
That statement alone shows how bad things have been. So far this year, there have been 64 murders in the city. Seventeen people have been killed since 12 June. In Newark, a 'good summer' is a relative concept.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2151747,00.html
