Allan Appel photo
Frank Redente, Jr. pointed to an armful of tattoos remembering the names of young New Haveners who have lost their lives to street violence.
Born and raised in Fair Haven, Redente now hopes to be part of the solution to the complex and chronic issue of youth violence as he takes on the job of being the first street outreach worker ever dedicated solely to his home neighborhood.
Redente expressed this sentiment, along with an abiding love for his Fair Haven native ground, as he introduced himself formally and passed out his card Thursday night at the latest regular meeting of the Fair Haven Community Management Team.
“A lot of kids who won’t talk to the police department will talk to me,” Redente said to the 35 Fair Haveners gathered in person and via Zoom in the community room of the Fair Haven Branch Library on Grand Avenue.
He and Alivia Langley, the program manager of the Connecticut Violence Intervention Program (CTVIP), were on hand to explain the role of the outreach workers in dealing with kids Langley described as at highest risk: those who carry guns, steal cars, are part of gangs.
Redente talking to neighbors Thursday night.
After having been introduced a decade ago by the New Haven Family Alliance, on a model from Providence, Rhode Island, outreach workers now deploy under the umbrella of CTVIP. They know the kids and the beefs and in effect bridge a gap between the kids and the schools and the kids and the police.
“Our staff resolves conflicts,” and provides mentors and mediation both with younger populations and those returning from prison who are aged 13 to 24, Langley said.
Click here and here for some of the success stories of the outreach workers, many of whom themselves have lived the lives of the young people they now deal with and rely on that intimacy of shared experience to do the job of intervention.
Fair Haven has had no shortage of struggles with youth crime, which Langley said is often committed in Fair Haven by kids who don’t live in the neighborhood. And yet, the community has never had its own street outreach worker until Redente, who stepped into the job in the summer.
His arrival was preceded by a successful advocacy from Fair Haven Alder Sarah Miller who appealed to CTVIP Executive Director Leonard Jahad.
“We weren’t getting the same attention” as CTVIP was providing to other areas in New Haven and Hamden, Miller recalled. She said Jahad was supportive. “It was a matter of getting the funding and finding the right person.”
And that right person was and is Redente, the son of Frank Redente, Sr., who, together, for decades organized citywide youth basketball leagues at the Farnam Neighborhood House on Fillmore Street in Fair Haven (now operated by Clifford Beers). For decades through the sports-focused social work of the Redentes, kids of all ages, who might belong to different groups from different areas of town could meet on the courts at Farnam and resolve disputes beneath a basket, not in front of a barrel of a gun.
In a conversation after the meeting, Redente, Jr. said Feb. 2 marked his 28th year working with the Board of Ed, beginning as a security guard and now, having worked his way up, as the system’s youth development coordinator.
“I had buried so many kids I wasn’t sure I wanted to continue in this job,” he said. He pointed to the wave of deaths after the pandemic being an especially bleak time.
“Then Leonard Jahad talked to me [and offered him the position] and that breathed new life into me.”
So Redente continues with the Board of Ed by day. Then from 4:00 to 9:00 p.m. he’s out there in Fair Haven, making appointments with kids, getting referrals from the schools, from the probation department, from the police, trying to resolve beefs, trying so he doesn’t have to bury more kids he has worked with.
Miller said Redente is perfect for the job and deeply appreciated. “I’ve walked the streets at night with Frank and I thought I knew everybody. He really does know everybody.”
Pointing to the tattoos of kids memorialized on his arm, Redente said, “Now I know I was meant to do this work.”
This is wonderful news. Our family remembers Frank as upbeat caring young man that kids loved. What a great decision.