Word was that trouble was brewing between Dixwell and the Ville. So when a car pulled up to the basketball court — and a gun appeared in window — Tyrone Weston was ready.
He and the new city “street outreach workers” he supervises separated the two groups before a fight broke out. Then they sparked a series of raw discussions that led to the first of four truces struck over the past three months. The truces are aimed at keeping the peace — and saving young lives — in pockets of New Haven’s most violence-plagued neighborhoods.
It’s too early to tell whether the four truces signed so far have produced long-term peace to Dixwell, Newhallville, Dwight-Kensington and the Hill.
But the truces are precisely the kind of result New Haven hoped for when it launched the Street Outreach effort this year through the Family Alliance. It sends adults with street cred to work with the 200 or so teens and young adults identified as most likely to engage in violence.
Tyrone Weston (pictured above) is a 37-year-old one-time New Haven gang-banger who turned around his life after 10 years behind bars for narcotics and assault charges. In an interview at the outreach worker program’s James Street offices, at the New Haven Family Alliance, Weston offered a play-by-play account of how his crew convinced some of the city’s toughest teens to sign their names to a no-shooting pledge.
Courtside Encounter
The turning point came on a September afternoon. Weston’s group knew about an ongoing beef between a group of at-risk teens in Newhallville and a group based around the Monterey Homes in lower Dixwell. They’d been fighting over incidents in which people had crossed into each other’s neighborhoods to sell drugs, or to flirt with young women at parties. There’d been talk of possible retribution.
More than a dozen boys from Dixwell were shooting hoops in a park on Bassett Street. In Newhallville. Around 5:30 p.m. a car pulled up. Some of the Newhallville guys were in the car. One pointed a gun. An argument ensued. And a threat to shoot.
Weston and two of his workers, Twan Singleton and Glorivi Matta, were there. “Part of our job,” he said, “is to be at the hot spots.”
The car pulled away, then returned five minutes later. In the meantime, Weston and Matta scattered the Dixwell teens, walking them in small groups to different side streets, to defuse the situation.
Singleton, who knew the Newhallville kids, walked up to the car. We all need to talk, he said, before more people get hurt.
He brought the handful of Newhallville teens to the Mudhole. (This lot and open-air gathering space off Shelton Avenue was highlighted in a 1990s New Yorker series and subsequent book as a center of the violent crack trade.)
Weston chose a small group of the Dixwell teens, central players in the ongoing feud, to be there as well.
Under the outreach workers’ guidance, the two sides took turns outlining their grievances.
“You can’t come in to my neighborhood to sell drugs…” It grew heated at times. Based on training they received from veterans of an outreach program in Providence, Weston and his workers knew the importance of preventing any one player from dominating the conversation. “We have to keep control of the situation. If you see it getting out of hand, you have to separate them. As long as you keep control, you can get both sides to talk it out.”
There they stood. For two hours. “It got to the point,” Weston said, “where people pulled over to add their little points.”
Weston inserted references to “Little Larry,” 17 year-old Lawrence Mabery, a suspect in three murders who was shot to death on Aug. 30.
“Remember where Little Larry’s at,” he said. “We can start these beefs. You’re in jail. This person’s dead. Who’s winning?”
Finally the session broke up. The outreach workers weren’t done, though. They fanned out to the homes or gathering spots of the teens who’d just been there; outreach worker Doug Bethea, for instance, “got on top” of the Dixwell teens, Weston said. They learned that the participants were pleased. They wanted to keep talking. The workers invited three key players from both groups to reconvene at the Family Alliance offices the next afternoon at 370 James St.
In a conference room there, the blunt talk resumed. It went well enough that at one point Weston and his crew felt comfortable leaving the room, so the participants could speak more openly. In the end, Weston produced a paper. A treaty. The participants agreed to sign it and not to shoot each other.
Early Results
A piece paper is just that, of course — unless people abide by it. So far, Weston reported, the participants have. They show up four afternoons a week to the office, for training in applying for jobs and in resolving conflicts. They held a series of neighborhood-versus-neighborhood basketball games, which went well. The key players helped the outreach workers negotiated three more truces: between Newhallville and The Tre (Dwight/Kensington); Dixwell and the Tre; and Dixwell and the stretch of the Hill around Stevens Street.
On Mischief Night (the night before Halloween, when mayhem traditionally breaks out), the outreach workers used a borrowed bus to take 48 of the at-risk kids, many of them involved in the truces, out of town. They drove to Southington for dinner and a movie, didn’t return until 1 a.m. (Given a choice, the teens selected a Mark Wahlberg shoot-‘em-up over a romantic comedy.)
Sgt. Anthony Duff, district manager in the Dixwell neighborhood, said it’s “premature” to say if the truce has produced long-term peace.
“I have nothing but positive to say about” the street outreach workers, Duff said. He calls on them to help with disputes; they respond right away. “I rely on them quite a bit.” Duff did see a decline in shootings after the truces began; then he saw an uptick. He has no idea, he said, whether to attribute that uptick to the return of several notorious figures to the neighborhood or to a loosening of the truce. Without a thorough review of gunshots over an extended period of time, the jury will remain out on the truce’s impact, he said.
Barbara Tinney (pictured), who runs the Family Alliance, said her agency is in the midst of compiling those figures. Shootings do indeed appear to have dropped in the area covered by the truce, she said. (The city contracts with the Family Alliance to run the outreach workers program.)
“If nothing else happens,” she said, “I want this city to see that these kids aren’t a lost cause. They actually can move in some different ways, if we pay attention to them. Every day I believe that more.” Her group has already found 20 of the at-risk teens jobs in recent weeks.
“You set the bar,” Tyrone Weston observed, “they’ll rise to it. We expect they can resolve their conflicts with each other rather than shooting.”
Weston and Tinney don’t have illusions about the precariousness of truces. The participants adamantly decline to make their roles public, for fear of being branded a punk and attacked by peers in their neighborhoods. Indeed, some of the truce-makers refused to speak openly about it when asked during a reporter’s visit to their program. They shook their heads when asked about the truces. “I didn’t promise nothing,” one insisted. “I promised myself not to beef. But I don’t trust them.”
But there they were — hanging out in a safe place, training to get jobs. It was a start. The kind of start a violence-weary city has been looking for.
Kudos to the street outreach workers of New Haven.