As New Haven’s 2011 body count hit 30, one murder victim’s brother urged a roomful of tough kids to resist the temptation to seek revenge. The way he did.
It wasn’t an easy decision.
So Darrell “D‑Russ” Allick — aka “Little Green Eye” in his drug-dealing heyday — told 11 rapt teenagers at Riverside Academy Wednesday.
Allick didn’t make the next, obvious point. He didn’t need to: That the 11 teens themselves could find themselves in the same position any day. If they make the wrong decision, they could find themselves adding to that body count.
Allick was close to his brother Donell. And someone shot Donell, a former scholastic basketball star who had served some jail time for drug-dealing, to death this June. It was one week before Donell’s 32nd birthday.
Word on the street reached Darrell about who probably did the shooting, apparently over a dispute about a woman. Word traveled that Darrell would shoot the suspected shooter to even the score.
Darrell had the reputation. He used to have the guns. He used to run with drug operations.
But now he was trying to go straight. He and his wife are bringing up three kids. He’s pursuing his GED. He didn’t want to go back to jail. He didn’t want to deal his sons the deal his dad left him.
“What are you gonna do, Russ?” he recalled asking himself, as the 11 teens hung on every word. “Throw your family, throw all that away to avenge my brother?”
“I’m gonna go ahead for my family,” he decided. “I’m gonna dedicate my life to giving back.”
That last part explained his presence Wednesday the classroom at Riverside, a small alternative high school off the Boulevard.
Principal Wanda Gibbs asked Allick to come. Gibbs knew Allick from when he went to Riverside, before he dropped out in 10th grade. She knew his late brother. In fact, she has had nine Allick siblings pass through her school. She asked Allick to start coming to their schools regularly to work with teenagers in or at risk of leading the dangerous life he led. Hillhouse Principal Kermit Carolina also plans to involve Allick in working with teens at his school.
“They need someone they can talk to who’s not far removed from them,” Gibbs explained.
Paul Bass Photo
Allick, who’s 29, has embraced the mission with gusto, accumulating a roster of 14 to 20-year-olds with whom he talks, dispenses advice, plans outings, offers help.
The 11 teens barely moved a muscle as they listened to Allick tell his story for 75 minutes Wednesday. (Click on the play arrow at the top of the story for a sample.)
He spoke of getting busted with weapons at 15, how the judge told him he would have served five years had he been older than 16. He referred to his years “running the street,” dealing and using drugs, in “The Tribe” in Dixwell. How he escaped death and longer prison sentences that his friends endured. “All my boys is locked up now,” he said. “The feds came and got my whole team.”
He mentioned “Dre” and other recent shooting victims, as though they were talking about common friends and acquaintances.
They were.
“My father died when I was 7,” Allick said. “That wasn’t an excuse.”
He remembers his father’s funeral. Joseph David Allick was known as “Green-Eyed Dave.” He was also known as one of New Haven’s top cocaine distributors. But by the time of his death in 1990, the cops had never managed to work their way up the organizational ladder to put him behind bars. “A lot of police officers came to the funeral,” Allick recalled. “To see how he looked.”
In his mid-teens Allick became known as “Little Green Eye.” Even though he has hazel eyes. That’s because he ran his own operation.
One of 12 kids, he felt he needed to take care of his brothers and sisters, he told the students. He felt his mother couldn’t control him, anyway. He mentioned, several times, how she didn’t show up at his grade school when he won academic honors — and how that made him cry.
Murmurs of recognition greeted his stories, including his tales of “popping pills” throughout the day to escape his problems, only to find those problems still there when the high passed.
Allick’s pitch to the kids: “Ice the beef.” If someone picks a fight, walk away.
“It’s not being a punk,” he said. “It’s about being a man.”
“We try,” one student responded. But people don’t let you alone.
“If they feel like they wanna keep beefin’, you leave them alone,” Allick urged. “It’s you ice the beef. Sometimes people fake it so they catch their adversaries off guard. That’s the oldest trick in the book.”
Allick popped a half-smile. Some of the boys snickered in assent.
“You either in or you ain’t,” Allick continued. You can’t have two foot in, one foot out. Your father not around, you wanna take care of your mother? You wanna be the man in the house?
“Parents don’t even got money to bury kids. Every time somebody gets murdered, they have a fundraiser. I know one family with three families living in a one-bedroom; two lost their houses. We can’t use that excuse to get out and do the wrong thing. You rob somebody. Your mother need bill money. You rob somebody for $200. Then you get high with it. You get a eight-ball. We get high and drink. ‘We got problems…’”
More snickers of assent.
“The high come down. The problem still there.”
Allick’s other pitch: basically, the New Haven Promise pitch, in language the kids understand. Study. Go to college. Get a job one day that pays $30,000 or $40,000 a year. You can support yourself and a family. The streets don’t pay that well, and you get killed soon, anyway.
Or you end up with nothing, still on the streets, in your thirties.
“You got somebody for people that was 18, now they’re 35, still on the block. You know why they’re still there? After you shoot everybody you gonna shoot, rob everybody you gonna rob, sell all the drugs you gonna sell, probably sex all the women you gonna sex, what’s the plan after that?”
Actually, not all 11 kids sat rapt the entire 75 minutes. One boy spent a while with his head down, writing on a piece of paper.
When Allick finished, he gave everyone his cell number. They discussed a planned paintball outing. He took their names and numbers on a sheet. He said he’d be returning this week for another session.
The kid handed Allick the paper. Allick stuffed it in his pocket.
Then he stood in a circle with the kids. From the back, with his corn rows, his baggy jeans covering the heels of his Timberlands, Allick looked like one of the boys. Even though he’s 29.
They prayed. Then they hugged each other. Kids who earn honors every day in face-hardening were smiling, their guards down.
After they left, Allick retrieved the piece of paper from his pocket. The boy had written about how his godbrother was killed; he was shot on Day Street on Aug. 10.
“It’s really tough for me through this HARD times,” the note read. “What can make the pain go away? I really need help … I think it’s time for a change. This dumb stuff is ridiculous.”
Darrell Allick will be a panelist at a Dec. 7 public forum on how to end gang violence, featuring, among others, New Haven’s new police chief and the author of a new book called Don’t Shoot. The event, at Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School, begins at 7 p.m.; it is free and open to the public.
He is also organizing a Dec. 3 community “Stop The Violence Symposium.” Details are in the flyer shown below.
Thank mr. Allick. Sincerely. These kids will listen to YOU not teachers, not the media, not their parents. We need more people like you out there spreading these stories and making themselves available to kids either in crisis or heading down that path. The boy who handed you the note was so brave in doing so. I hope you can help him shoulder his pain.