[music]

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. We will hear in detail now about research that we mentioned briefly with DA Alvin Bragg yesterday that investigates why some boys and young men in New York City carry guns. The report comes from the Center for Justice Innovation, and a personal look at the gun violence plaguing communities in the city is part of that. It finds that fear of being the victim of crime is the overwhelming reason that young people carry guns, and it takes into account not only interpersonal violence but structural violence.

With us now are three authors of the study, Javonte Alexander and Basaime Spate, community research coordinators at the Center for Justice Innovation, and Elise White, director of action research at the Center for Justice Innovation. Welcome, all three of you, to WNYC. Thank you for coming on today.

Elise White: Thanks for having us.

Basaime Spate: Thank you. Thank you, Brian.

Javonte Alexander: Thanks for having us.

Brian Lehrer: Elise White, how did this study come about? What were the goals or questions you and your colleagues really sought to answer?

Elise White: Our department at the Center has a research program that we're developing looking at gangs, at gun use, at gun violence, and the realities that young people face. This is building on a study that we completed in 2020, but in this piece what we were really looking at is trying to identify what some of the structural factors and the cultural realities are of gun culture in US cities. This is one city that's part of a four-city study that we're doing, looking at those issues.

We want to look at what are the drivers, but we're also really interested here in strengths that are already in place. Support in the community that can be leveraged to bring down gun use and gun violence.

Brian Lehrer: Javonte and Basaime, I see that you both say that your lived experiences were instrumental in the study's participatory approach. I wonder if you could each say, to the extent that you're comfortable, what kinds of lived experiences you're referring to in brief, and how that helped design a meaningful study about why young New Yorkers carry guns. Javonte, would you start?

Javonte Alexander: Yes, I can. Just being around a community for years, being around issues, actually being a victim of gun violence. Just being part of being a victim, I feel like I have experience to speak on from experience of being a victim, of being shot, and also understanding and witnessing shootings in neighborhoods. Having the approach just to make kids more vulnerable and explaining the work that we're doing, pretty much.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Basaime, you?

Basaime Spate: I would say my lived experience benefit me real well in this work. It really gave me the framework of how gun culture and urban communities, especially around gangs, really operate. When we were talking about our lived experience, we're talking about our years that we have been on the street. To be able to take that knowledge and wisdom and apply it to the research, and to be able to put it in a frame structure such as this so we can really talk about it.

I would say through our lived experiences that this work with the research and our lived experience as far as being in the streets, this helped us frame and put words to things that we normally don't talk about in the street.

Brian Lehrer: Do you have an easy example for the radio audience of maybe a question or a type of question or a type of conversational structure or however you want to describe it that was in the study?

Basaime Spate: I would just say of just vulnerability. In these settings of industry culture, it's a real masculine setting. Guys hasn't really learned how to be diverse with each other or communicate with each other on those type of levels to really start to understand each other and where they really come from. This research here really opened the door for that and also gave us a safe space or a protected space to be able to have those conversations, those vulnerable conversations that they wouldn't normally have when they are out on the block because of the hypervigilance that they are always in.

Brian Lehrer: I would imagine, Javonte, in the context of what Basaime was just saying, it might have been hard to get participants who were willing to open up and be vulnerable. Not to mention their fear of legal ramifications if they're talking about their ownership of illegal guns. What was the fieldwork like? How did you get participants?

Javonte Alexander: Well, pretty much the fieldwork was-- When you're going into neighborhoods that you're not known in, first off you have to do some type of bonding before you just go in a neighborhood. You got to seek out who's who and just approach them with your work. Let them know you're not police. Everything anonymous. You're not here to really get them in any trouble. You're here to really help them out.

Brian Lehrer: For real. Let's talk about your findings. This is a quoting from the report. Now, the majority identified fear as the driver of that gun-carrying, primarily fear of their own deaths - 75% said that - and fear someone might harm their families.72% said that. Basaime, what should we make of that finding? How does it complicate our understanding of gun possession and gun violence that maybe the average listener who's not personally involved in that world might have?

Basaime Spate: I would say that not only that fear of dying but also a fear of police. A fear of not feeling protected by those who are enforced or-- yes, I would say enforced to protect us. That was the override general fear of not feeling protected by police and not feeling safe in the neighborhood, which gave them the incentive of feeling like they had the need to take safety in their own hands and protect themselves. It's like a sort of-- What would you say? How do you say that, Elise? Resilient?

Elise White: Resilient, yes.

Basaime Spate: A resilient approach for themselves, and then protecting and taking ownership of their own lives.

Brian Lehrer: Javonte, building on what Basaime just said, does that indicate that the relationship to the teens and young men-- and the study in the age range, I see, was 15 to 25. That they're more concerned that the police weren't going to be protecting them than they were about the police oppressing them or incarcerating them or committing police brutality? What do you get about the relationship with the police and the attitudes toward the police in your sample?

Javonte Alexander: Well, pretty much all of it. All of it. Pretty much all of it, brother. As we conducted this report, that's all you hear. That's all I heard really from the participants is, "We don't have pretty much--" They just don't feel like they can open up to police. You know what I mean? They feel like they just out to get them. That just come with, of course, a standoffish, and in the community, it's not really a good relationship between community members and police. It's just been like that all over the country, I feel like. That's one of the major--

Basaime Spate: Through history. I would say through history.

Javonte Alexander: Yes, through history. That's just one of the major problems we'd want to fix.

Brian Lehrer: Now listeners, we have time for a few calls in this segment. We're talking about the new report from the Center for Justice Innovation that looks into the reasons young people in Crown Heights, Brooklyn - that's where they did the study - say they carry guns. 212-433-WNYC with questions or your stories. You don't have to be in Crown Heights, but maybe you are living or have lived the reality of somebody carrying guns who does not intend to commit a crime with those guns, which is maybe the reveal to a lot of other people that people who carry guns are so often doing it for self-protection and out of fear for themselves and their families rather than to do something aggressive.

Who wants to tell a story or ask a question? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or Tweet us or X us, or whatever you call it now, @BrianLehrer. My guests are Javonte Alexander and Basaime Spate, community research coordinators at the Center for Justice Innovation, and Elise White, director of action research at the Center for Justice Innovation.

Elise, the report identifies four types of young gun carriers in the city. Those who carry for protection, those who carry for image, those who carry as part of a street hustle, and a fourth type you call shooters. Can you elaborate on who the shooters are?

Elise White: Sure. The shooters are a lot of times in the narratives. The interviews that we conducted had quantitative section and qualitative as well, so we really wanted the contextual stuff. Just in the narratives, a lot of people would say, "I'm not a shooter. I'm not a person who carries the gun because I'm trying to kill. I'm just trying to stay safe." That's protection, that's image, and a lot of time that's street hustle as well. They would say things like, "Oh well, that was my friend. My friend is a shooter. Now, that's a real shooter. When they get involved, we know what's going to happen."

The shooter is somebody who-- they're more of an offensive gun carrier, meaning offense. When they have the gun, if there is a threat they're going to move in, they're going to kill, and that's the goal. Whereas for a lot of these other people who are carrying guns, it's much more, "I might flash it. I might shoot it up in the sky. If I have to fire it, I might do it, but not intend to actually hit."

Brian Lehrer: Can I get your take, Elise, on the police aspect we were talking about before? Because I'm quoting now from the report, "Police were widely seen as threatening figures and as putting young people's lives at risk by reacting slowly, or not at all, to threats to their safety."

Elise White: In some of the narratives, what would come out is a lot of the young people felt that the police responded more slowly if and when they thought there was a gang incident. They might respond more quickly if they thought it was a regular community member or civilian that was injured, but in instances where they thought that the gang was involved, they wouldn't come quickly, they would slow. That is like putting their lives at risk. They would say, "Someone's bleeding out. Can we not try to go into the questions part? Can we get some help and get this person stabilized?"

In terms of the aggression, a lot of them felt like, "Well, you carry weapons. You flash the weapons. You come into the community using tactics that look to us like the same tactics that--" they refer to as opposition. That would be maybe rival gang members or somebody who they have some sort of street beef with. It looks similar, it feels similar, and so they feel like they have to react in a similar way.

Brian Lehrer: Basaime, some even cited fear of the police as a reason to carry a gun. As I understand the language in the report, this isn't to say that these young people are ready and willing to shoot at cops, but that they feel they have to protect themselves. Can you talk a little bit more about the role of the police in the folks' decisions to carry guns?

Basaime Spate: I will say off our report and how our participants talked about it. They carry guns because they felt unprotected by the police, but also targeted by the police at the same time. 35% said they felt the fear of dying by police was one of the main reasons why they carried guns. Then the unpredictability of the interactions with police, like Elise was stating. Now our participants are viewing police as ops, as enemies, as someone that they may be beefing with in the streets. That leads to their fear, which leads to gun carrying. To exist to ensure their survival or their safety.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a phone call. Anthony in the Bronx, you're on WNYC. Hi, Anthony.

Anthony: Hi, Brian. Good morning to you and your panelists. I'd like to open up by asking, first and foremost, is this due in part to the lack of positive male role models in the community. Number two, are the OGs the ones that are mostly influencing these young impressionable kids to go out here and do this? What I mean by OGs, the young guys coming out of prison who are maybe 25, 30 years old, who can no longer relate to people their own age, so they go around young kids, 16 and 17 years old, and influence them to a life of crime or whatsoever. Number three, I'd like to know how are you guys getting these illegal arms? Thank you. I'll take my hat off here.

Brian Lehrer: Anthony, thank you for your call. Basaime, I think your body language is saying you want to talk about this.

Basaime Spate: First of all, I'm going to just say as someone who has the accountability and the responsibility of youth who's part of street networks right now growing up in Black and brown communities across the country. Just off my personal experience with them, that's nothing, what the caller was stating, that really happens in these neighborhoods. The guys who's coming home from jail nowadays, especially in our community, are really being referred to the work of Cure Violence, or they're referred into some type of work that we are doing. Because of where they come from, they also have this lived experience.

That also has wisdom and knowledge that come with that, which also comes with solutions because they live this every day. I don't know no OG or no big homie that comes home and their main goal is to influence youth to pick up a gun or do this type of crime. If anything, knowing the history of guns and the knowledge and the body of wisdom that comes with that, they're more or less informing them and educating them on how to go about in their neighborhood. How to protect their neighborhood.

Having vulnerable conversations with them about what it is to be a Black man in America. Explaining the structures that they're going to be up against when they are in the right mindset to be able to go out and be able to conduct theirselves, and make a name for theirselves, or put theirselves out there financially.

Then our research participants speaks towards their gang leadership as them being caretakers. As them being providers. As them putting food in their mouths, putting money in their pocket. Ensuring them that they're going to school. Most of the big companies nowadays are involved in Cure Violence. They have these connections that they have built, these networks that they have built, to make it even more easier for their youth to be able to come in and point them in these right directions of the true needs that they are asking for.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take another call. John in Rockland County, you're on WNYC. Hi, John.

John: Hello. How're you doing, Mr. Lehrer?

Brian Lehrer: Doing all right.

John: Hello to all the guests.

Basaime Spate: How're you doing?

John: Quick thing. I may not be the perfect one to articulate the point, but I just want to get my opinion out there. I came mid-show, but I want to know if this is based on statistical data or just people going around the street talking to people about why they carry guns.

Brian Lehrer: Elise, you want to take that?

Elise White: Yes. This study was conducted in the neighborhood. It involved a team of about six people doing hour-long interviews. There is quantitative data, there's qualitative data, so we have numbers and then we have context as well. There is statistical data but there's also stories.

Brian Lehrer: John, what's behind your question? Are you wondering about the value of what they've learned from this to public safety?

John: Yes. I'm a African American police officer for 20 years. Okay?

Brian Lehrer: Yes.

John: No disrespect to anybody on the panel, but Mr. Lehrer, I don't think you get the point out of the other side. You are very anti-police. We all know that because you don't put nothing on that side on the air. It's always against the government or why the police do this or why the police tactics. Nobody is going to admit to anybody on why they carry guns. They're not. They're going to lie. Yes, people walk around the street asking why people carry guns. They're not going to tell you the truth. Most of the people that carry guns use them. I've arrested plenty of people with guns, and they will actively use them or are using them. They didn't carry for protection. Nobody is going to admit to that.

Brian Lehrer: They weren't carrying--

John: I don't get why this--

Brian Lehrer: You don't believe that they--

John: I don't get why this is even a thing.

Brian Lehrer: Based on your experience on the street, you don't believe--

John: I'm sorry. I'm pretty sure you--

Brian Lehrer: I'm asking you a question. Based on your experience on the street, you're saying you don't believe the finding that 75% of those who carry guns say they're doing it for protecting themselves from others' violence?

John: Well, I can never say it's absolute to anything, right? There's always going to be a few people that's going to carry for protection. I get that. The majority of people that carry guns illegally, especially illegally, you have to get these guns illegally. There is nothing about that's going to be just for their own protection. People are not going to admit to that. Then with the whole tactics, the community gives the police aspect that everybody likes going off of, but you don't see the other side of that. You don't see the side of these gentlemen standing on the street corner getting spit at, getting attacked. That's bringing their guard up constantly. You don't understand.

You act like we're just standing around there and nothing's going on. Especially if there's shootings in the neighborhood. All right? We're not going to go and take our time getting to some of these instances. We can't. Everything is locked down. We're held accountable for everything, especially times. We're not just going to be sitting around while people are bleeding out. That's a lie. It's a flat lie. You're never going to be able to find somebody that's going to state that.

Brain Lehrer: Is that Basaime getting in?

Basaime Spate: Yes. Yes, it is, Brian.

Brain Lehrer: Go ahead.

Basaime Spate: All right. First I'mma say this. You are a young Black man who's a officer for 20 years, right?

John: Yes.

Basaime Spate: You know the history of police in our country, especially when it comes to Black people. Just knowing the very creativity and why they was created in the first place. Slave catchers, let's talk about that. Those practices--

John: That's not true either. That's not true either.

Basaime Spate: This is history.

John: That's not true.

Basaime Spate: This is history. This is history. This is history of what the police--

John: That's not true. That's not true.

Brain Lehrer: Let's go one at a time.

Basaime Spate: Let me just say this.

Brain Lehrer: John, you'll get back in.

Basaime Spate: Yes.

Brain Lehrer: Basaime, finish your thought.

Basaime Spate: How that policing--

John: No problem. I'm sorry.

Basaime Spate: How that policing-

John: I'm sorry.

Basaime Spate: -state of them watching and monitoring slaves at that time is still in existence today. We only see precincts in Black and brown communities. Then when you're talking about a lie that nobody will admit about carrying guns, that's based off your experience because you are a officer. The guys who's on the streets know the history of police and the relationship that we have with them. As you said, no way I'm going to be vulnerable and tell you why I'm carrying.

Here in this study, and with me and Javonte based off our deep relationships, existing relationships that we have with these youth, when they have seen us outside we interacted. These are kids that's from our neighborhood, so of course they're going to look at us and if we're saying that we have this accountability and this responsibility in our neighborhood to our youth, and we have been showing that before this research project had came in and without it.

Since Cure Violence had came in our neighborhood, now this research project that came in, it has put even more of a trust into us and what we're talking about here as far as why they carry guns. The reason they would admit that is just because they're looking for solutions to not carry guns. What else is out there for me?

Brain Lehrer: John, one more response from you. Go ahead.

John: Okay. I'm going to be real quick. Number one, it's not true. Policing did not start by slave catchers. It's not true. Boston, New York had the first police departments. If you actually look it up, why they were doing it, it never happened.

Basaime Spate: Yes. I know that. That's the first--

John: Precincts were started before, yes, but once--

Basaime Spate: Boston is the first precinct [crosstalk].

John: No. Let me just finish for once.

Brain Lehrer: Hang on, hang on. Let's not [crosstalk].

John: Let me just finish.

Brian Lehrer: Go ahead, John.

John: Once the slave catchers started getting involved with policing, yes, I agree, but it didn't initially start with that. That's number one. Number two, the people in the community, the OGs, are encouraging the-- why do you think the youth rate of these shootings are so high? They're encouraging the youth because they know that the youth is not-- I'll go get a slap on the wrist for shooting, which I've been involved with [unintelligible 00:23:06]. They're recruiting these youngsters. That's what they used to do in the shelters. Just because I live in Rockland County --  I have been living in the city my whole life, okay?

They were recruiting at these community centers. Bring them into the gangs, let them commit the crimes because they'd only go get a slap on the wrist if they're committed. That's number two.

Brain Lehrer: Sure. Go ahead. You had a number three? Do it real quick if you do.

John: No, it's okay.

Javonte Alexander: I just want to--

Brain Lehrer: John, I appreciate your call very much. Thank you very much. Javonte, you want to give a last response in this exchange?

Javonte Alexander: One thing I just want to say. I get you're a police officer, but your approach and our approach is totally different. It's hard for anybody carrying a gun-- no disrespect to what works you do, but for any brown and Black people in our community, it's hard for us to open up to any police officer because the trust-- In all neighborhoods, out of 100% of police, I feel like the way people look at y'all is tough. Y'all don't have a really good rep of respect. You know what I mean?

What I see with my own eyes in my community, just for me speaking-- and I'm not saying all cops is bad. I'm not. I understand all people is different. It's hard for kids to open up to y'all guys. I don't feel like cops really open up to kids to even be vulnerable enough to y'all.

Basaime Spate: Based off interaction.

Javonte Alexander: Yes, interaction. What I see in--

Basaime Spate: Based off respect.

Javonte Alexander: Respect is everything. Every day I'm in my neighborhood I don't feel like police shows respect. I feel like they treat people like animals. They talk to people like they already in the wrong. Already just committed a crime before-

Basaime Spate: Already a criminal

Javonte Alexander: -you give somebody respect.

Basaime Spate: You're already judging us a criminal before you even have a conversation with that individual to find out why is he even doing what he's doing.

Brain Lehrer: As we run out of time, Elise, I want to give you the last word because you're the director of action research at the Center for Justice Innovation. I wonder if there are policy implications from what you learned in this study. Implications for action that you would like to state.

Elise White: I think the dominant thing that we would want listeners to take away is that young people are afraid of dying. These are children and young adults who are afraid they are going to be killed on a number of different levels. There need to be structural changes to meet them where they are, help them get healing. They're living with significant levels of trauma. They're living in a state of hypervigilance. How can we, the adults, the policymakers, hear that? Because even in what your caller just stated, I hear that there is a real resistance to listening to the narratives. I think we have to start and trust them that when they say what they are going through, they are speaking the truth.

Brain Lehrer: There we leave it with Javonte Alexander and Basaime Spate, community research coordinators at the Center for Justice Innovation, and Elise White, director of action research at the Center on the study of 15 to 25-year-olds in Crown Heights and why they carry guns. Thank you so much for joining us and thanks for your openness.

Elise White: Thank you.

Basaime Spate: Thank you, Brian.

Javonte Alexander: Thank you so much.

 

Copyright © 2023 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.