Interview with Ms. Stephanie Ubreall, NYC Crime Commission, 11/25/14
On Monday, November 24th, my group members and I went on our second fieldwork to go to the NYC Crime Commission. We met with the one of the program directors, Stephanie Uberall. We talked to Stephanie and one of her interns about youth and minors in gangs. We talked about how kids our age get involved in gangs. She told us that if you have 100 kids who were in a gang, only about 95 of them actually wanted to be in them. Another interesting thing that she told us is that kids in gangs are not usually making money, so they are in it for revenge. One person that she told us about that really caught my attention — the story of Tyquan Assassin. She joined a gang and killed someone when she was just 14 years old. She didn’t join a gang just for the fun of it, she joined it because another gang killed her brother. She died when she was 17, just 3 years after she ruled the streets of Chicago. By the time she was killed, she (allegedly) killed over 20 people.
Stephanie doesn’t work in the field anymore talking to kids, but she helps coordinate other organizations that help kids with trouble. This had a big impact and me and probably my group members because there are kids in gangs that are most likely younger than us and always have the fear of dying when they are just 9 or 10 years old. She also talked to us about New York’s biggest gang raid in the Grant and Manhattanville housing projects in West Harlem. She told us that there almost 100 kids aged 12-24 who got arrested and most would have to serve a minimum sentence of 20 years. She talked to us about how these kids should not have to serve 20 years in jail for probably being peer pressured into do something they probably hated doing.
This inspired me and most likely my group members to want to make a change to the way that kids are treated in gangs and in the justice system. This fieldwork will really help our group because Stephanie recommend a lot of other organizations that focus specifically on children in gangs. One thing that I would be sure to remember for our Teach-In is how that if you just talk about 25 year olds in gangs, that is not new to people, but if you talk about how there are 9-10 year olds that have to fear getting shot or stabbed by just walking on the wrong side of the street, that can persuade people to make a change.
