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Nov. 1-7, 2019
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‘HOW MANY MORE?’ Public advocate joins Jamaica leaders to demand community investment after fatal shooting
Public Advocate Jumaane Williams joined South Jamaica leaders on Tuesday to demand community investment after the fatal
shooting of a 14-year-old boy who lived the Baisley Park Houses. Photo: Max Parrott/QNS
BY MAX PARROTT
The Baisley Park Houses community
in South Jamaica continued grieving
Tuesday afternoon after 14-year-old resident
Aamir Griffin was killed by what
police suspect to be a stray bullet from a
gang-related shooting.
In response to the shooting, Public
Advocate Jumaane Williams gathered
a coalition of local advocates, elected
officials and Griffin’s relatives to decry
the neighborhood’s long-term disinvestment
and demand increased funding for
community programs.
“The number of shooting incidents
are up 3.7 percent. I would like the city
to begin a serious investment in taking
on the causes of these acts,” Williams
said. “Police have a role to play in public
safety. However, if police could have
solved this problem, it would have been
solved a long time ago.”
Williams’ demands included a universal
youth job program, more funding
for at-risk youth groups and athletic
leagues and the re-opening of a community
center in the Baisley Park development
that shut down under Mayor
Bloomberg in 2008.
Griffin’s death comes less than a
week after Borough President and DA
candidate Melinda Katz posed a similar
preventive strategy to address Queens’
spike in gun violence over the past year.
Williams took Katz’s idea a step further
to suggest that southeastern Queens’
recent spike is a result of systematic disinvestment.
Gary Frazier, a local chaplain who
has run sports programs for area students,
said that the community center
was closed as a result of a budgetary
mandate in 2008 that shut down community
centers in NYCHA houses across
the city.
“We’ve been fighting and ever since
and they’ve been telling us it’s not in the
budget to do so,” Frazier said.
Williams specifically took aim at
Mayor Bill de Blasio during the press
conference, referencing his “historic resistance”
to funding youth employment
programs and framing the mayor’s $8.7
billion community-based jail plan as an
impediment to at-risk youth funding.
Through tears, neighborhood Councilwoman
Adrienne Adams echoed Williams’
call for resources and criticized
of the city’s cessation of the area’s youth
programs.
“Aamir was gunned down on the
very playground that was supposed to
cut down on gun violence in these houses,”
said Adams.
Councilman Donovan Richards, also
a candidate for Queens borough president,
called out the racial disparity in
how resources are distributed throughout
the city.
“If Aamir’s complexion were a little
whiter, we wouldn’t be out here begging
for resources,” Richards said.
In his address, he called it unfair
that southeastern Queens’ large population
of homeowners should pay more
in property taxes without getting youth
services in return.
“When a 14-year-old is taken from
a community, it’s not just the community
that has to take that burden. It’s the
community, city, state and the country,”
Frazier said.
Reach reporter Max Parrott by e-mail
at mparrott@schnepsmedia.com or by
phone at (718) 260-2507.
Vol. 7 No. 44 52 total pages
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