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QUEENS WEEKLY, NOV. 3, 2019
‘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.
/schnepsmedia.com
