Most of the information in the article is the story of Edwin who left the gang for church life.
I have been proposing that all gang members and former incarcerated people start a Bible study program either in English or Spanish. The Crossroads Bible Institute in Michigan has a program that is used across the United States. Men and women in Rikers’ Correctional Institute have learned from it for over a decade. Create your own program if you feel the need.
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I was recently in touch with a pastor in El Salvador who works with about 300 former gang members, but that initiative was suspended as the pastor seemed overwhelmed to me.
Another thing that came out in the article is how gang members influenced attendance in an English class in Central Islip. There must be much more about the education of these youth. Even Edwin’s education other than religion should have been mentioned.
On one trip where I was a guest panelist and speaker for the Dominican-American National Roundtable in Washington, D.C., I arranged two meetings in embassies in Washington, D.C. in 2012 between the staff involved with community and the CEO/President of the G.E.D. Testing Service Randy Trask. I walked away from those meetings with great hope for the immigrant community as Trask told the people we met with that the G.E.D. test could be given in the embassies. I started to put the word out, but nobody listens to me. Gang members who need a G.E.D. could anonymously take the test and show that credential here or in their country. The meetings were held with El Salvador and Honduras, two of the countries that are known for gang activity. There are even people who have wanted me to tone down my effort to help people with the G.E.D. Some of those people do not like the competition to help people, competition that could easily rank with character development as earning the diploma helps build self-esteem and makes people eligible quickly for jobs that they would be disqualified for.
Edwin reveals how the “shot spotter” has been used in Nassau County and then Suffolk County to notify police quickly about shootings and how it deterred him and others. I was with Police Commissioner Mulvey in a meeting with several other men on the day that he first announced the shot spotter to the community and I started going to a couple of meetings including one called by the Nassau County Police Department. That meeting was attended by community agency staff and nobody listened to me. I stopped going. Sergeant Marino who interrogated almost five hundred youth who were arrested in a year told me that most of them did not have their “education.” And the men that I attended that meeting with the commissioner went their separate ways. This is also true of people in Philadelphia who feel the same way as people in New York. Education takes a back seat to the things that they are doing. Take into consideration that I know how to get people into testing seats faster and I had a program from 2002-2014 to build people up much faster (in just a few hours of work). And nobody listens to me.
Then we can go back to 2004 when I wrote about the rapes taking place by gang members in our communities and followed it up with a talk in the Consulate of Mexico in Washington, D.C. where three women told me that that had happened to their nieces. Do you think that the new Mexican government under López-Obrador will add this important information along with a new initiative to help Mexican immigrants? He will be establishing immigrant help centers related to the attack on Mexicans by Donald Trump and others.
Teachers finally woke up according to the article and advocate to do more. Nobody listens to me, but those teachers should read School Districts All Over America Reveal Great Incompetence in Jewish Business News. I have started to help a Salvadoran referred to me by a lawn care company that has known me for about ten years. He attended a fine school district on Long Island that is loaded with Asians, Chinese, and Jewish students who excel. We talked a lot and I will have him on his way to success soon.
Our nation is losing ground in the war on gangs and very little has changed in the last two years, except now the Trinitarios gang (a Dominican gang) that Edwin had contacted with in the gang wars years ago has become more like the MS-13 after killing the wrong youth in the Bronx. Donald Trump was recently on Long Island with Rod Rosenstein and Congressman Peter King and the truth is that they know less than you do. Long Islanders want programs for their youth, but those programs should be helping the active gang members now.
Donald Trump is really stuck in an awkward place for not helping enough and making the most of federal law enforcement that has been fighting MS-13 since 2003 and the experts expect more MS-13 activity after all that talk. All that it would take right now is another major murder by MS-13 and that combined with his handling of matters in Saudi Arabia after the much-publicized disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi. These problems require bold solutions, not deals. These problems call for a man or woman who has values and believes in education, not in police force and fear.
