This article at least does the subject enough justice to prominently mention the fact that without long-term employment options the truce was precarious, but it still doesn’t give this issue enough importance. There can be no lasting truce between street organizations without legal economic opportunity for these youths!! It is truly that simple. Or a different way of saying that is, this all boils down to economics.
Celebrated gang truce disintegrates
Jahmol Norfleet was a youth leader who helped organize the peace treaty. The peace lasted beyond Jahmol's murder a year later, but is believed to have fallen apart recently.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/08/16/bostons_06_gang_truce_disintegrates/
The shooting death in May of a 14-year-old honors student has done more than shock the city; it has also unraveled the final remnants of a 2006 gang truce once hailed as a historic success.
During the recent arraignments of Jaewon Martin’s alleged assailants, prosecutors said Martin, who had no gang ties, was apparently targeted by members of the H-Block gang because he was hanging out on a basketball court frequented by their Heath Street foes.
Martin was the third shooting victim connected to the gang feud since high-profile peace negotiations four years ago put a temporary end to deadly warfare between H-Block and Heath Street.
While the two previous shootings had frayed the peace, community leaders and law enforcement officials agree that Martin’s death and the resulting investigation are a sign that the pact has disintegrated.
“It’s a shame it didn’t last,’’ said Bob Francis, cochairman of the Academy/Bromley/Egleston Safety Task Force, who did not participate in the truce but witnessed the drop in shootings that followed. “You could see the results when the peace initiative was in place. You could see it in the crime reports. You could see it in the community.’’
More details of the truce’s deterioration could emerge this fall, when a purported H-Block member is scheduled to stand trial for allegedly killing a Heath Street rival in 2009.
Law enforcement officials and community leaders cited several reasons for the crumbling of the much-heralded truce, including insufficient resources like long-term jobs for participants, the release of gang members from prison who want to retaliate against old foes, changing membership within the groups, and the overwhelming challenge of tamping down tensions between rivals who have feuded for decades.
Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis acknowledged the fragility of truces but said if they result in even a few months without violence it means success.
“If we can get a season, and what I mean by that is a summer or a fall, we consider that a major victory,’’ Davis said. “I don’t think we’re looking at long-term commitments to nonviolence among this cohort of people. We’re looking at the short-term and trying to get them to rethink their retaliatory ways.’’
Police said shootings in the two districts where the gangs are based are still lower than they were in 2006. There have been 51 shootings in the districts between Jan. 1 and Aug. 10, 2010, compared with 92 shootings during the same time period four years ago.
The truce was struck in July 2006, following months of shootings between H-Block, a group of about two dozen individuals from Roxbury around Humboldt Avenue, and Heath Street, whose 20 to 30 members live in or near Jamaica Plain’s Bromley-Heath housing complex.
The FBI had attributed 20 shootings to the feud between January 2005 and June 2006. That summer, a 17-year-old man was shot several times on the basketball court near Bromley-Heath. A month later 18-year-old Herman Taylor 3d, who police believe was an innocent bystander, was fatally shot standing on Humboldt Avenue next to an H-Block leader.
The violence spurred ministers and neighborhood leaders at the Bromley-Heath housing complex to collaborate with probation officers, school and city police, and gang unit officers to broker an agreement between the two groups.
Organizers met separately with each gang to pitch the truce, persuading them to put down their guns. Gang members, tired of the fighting, agreed to the cease-fire, said Mark Prisco, chief of West Roxbury District Court and one of the truce organizers.
“They wanted safety and they wanted a job,’’ he said.
Eventually, the two gangs met at a peace summit held at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, where they pledged to stay away from each other’s territory for the rest of the summer, not shoot on sight, and call a minister before retaliating for any disputes.
Truce organizers met weekly with gang leaders to maintain the peace and offered summer jobs through the city and GED classes. Many participants walked away from gang life altogether.
For four months, there was not a single shooting between the two groups.
Then, in November 2006, one of the truce’s principal participants, Jahmol Norfleet, an H-Block gang leader, was fatally shot. No one was arrested and community leaders feared retaliation. But ministers managed to keep both gangs peaceful, and for a year the groups stayed away from each other.
But in January 2009, police say, H-Block member Chris Jamison gunned down Heath Street rival Anthony Perry on a busy Jamaica Plain street. His trial is expected to begin Oct. 12. Both men had been part of the summit. No motive has been given for the killing.
“A truce is so difficult because all it takes is one kid,’’ Prisco said. “I think it’s just such a difficult task to get a young man whose had someone in his family shot or someone he loves shot and for him to say, ‘OK, I’m going to shake hands with someone from that group and try to quash things.’ ’’
Another challenge truce organizers faced was obtaining long-term jobs for many gang members, whose criminal records were impediments to employment, said the Rev. Jeffrey Brown, executive director of the Boston TenPoint Coalition and a truce organizer.
While publicly there was praise for the truce, privately some community leaders and even police criticized the benefits that were given to gang members. Truce organizers, for instance, took some gang members to a Patriots game and gave them tickets to a Boston College football game.
Within the department, some officers derided the truce process as a “hug-a-thug’’ program, according to law enforcement officials. That kind of skepticism made it difficult to secure more funding and jobs to help keep participants away from crime, Brown said.
“In 2010, getting resources for what we were trying to do is a no-brainer, but in 2006 it was a new idea,’’ he said. “Any pressure that came, any criticism that came effectively killed the effort.’’
Davis said the truce process remains one of the department’s anticrime strategies. Law enforcement officials, with the help of ministers, are now trying to negotiate peace between two large gangs, Davis said, declining to provide details because it could jeopardize the effort.
Francis said he hopes there will be another effort to strike a truce between H-Block and Heath Street.
“It’s something that actually worked,’’ he said. “The likelihood of failure is high, but you don’t give up on it.’
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