Teens Terrorizing Our Community: How Do We Protect Ourselves?

When I arrived near the scene of a stabbing outside of Canarsie High School a couple of weeks ago, it was like heading to a war zone. The stabbing victim, reportedly a student, was in an ambulance and being taken to the hospital by the time I got closer to Rockaway Parkway near Flatlands Avenue.

Herds of students walked along Flatlands Avenue, talking about some fight that happened at the school earlier that day but the sound of School Safety patrol cars, and their sirens, racing to the scene were like air raids going off on a battlefield. Some students just hung around on street corners, others pushed each other near the bus stops and you could hear unruly teens cursing and yelling to each other.

You couldn’t even make your way along any sidewalk without meeting a wall of boisterous teens – some teasing each other and testing passersby who had to walk in the street with traffic just to avoid being harassed or involved in the childish display.

Is your school a crime scene waiting to happen?

What the hell is going on here?

I’m not gonna sugar coat anything – walking around the community when school lets out is one of the scariest times you can be outside. What do you do when you’re simply waiting for a bus on a busy avenue or taking a stroll to a store and a dozen youths are heading your way? The first thing you might think – or ask yourself – is “am I safe walking in these kids’ direction? Where do I run if they harass me?”

If you think I’m exaggerating in my observations, give it a shot and take a walk along Rockaway Parkway or Flatlands Avenue during school dismissal. I don’t want to say that the fear of being terrorized by teens deters everyone from going about their business, but no matter what officials do, our streets don’t feel safe when massive groups of teens take over.

Thank God all of the teens responsible for the Flatbush area McDonald’s attack were arrested. But those kids really had nothing better to do than gang up on someone and cause a brawl? Teenagers, in my opinion, get a really bad reputation and whenever they say teens don’t have enough positive things to do, it makes me wonder it they’re right (“they” being community leaders). That could be true – or maybe they’re so caught up in each others’ drama that they don’t want to be bothered doing anything BUT retaliating against each other.

We’re not exactly sure how the suspect in the Rockaway Parkway stabbing got a hold of a weapon to begin with when there’s tons of security and metal detectors at the school – but it’s still unsettling.

What are we going to do with these teens to keep them in line – have military personnel stand guard at all corners in and around local schools and train stations to keep the peace? When you get to a school and see police patrolling, diverting traffic and closing off blocks – as if our city has just witnessed a terrorist attack – what does that say about our attitudes towards teens? Fine – authorities don’t want more teens to get out of control and School Safety officers are doing their job. However, Rockaway Parkway should simply look and operate like a busy shopping area and NOT a scene from the Wild Wild West! 
Maybe authorities should institute a curfew and clear out the community of all those teens walking aimlessly and causing havoc.

 Youth programs? Let’s get real! The availability of youth programs does us no good if teens aren’t enrolling in any of them! Instead, they’re hanging out at McDonalds or congregating in groups after their extracurricular activities and pursuing their vendettas. Conflict resolution and reaching out to youths involved in gangs is a hard task to undertake when there are so many teens taking matters into their own hands.

When my late editor Chuck Rogers and I listened to the office police scanner, hundreds of radio calls of post-school dismissal shenanigans came over the frequencies. Sometimes, he’d pay no mind, look at the scanner and shout, “School’s out!” which usually meant the call was about typical teens stirring typical trouble. Is “typical” acceptable and how many armed guards do we have to post outside near schools to let kids know that their violent frames of mind need to be reformed? Check out the avenues the next time school’s out and let me know what the answer is.

Til then, the community won’t be saved by bell!