Media Coverage

Article Source: The New Haven Register - Monday 5th, 2005

12/05/2005

Shooting victims frequently clam up

William Kaempffer , Register Staff

NEW HAVEN — The wounded man knew nothing.

Shot at close range last month, he couldn’t describe his assailant or provide detectives with any useful information, even though witnesses nearby provided detailed accounts.
He said he had no idea why anyone would want to harm him.

It’s a recurring theme. A man gets shot and tells detectives that he was minding his own business when an unknown or unseen gunman shot him for no apparent reason.

"I think it has a lot to do with their mind set. The shooting to them is just the price of business, so to speak," said police Chief Francisco Ortiz Jr.

"The victims do mislead you. They tell you a completely different story initially, that it happened in part of the city when it didn’t, that they were robbed when it didn’t happen that way. They will sit there and say they were standing somewhere and they were minding their business when they were shot."

Call it the code of the street, a distrust of police, a reluctance for being labeled a "snitch" or a desire to handle the situation in their own way, but a lot of victims want no part in helping police find their shooter.

While certainly some are innocent victims of circumstance, police said, many more are themselves involved in criminal conduct and are well known to police. Sometimes, they’ve been shot before or have been suspects in other shootings.

And detectives investigating the growing case loads recognize that today’s victim often will become tomorrow’s perpetrator.

"These are folks that want to be respected. They want a reputation, and quite honestly, they want revenge," Ortiz said.

Dr. Steve Marans, of the Yale Child Study Center, said the underlying problem surrounding young people solving problems through violence — and perhaps their reluctance to deal with police when they become targets — is societal. A new generation of young people are coming of age in "circumstances that haven’t given them the opportunities to find respect and a sense of well being and pride" in traditional ways like education or athletics or work.

"Too often when they’re left to feeling insulted . . . violence and the power of violence becomes their only recourse," said Marans, who works closely with police through the Community Policing-Child Development partnerships.

"This is not a police department issue alone," he said. "The families and the community have a responsibility to be working closely with the police and helping to stop some of these situations before they escalate."

The problem manifested in a recent spate of revenge shootings that left one dead.

Last Tuesday, when two young men were shot in separate incidents, they gave police little to work with. Later that night, a 22-year-old was shot on Kensington Street. Then, when he died the following morning, more gunshots rang out in the Hill, and another man ending up wounded.

Police say the four incidents are connected and that the parties apparently all knew each other.

While it’s impossible to say whether the last two shootings were preventable, police suspect that they could have been if the first two victims had been more forthcoming.

"If the first two guys had been truthful about what happened, we wouldn’t have had three and four," Ortiz said.

And if the underlying problem is societal, he said, then the solution must be, too.

Many parents are terrified that their children will get caught up in the culture of violence, but feel powerless to stop it.

One Stevens Street mother averted possible bloodshed when she called police when she feared her son had a gun and was about to retaliate for a shooting in Dwight Kensington.

Parents and the community need to stand up and take an active role, rather than stand back and hope for the best, they said.

While authorities recognize "how hard it is for families to feel like they’re dropping the dime on their own kids," Marans said, the alternative is more dire.

"Think about what it’s like when the family gets the call, hearing that their son or daughter has been shot. This is with the aim of trying to prevent the heartache that goes with injury and the grief that goes with death."

©New Haven Register 2005