Blue Coats: No one is exempt when it comes to Erie's youth gun violence

Editor's note: Opinion and Engagement Editor Lisa Thompson Sayers recently joined members of the Blue Coats, Erie's grassroots anti-violence organization, for a wide-ranging conversation on the city's rising youth gun violence. Here, Daryl Craig, Roscoe Carroll, Craig Heidelberg and Dave Garren discuss the causes, potential solutions and their urgent call for community action and accountability as the new school year approaches. The conversation has been edited and organized by theme for length and clarity.

Q: Can you set the stage for the escalating violence we have seen?

CRAIG: Before the pandemic, after the Erie high school mergers, the city had been enjoying relative peace. Unified Erie had come in with a strategic three-pronged perspective: enforcement, reentry, and prevention. And we were already having, as Blue Coats, a measure of success at the schools, specifically Vincent and East, where there had been fights every day.

Shortly after the first Unified Erie call-in, we saw shots fired decreasing. We saw shootings decrease. You'd go through the neighborhood, you couldn't pay one of these kids to say they belong to these little networks. If you approached one of these kids, or law enforcement approached these kids, and said, “You belong to Four Nation or 1800?" They would argue, "No, I don’t." They were through with that.

COVID-19 and gun violence

CRAIG: Then the pandemic hit and unleashed so many things. Consider the kids who were in middle school when the pandemic hit. They're 12 years old, 11 years old, and they're turned out into the streets because a lot of these kids come from unstable, dysfunctional conditions. Now they're totally immersed in that.

HEIDELBERG: There's nothing in place. If you have two kids in elementary, one in middle, one in high school, and now they're all in a house together, that's a heck of an influence. Say the high schooler is involved in gang activity and then you have a fifth grader who is a sponge and a middle schooler who is a sponge who are in the same household for 24 hours a day. And then there is social media. And what (are the younger ones) doing? Soaking all that up.

CRAIG: You have 10-year-olds hanging on the block with kids much older than them who normally would be in school. They're witnessing things that they normally might not witness. And so now this kid comes back (to school). He's 14 or 15. And he's been in this environment for two or three years, not for six hours a day like he would in school, but for 24 hours a day. .…And they create their own new social groups.

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On Seventh and Wallace streets, there was a social network...They called it the "Pooh Block" after DaQuan Crosby, who was shot by his friend in a robbery attempt. Now you have these kids "claiming" this territory, and they didn't even know DaQuan…And that's their structure. You have 11-year-olds and 10-year-olds trying to emulate these things.

Then something else happened. There was an influx of money into the community. And believe it or not, these kids found a way to access that money because they are some of the most intelligent beings on the planet. People are selling dope. Everybody's immersed into this culture. And with the social media thing, taking shots at each other, there's so many dynamics involved. You have girls who are inciting situations between boys.

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But when they come back to school, we didn't assess who came back — meaning these aren't the same kids who left. We had two years' worth of freshmen come into the schools at one time.

Some of these kids went through pure hell. Some of them lost family members to COVID-19. Some of them experienced COVID themselves. Most of them experienced no structure. Because a lot of people that we know had to work through the pandemic like us. Most of us didn't get unemployment. We worked around the clock... And so those parents who worked, their kids are home alone now. And guess who's coming by? The kids who don't have any structure at all.

…These children don't have bridles when it comes to those impulses, so they're going to seek out each other and then it gets competitive and next thing you know, our violence rises back. Nobody's doing the call-ins during a pandemic... And you have this fight and that fight, and once shots are fired, it's on. It takes so much to heal. And then in a lot of cases, you have kids involved who don't want to be involved, but they don't know how to stop either.

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…That is one of the biggest and fastest growing dynamics in that whole equation. You have so-called good kids who are carrying guns. Not because they want to be gangsters. Not because they want to be killers, but because if you don't have one, you are a victim. You have kids who are just trying to level the playing field. How many times I've been to court with somebody who had never been arrested...but then you see these little groups get formed out of necessity.

…Look at this weekend (where hundreds of shots were fired in three locations), probably one of the worst we've had in the city of Erie. There were so many bullets in the atmosphere…We know a lot of people had guns and so now what happens? Whoever the intended target was has to return fire eventually. And every time these scenarios play out, everybody in the vicinity is in danger. These bullets go through walls and they travel great distances and people unknowingly are exposed.

Roots of Erie gun violence

Q: What provokes the violence? The drug economy, retaliation?

CARROLL: It is a mix of everything. Anytime you have poverty, people are going to do whatever they have to do to get out. With the pandemic, then it set the stage. With social media, as soon as it came in, with all the violence already out here, it just heightened everything.

They have been doing this for a long time (in bigger cities), but it hasn't been that way here. The culture, the music, we got everything last because of where we're located. So now that it's here, we, the Blue Coats, are not surprised. We've seen it coming. But people here are like, "Oh, this is so terrible," because they've never seen it like that.

Erie is too small for what’s going on.

Q: How does Erie's size affect the violence?

CARROLL: Think of Buffalo. If you are beefing with somebody, you may have to drive an hour to go to wherever that is. But here, you go three minutes, and you are into the trouble.  CRAIG:  You can’t get away from one another. And then you take an already traumatized population. And you immerse them in more trauma.

HEIDELBERG: Like Roscoe said, Erie is so small. If everybody has a gun and I go to get gas and I bump into you, that's where the gunshots are going to ring out. That's why we see these gunshots like the 7-year-old, Antonio Yarger Jr., getting shot, because it's just, you're there, I'm there. We have this thing between us that we don't understand, so we're going to shoot in total disregard of whoever's around.

Q: Tell me about the proliferation of the guns.  CRAIG: (Due to a problematic Ohio law), we have an "iron pipeline" (through Erie and beyond). I can go to Ohio and I can buy these D-grade guns very cheap. You have kids in the street who don't really understand and are not researching guns...A person can go buy the 9-mm for $125 dollars in Ohio and it is not the best made gun — I can aim at you and shoot Craig. It (results in) an untrained person with a poorly made weapon. This is where a lot of collateral damage is coming from.

HEIDELBERG: And that is just one pipeline. The type of guns we see these youths with are the guns that the United States is dropping off in Ukraine — military-grade. We don't see them being reported stolen. So where are they getting them? That's a question.

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CRAIG: The drug trade.

Q: So addicts trade guns to feed their habits and sometimes they are stolen from their own family members? 

CRAIG: They might report them stolen. But...these people know that their sons and daughters took their guns because they're the only ones who had access. The house hasn't been burglarized. They report it stolen, get their insurance, buy another gun.

Social media, rap music fuel violence

Q: Are kids being recruited to this violence or to gangs? 

CRAIG: The craziest thing about that — some of our biggest cheerleaders are people who have gotten themselves entwined in those lifestyles and really don't see their way out.

CARROLL: I don't think you have to do too much recruiting. These kids are making a decision.

CRAIG: It is not so much a person that we're fighting against, as the influences coming from everywhere. Some of these kids’ negative heroes are heroes they have seen on social media, YouTube, even regular television. Some of these kids fantasize about the movie criminals because of the way Hollywood (gives) criminals and killers endearing qualities. An 11-year-old watching that doesn't know how to separate that.

CARROLL: ...It's a “look-at-me" generation. Everybody wants to be seen. If you look on TV, everybody has diamonds and extra stuff. Some of these kids are not willing to really do what we did and have to do — buckle down and work. And we are part of the reason that they do what they do, because we weren't always model citizens, some of us. That's why we come back to give back to the neighborhood.

But social media is driving the bus. You have music. You have got all types of platforms now where you can become a millionaire. These kids see that and when the pandemic hit, everything stopped. It was fear. Everybody was fearful. So, there's a lot of things that were overlooked. So now (we have to) rebuild.

HEIDELBERG:  It's like the crack epidemic in the 1980s and early 1990s. Now this youth violence has taken over. It's a pandemic. The youth violence is insane and for people to just sit back and do nothing and allow gasoline to be thrown on it via rap music? …You can turn your radio on and…hear the most insane things about destroying the life of a Black youth and it's mainstream. That speaks to mental illness — for me to put on a song that talks about killing me.

CARROLL: All the rappers now, they are getting in trouble with guns. So at some point (kids) think it is cool to go to jail, and that's the misconception...Some of the stuff (these kids) are doing is going to get them life in jail or get them killed.

CRAIG: There's a San Francisco rapper (who said) these young Black kids don't even realize that when they go looking for a gun, their intended target and reason for having that gun is another Black man. They only shoot Black people. So when we talk about racism and race hate, look at that. These kids only have a gun for the purpose of shooting another Black kid.

All over this nation, we have hundreds of thousands of Black kids picking up guns to shoot other Black kids. How are we supposed to survive? And then you have these ones, the hypocritical stance, that say, "Oh, they're being profiled (by police)." We know…law enforcement desperately needs an overhaul. But the truth of the matter is, I'm more likely to be shot by somebody who looks like me than I am a cop. The statistics bear that out.

...It's like my cousin said, to defeat this problem, what is the cause?  How many bubbles are in a bar soap?

Poverty, peer pressure ratchets up violence

 CARROLL: They're going to do whatever their heart desires. Until there is an opportunity to liberate people who don't have, then you're always going to have this. That's the problem. I'm saying there should not be a feeble one amongst us. What we believe is everybody eats together and you have less problems, then you can tackle some of the issues. But it's much greater than this really...These kids are fearless and influenced by not just one thing.

So we try to teach them how to make better decisions, because that's what it boils down to.

CRAIG: It's like the kid who came up to the store (recently). They were trying to make T-shirts with a little gang (label) on it. And we started talking to him about the anti-gang laws, now he's crying. "I only wanted to get the shirt made because they said we should get them made."

The peer pressure is dangerous. It is driven by real fear because they have guns. I don't really want a gun. But I better get one because wherever we go, the people we are conflicting with have guns. And then on top of that, the people I'm around have guns and it's starting to feel really, really awkward me not participating and if I want to keep my circle of support and protection, I have to join on with whatever they're doing.

...Kids literally can't get away. If you're at the poverty level and you move out of the neighborhood, where are you moving to? You are moving into another impoverished neighborhood. And the same thing is waiting for him. It has become such a subculture and is so ingrained. What's abnormal to those who don't see this regularly is very normal to those who live it. These kids are not shocked.

Enlisting parents to quell the violence

Q: Tell me about the Most Valuable Parent Strategy. 

CRAIG: It is something we had, but we put it on a shelf during the pandemic.  HEIDELBERG: We thought it would be a perfect time to revamp it because of the lack of guidance. We see the kids running amok and we're contacting parents. That's the major component of the Most Valuable Parent program — if we can get the parent to see that you're not powerless. You can do something.

CRAIG: Here's a parent who has been stuck in poverty for years. That parent needs some help coming out of poverty. So mainly what we do is a lot of referrals and a lot of plugging into resources that address the things that are making this parent be the way they are…It takes some digging sometimes because people don't quickly acknowledge their stuff. We feel like because we live with them — we worship together; we've grown up together; and we cry together — we can just take a little bit of our time and say, "OK, you're here with the MVP group. We're here to support you. We're going to get at that thing that's holding this parent hostage to poverty."

GARREN: What he is saying is so lacking in our community. It is absolutely pathetic that we can't give our community people from the community who know the community and can ask the community questions and make sure we understand what the community needs.

HEIDELBERG: A lot of times, in order to get a better understanding of why this kid is acting out so much, we go to the door and knock. (And we find drug activity in the home.)

...It is a world that exists that most people only connect with through music or movies or news sites.

CRAIG: But these are real people with real hearts and who are really wanting more. But we judge them and we look down. I know that we think that they're unreachable because we can't see ourselves in that environment or see ourselves going into that environment to try to help. And then when we do go, we go with the wrong perspective and don't know how to let love lead the way because you have got to care about people.

And that's where America itself has really fallen off because you know that quote, "it takes a village to raise a child.” They weren't saying it takes a village back when we had a village. We just knew the right thing to do was to help your neighbor and to care about the kids in your neighborhood.

…The key is that unity that resides in the village concept. The goose with the golden egg (on our MVP T-shirts) — the goose represents our unity. The golden egg represents the benefits of unity. As long as we don't kill the golden goose, we can continue to benefit from the unity.

That is the overriding theme of everything we do…that we have got to come together. There's no earthly reason that I can find that will tell me why any adult, I don't care where you are from, is not upset about children dying and filling up the prisons. You asked that question about the people who have worked intentionally to recruit kids. What about the people who intentionally don't help, but they come out whenever the camera shows up and they say they're for the community and I have an idea, but their idea costs money?

HEIDELBERG: That's what the reemergence of MVP was for. To say, "Come stand with us." We invite them to something because we need the village to be restored. And that's the only way that we can take it back is by having all hands on deck because we see parents who are a part of the problem, 100%.  (We might say,) "Hey, we just took a gun from your son." And they say, "Ah man, I can't handle him." Wait a minute. You are the dad. So now we work with him a different way with MVP.

CRAIG: (MVP can) give that parent support because you have so many parents who, as Brother Craig said, are just so frustrated. And then you have parents who are just holding on by a thread financially. … So now you have a whole network of other parents who are willing to support you and you can bounce things off. And then these parents need a voice because so many parents feel like they haven't been heard.

...And we look at some of these kids. And it should not have taken this long for us to realize these kids needed a different kind of help and more of it. Some of these kids had multiple incidents that clearly told us traditional stuff isn't working...So what's taking us so long to understand that certain things are not working, they never did.

If you look at young men who were recently on trial and go through their history, why did it take this (long)? Now we ready to give them life in prison. They are on trial. We are on trial. This whole community is on trial. And we can walk like it's not true. But we know in the midnight hour when it's just us and God, we have failed these kids. Everybody knew there was going to be a school shooting. Everybody knows there's going to be another shooting in certain areas of the city.

...When are these children going to get the help and their families going to get their help when these behaviors and mindsets begin to manifest?

These kids, oh my god, they don't want to be killers. They're not killers, most of them. And the ones who are have severe mental health issues that were on full display.

...Some parents are afraid that instead of getting help, their child is going to be arrested. One of the things we have to do is help parents understand that it is not as bad as it used to be. There are excellent people trying to change the culture. You talked about the size of Erie. We believe Erie can be a model for the nation.  Everybody's connected to everybody. We're the perfect size to be an example if we can start bridging these gaps.

Where these gaps exist, people on both sides have got to take ownership because we all contribute to the gap. The police department has to be more willing to show themselves as protectors and servers and not enforcers and occupying armies, but at the same time, you can't say, "Stop the violence," and not be willing to address the violent.

Same thing with any school district or (the court system). Everybody's got to be willing to do something new and realize that it takes all of us to be successful. The only guaranteed path to success is a unified path. The only time we've ever seen this violence impacted was through Unified Erie.

Unity is the only way forward

CRAIG: The Bible says that whenever people come together in unity, God commanded the blessing. That means this is a guaranteed blessing. If we will unify, we can't miss. We've got the evidence from Unified Erie. But Unified Erie should not just be the small group of people who went out that first time. Unified Erie means everybody in Erie and what MVP and the Blue Coats and everybody else is trying to create is this space where everybody realizes that we can't stop this (violence) being divided. We can't heal being separate. We have to come together.

I, for the life of me, can't understand any adult who is not willing to lend their voice to this cause. You are part of the problem. You don’t have to be a Blue Coat. But you do have to do something. (My childhood mentor) said the world of adults is responsible for the world of children because we created it. Any adult who feels like this is not their problem, that they have nothing to do with it, they don't know truth at all.

By this town being so small, that means it's more likely that any one of us could be the next collateral damage. And people need to wake up to that too. Nobody here is exempt.

…It's hard for us to understand why certain individuals in key positions are allowing selfish motives to keep their voices separate from just this one cry. Enough is enough. And…the people in the neighborhood — you know who is (involved in violence) — and then you are crying about how you want it to stop, but you're not saying anything to that family member or that child.

This tells me that you have accepted death and violence as a way of life. And that is the biggest part of this problem —accepting this as something that we can just live with. We've been living with it for the last 30 years, and it's getting worse. Every time there's a death, there's no hope for healing because that's permanent. Antonio Yarger's family will never be the same. And so it is with the families of the multiple people who have lost their lives before Antonio.

What are we waiting for? For all of us to have a story to tell about a family member who we buried?

Q: Can you heal this without healing the inequity first? 

CARROLL: If you empower people to use their creativity for the right area of their life, you can make it out. We (need to) show them how to use the gifts that they have in a positive way.  We have a few ideas that we're working on to try to help empower people to be the greatest version of themselves.

I feel that we aren't predetermined in ourselves. It's about consciousness. If you listen to something that says, "I'm a killer, I'm a killer, I'm a killer. I'm a shooter, I'm a shooter," all day, then that's in your consciousness. And that's what you become. You're taking it in and metabolizing it.

…Sometimes you have to understand what their home life is. And a lot of times it's not their fault. This is what is instilled in their consciousness. So how do we combat that?

The parents are the major component. If we get the parents on the same page and knowing that they have support, (we can succeed). Because there are plenty of kids who turn things around and are doing great, getting college degrees. They come back and say, "Thank you." Or they say, "You were right, and we shouldn't have done that."

Erie gun violence: What is at stake?

Q: How urgent is this problem? 

CRAIG: A kid could be getting killed while we're speaking. That's how urgent it is. And any one of us or anybody's child could be the next victim. That's how urgent it is. I know that it's going to take everybody to take a stand.

…We have to visibly show our children, these families and all those who are prone to these types of behaviors, that first: This is not acceptable. But then (also), you matter. You're better than this. We can do better than this. And we are going to do better than this.

I'm not going to accept that we're comfortable with a 7- year-old child being murdered just walking down the street, bullets flying through.

It's time to call out the do-nothing politicians, the do-nothing pastors, the do-nothing poverty pimps. That's the bottom line. We have some funding now, but I say with pride, godly pride, when we decided that we were going to do this work in our neighborhoods, we did not ask anybody for any money. We had a three-point process: Raise awareness about the rising tide of violence… Second, attest the message of nonviolence in everything we did. Third, become a part of a coalition of like-minded, committed organizations and individuals.

But the committed part seemed to come up short every time we would link up with different people or organizations. We literally caught a church throwing our "nonviolence begins with me" signs in the Dumpster behind their church.

I've sat in meetings where individuals have said, "What's in it for me?" ...And kids are dying?

And so, at what cost? Antonio Yarger. I am not comfortable with us letting him be forgotten, like we did the baby on Chestnut Street and the 6-year-old out in the Harbor Homes. Shame on us. When that 6-year-old got shot, this city should have gone to work.

Of course we know everybody can't and shouldn't be trying to be a Blue Coat. But you can do something and when it comes time for your voice — and that's all we're asking — just raise your voice. Take a stand. Be counted among those who give a damn. That is not too much to ask for a safe community.

Gun violence a form of genocide

CRAIG: You asked what's going to happen if we don't stop this. I don't know how much damage has already been done. I don't know statistically, if we lumped this whole equation in across this nation, where we may be…particularly Black people with the number of young men and women who are in our prisons and in our graves as a result of this violence.

But I do know that it must have impacted us on the level of how we grow as a race of people and how we survive because you wipe out more than just the life when you wipe out potential. The next Barack Obama may be languishing in the prison. The next Michael Jordan may be languishing in the prison somewhere, or worse, in a grave. The next Jesus Christ may already have gotten crucified by a bullet because each and every one of us are born with the potential to produce the works of God or the works of the so-called Devil. And if we're wiping them out, we don't have to worry about any works at all.

Genocide is really playing out in front of our faces and why? With all of these leaders and talking heads that we have? There's over, I think, 60 African American churches in Erie. Outside of Bishop Dwane Brock, where is the fruit? On his street, I see a campus and I see African American people employed and African American people presenting themselves as examples for our children and through his partnership with UPMC, we have (hundreds) of African American people employed. So he's got fruit.

Now, no matter what you may think about him, or myself, because I'm not everybody's favorite, because I won't fit the stereotype of what a pastor should be. But the last time I checked, the pastor was supposed the model himself after Jesus. Jesus was out of the temple more than he was in the temple, and he walked among the people and he made himself have no distinction of being above anybody else. He touched humanity. (As a) pastor, I'm not here to entertain anybody. ...if I'm not impacting a life, if I'm not making a difference, then what's the point?

...It's time to raise up the voices of everybody. Everybody. We have to teach our children to raise their voices…If every family was modeling a concern for the community, we would start raising children with that concern. And this other thing will begin to dissipate.

…If we don't, we're going to be wiped out.

HEIDELBERG: And it's just that simple. And it's just that blunt.

CRAIG: We are literally allowing the future of our children to be destroyed before they are even born.

Q: You mentioned that you were worried about what will happen when school opens given all the violence this summer?

CRAIG: The kids bring their reality wherever they go. So for the last year, especially all summer, we've seen these acts are being performed by school-aged children. They come to school. They bring that with them now. The school district has made great strides in making our schools safer inside, even though nothing is, for lack of a better term, bulletproof.

So if I'm bringing my gun to school — and I have to bring my guns to school because I've been shooting at people all summer long — and my opponent who is shooting at me is bringing his gun to the school too and because we know whenever we see each other, we shoot at each other, and our group, we shoot at each other, so now we might have kids trying to shoot at targets a block away.

…Nobody's trained. I just talked about these poorly made handguns that are just flooding our community. And you're talking about a 14-year-old trying to handle a 40-caliber, who knows nothing about kickback.

And so we have to do everything we can. I will not accept that there is not a sense of urgency in every adult's heart. I just can't accept that that is our reality today — that we are so jaded and numb and detached. Every adult (should) understand in a town this size, it could be anybody, at any time.

There are so many houses and cars with bullet holes in them that have nothing to do with what goes on in the street.

All over the country every day, this is what we get. I am not going to let this be my normal.

HEIDELBERG: Even with the parents who were outside Erie High when that shooting happened (in April), we were doing some MVP work, telling them, "Don't let this be the only thing that brings you out."

CRAIG:  Show up now before the next one happens.

…We have to understand that we are all connected in this and we can't get away from that.

It doesn't matter what color you are, what you do for a living, what your economic status is. Everybody has a piece of the solution and everybody owns some of the problem some way, somehow.

…So you should be talking to the person you vote for. If you belong to a church, you should be asking your pastor, why aren't are we involved in trying to help these kids? What are we doing to exemplify that human connection? Because if we don't — I know they have big dreams in Erie — (but) nobody wants to vacation in the murder capital.

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If we don't (come together), it's only going to get bloodier and bloodier and bloodier.

…Now we're getting ready to have this age group who is behind the majority of this shooting coming together (at school). Those parents who rolled up after that high school shooting, every one of them had something to say. But we need you to say that before the next shooting.

There's so much stuff that goes on and there's so much hypocrisy that hinders us. We are just saying everybody has got to be held accountable, and we have to hold ourselves accountable.

HEIDELBERG: I'm holding me accountable. You're holding you accountable. We can build on that. Because we're not finger-pointing, we're searching for solutions.

CRAIG: Otherwise, I don't want to hear anything. I don't want to hear you. I don't want to hear words you have to say if you're not willing to say something before something happens. Please don't burn my energy afterwards. That's old. I don't want to hear about a grand plan that's going to take place two years from now when there is something that we can do today. I don't want to hear about all that.

What do you bring to the table today? You've got something and that's your voice. Use it today.

Opinion and Engagement Editor Lisa Thompson Sayers can be reached at lthompson@timesnews.com or 814-870-1802. Follow her on  Twitter @ETNThompson. 

This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Erie Blue Coats explain Erie youth gun violence, call for action