Men of the cloth say hunger feeds crime
PORTSMOUTH, Va.. (WAVY) — Dancing and roller skating sensation Bishop Vance Oldes of Landover, Maryland spreads the Word old-school style in skating rinks across the mid-Atlantic, and he can kick it with the best in Hip-Hop dance in local malls.
Here’s why.
“So people won’t be intimidated; they won’t feel threatened, and they are able to soften up and open up that so I can share the love of God,” said Oldes of Liberty House Ministries in Hyattsville, Maryland.
The Bishop’s message comes with street credibility, as he’s a former drug dealer and drug addict.
“My addiction started in the mid-eighties, in my early twenties, and it progressed and progressed,” Oldes said. “I got arrested for the last time in 1993. I was literally selling drugs on skates in the neighborhood and sold (drugs) to undercover (police officers) some crack rock, and my journey of recovery started then. So I didn’t get arrested; I got rescued.
Thirty years later, the Bishop has a message on how to rescue young adults and children in trouble.
Regina Mobley: OK, so they are hungry for love, but also food?
Bishop Vance Oldes: That’s one of the things that I think we overlook in this (drug) epidemic is that a lot of the young men that are out there, a great percentage of them are literally, physically hungry because they don’t really have food in their homes. Their parents are not there, they go to their apartment where they don’t have anything in the fridge and they’re hungry.
Hunger, Oldes said, leads to more crime.
“So they do whatever they have to do by any means necessary even to put food in their stomachs,” said Oldes, who skated with local children and adults last weekend in Chesapeake. “So carjacking and car theft is at an all-time high. And then, it’s coupled with (the fact that) many of them are dealing with mental health and also with substance abuse. That is the foundation out of which many of them are doing a lot of crap just to really, basically, get high, and not even understanding that that leaves you in jail’s institutions as well.”
The Portsmouth-based community group Andrew’s Brothers also said hunger plays a role in why some youth turn to crime. That’s why the Brothers are taking back the community one meal at a time. The volunteers host a mobile food bank every Monday morning beginning at 9 a.m. at Third Baptist Church on High Street, near Godwin Street, in Portsmouth.
Andrews Brothers, who have been featured in two previous 10 On Your Side stories, also have street credibility. Several members spent time behind bars beginning in the 1990s because of crimes associated with drug sales and abuse.
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