Mount Carmel students learn the dangers of gang affiliation
Sheriff's officers and former gang member deliver presentation
Life is all about making choices.
That is the message members of the Monmouth County Sheriff’ Office Department of Correction Gang Intelligence Unit delivered to students at Our Lady of Mount Carmel School in Asbury Park Thursday during a presentation about the risks of joining a gang.
The Gang Intelligence Unit deals with incarcerated gang members at the Monmouth County Correctional Institute and delivers presentations to schools throughout Monmouth County, for judges and courtroom personnel, for law enforcement agencies and to members of the private sector.
In the 1350 bed facility, about 150 of the inmates are known gang members, according to Monmouth County Sheriff Shaun Golden.
“I’m here to tell you that it is worth you being here today,” Golden said to the students.
Most of the gang members are coming out of Asbury Park, according to Carlos Piniero, a member of the Gang Intelligence Unit.
“Asbury Park is our biggest supplier,” he said.
About ten students in the crowd of approximately 100 raised their hands when the officers asked if they knew someone who was in a gang. Three raised their hands when asked if they had been approached by a gang member to join an organization.
Before giving school presentation, the three correctional officers that make up the Gang Intelligence Unit scouted the school and the area surrounding the school to determine if there was a gang presence nearby, Piniero told students.
While there were no gang signs or tags in the school, when the officers exited the school they noted one of the house numbers was incorrect, showing 235 instead of the correct address, and that 235 is a known tag of the “Double I” faction of the “Bloods” street gang, Piniero said.
“We live in a neighborhood and a community that this is a pressing issue in,” said Amanda Faulhaber, school counselor at Our Lady of Mount Carmel.
The Gang Intelligence Unit explained to students that gang members often glamorize gang affiliation to recruits by telling them they will be popular, get to hang out at parties, make easy money and will be members of a family – but that is far from the truth. In reality, if is about jail time, permanent injury and death.
That message was underscored by Shaheed Curry, a former “Bloods” street gang member from Newark who spent eight and a half years behind bars.
“All of what the sheriff’s officers said is true,” he said.
With 72 arrests – more than the number of students in the room – Curry, 31, said the choices he made caused the death of his sister after fellow gang members killed her in retaliation of something they thought he did.
Curry prioritized gang affiliation over reading and writing and did not learn to read until he was 21, he said. While incarcerated, he had to have other inmates read the letters that were sent to him and told students to stay in school.
During the presentation, slides showed photographs of injuries inmates had suffered while they were incarcerated, including one man whose face now bears a scar from his ear to his chin that gang members call a “buck fifty,” named for the 150 stitches it takes to heal it, one officer said.
Clothes that the inmates are required to wear, sheets, bed rolls and the food inmates eat were brought so students could get an up-close look at them. Nearing the end of the talk, a stretcher with a body bag was rolled in to complete the message that joining a gang would most likely end in jail time or death.
Faulhaber helped organize the presentation that was delivered to students in the upper grades at the school.
Since the majority of students will move from their relatively small classes of 25 students who know one another to public high schools with hundreds of students and new faces after graduating this year, Faulhaber thought it was an appropriate time to address the issue, she said.
“We know that our students live this on a day-to-day basis,” she said.
During the afternoon session at the school Faulhaber will meet with smaller groups of students to process the information from the presentation and to give them the opportunity to get their questions answered, she said.
“Measuring the effectiveness [of the presentation] may be hard to quantify” said Golden. “But we hope the message is getting through.”
“I wouldn’t join a gang,” said eighth-grader Tatiana Vilus. “When I saw the cuts the scars, and all that stuff — I thought about my cousin that is in jail.”
[Correction: A previous version of this article identified Shaheed Curry as a former member of the “Crips” street gang, he is a former member of the “Bloods” street gang.
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