New York Daily News Calls 8-Year Old Children Living in Public Housing Future “Gangbangers”

the article opens with the sentence: “Meet the gangbangers of tomorrow.”

Yesterday, the New York Daily News published an article called “Harlem Kids Proudly Aligning With Violent Gangs” about the “future gangbangers” in Harlem. The article was talking about 8 to 10 year olds. Underneath a photograph of kids playing around the public housing in West Harlem, the caption reads: “Youngsters in Manhattanville Houses say they aspire to join street gangs.”

The first sentence of the article reads, “Meet the gangbangers of tomorrow.” From there, it doesn’t get any better. The article includes only one quote of a child referencing what may be a crew or a gang called “OTV” — Only The Ville — but can’t prove that this “crew” has been responsible for anything violent despite the title of the article. The author then goes on to conflate it with two different “crews” (Money Boys and Make It Happen Boys) who are allegedly responsible for the violence around the public housing in recent years. She first calls the children playing “unsupervised,” then admits “older teens” are watching the kids, their “tween mentees” as she puts it. It apparently doesn’t cross the author’s mind that the “older mentors” watching them play in the park may be their older brothers or sisters or cousins babysitting them (despite one kid telling her “they family, I’m not being recruited by nobody”). And perhaps the adults she can’t find are working or cooking dinner or simply out of eyesight.

The most ridiculous part of the article is when she mentions that what anonymous police officer told her, “it’s hard for cops to track young troublemakers since they are seldom caught carrying guns and drugs.” So, it’s hard to track these “troublemakers” because you haven’t caught them committing crimes? Okay.

Some residents question the “gang” label: “If it’s three or more kids hanging out, they call it a gang.” Another resident said, “these kids grew up together. They’ve known each other all their life. They’re friends.”

Katherine Fort, whose 8 year old grandson was in the photograph, was livid when she saw it. “There’s a picture of my grandson on page 60, playing in the park talking about he’s a wanna be gang banger. A wanna be gang banger? Him and other kids playing in the park…My grandson goes to school. He’s very smart. He loves basketball. He’s into football. And he wants to be a damn lawyer when he grows up.”

Later on Katherine said, “they were taking pictures of him without people knowing. My grandson is very intelligent…and he wants to be a lawyer. They didn’t write that. They put that he wanted to be a gang member. That’s not what my grandson wants to be and I honestly don’t know how they’re allowed to write this shit. You come out and you say something and they write what they want to write. They don’t write what you tell them.”

This is not to deny that there has been some violence in recent years but that doesn’t excuse irresponsible articles (that are obviously fed by the NYPD) such as this one. Articles like these enable the NYPD to harass children for standing around or playing outside. “I’m scared to let my 11 year old play outside because the police will harass him if there are a group of them together,” one resident told me.

Residents who live in Manhattanville project housing are well tired of how they and their children have been portrayed, “it’s like we’re already guilty and we have to prove our innocence. It’s supposed to be the other way around.”

This was first posted on my Wordpress blog. To read the NYDN article without giving it traffic, go here (and scroll to the end).