that my nephew was in the ICU -- doctors said they were surprised he was alive -- my brother-in-law called me to task me with keeping my nephew's friends from seeking revenge. And his buddies were definitely making plans to travel to the gang's hometown, to hunt for them. Luckily, they trusted me when I said that more violence was not the answer. (Had they spoken with my brother instead of me, it would have been ugly. He was furious that I nixed his agenda to travel in the night to "splatter some blood on the walls."
Avoiding gross violence demands that we know how to read situations. That ability helped me in responding to "community crises" when I worked at the mental health clinic. It's come in mighty handy in many, many other situations over the decades, even when I was young and enjoyed fighting. It requires a combination of instinct and experience -- including exposure to a higher level of thinking and understanding.
Rather than more violence, we used the resulting legal process to educate the public. For three months, court hearings took place. The news media from this region of the state covered it closely. Besides local community members, from young to old, we had two chapters of the NAACP there every week. At the first few hearings, law enforcement feared outbreaks of violence. Instead, we had 100+ well behaved people attending. That the only two black cops in the area were there with us may have reassured the police.
The head thug had hired our region's best criminal defense attorney. As I was tasked with being our side's public voice, I would go toe-to-toe with him in front of the tv cameras. No local prosecutors in a five-county area liked debating him. (Two of my uncles who were retired BCI Senior Investigators had kicked both this fellow and his late father's asses in court years before. So it was again the Irish vs the Irish in heated debate!) I reviewed my Malcolm X per public debate. And I kicked his behind, getting him to completely lose his cool before the reporters, time after time. Finally, he avoided me.
Those were strange times. To be honest, my first nature was to resort to violence in an attempt to get revenge. But I was able to rise to my second nature. My friend RFK, Jr. took a public stance on the case, and became my family's friend and advocate. Sports Illustrated considered doing an article on the case, but threats of a law suit ended that. And the court system ended up failing us, a the DA was close friends with the one defense attorney. The NYS Committee on Judicial Misconduct investigated, and reported that the DA had protected the gang members.
Afterwards, several of my nephew's friends thought I had failed them. (My brother called me a "fucking coward." But these days, those same young men tell me that I was right when we bump into each other. It was an event that students should never be exposed to. There are still scars.
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