MyCom Podcast: Cierra interviews Operation Focus, 8/17/2010
|
Cierra, a MyCom youth, interviews Sharyna Cloud, the coordinator for the City of Cleveland’s Operation Focus anti-gang initiative, about her work and how to prevent crime in neighborhoods. Transcripts of the two-part interview are below.
Click to hear the podcast (.wmv file, 6 min. 15 sec.)
|
Interview with Sharyna Cloud, Operation Focus, Part One, 8/17/2010
Cierra: Hi, welcome to our podcast on MyCom.net. I am Cierra, a 17-year-old student at Jane Addams Business Career Center. I am also a voice of the MyCom movement -- My Commitment, My Community. I am here with Sharyna Cloud, the coordinator of an anti-violence initiative for youth, who is going to talk to us about to preventing crime near our homes. Thanks for joining us, Mrs. Cloud.
SC: You’re welcome, Cierra. Thanks for having me!
C: First, I’ve got to say something: I think there is a stereotype about out-of-control teenagers, but most teens we know are smart, respectable, and bright people. Would you agree?
SC: I would.
C: So how do we work to prevent youth crimes and not make the “out-of-control teenager” stereotype even worse?
SC: I believe that the Greater Cleveland community needs to work a little harder with the citizens. The government entities need to work harder with citizens to develop -- I don’t want to call them programs -- but activities for the youth to do. Although I know that is ultimately the responsibility of the household to find things for their child to do, I still believe that the city in which you live should provide some of those outlets.
MyCom Fact: Youth and parents can call 216-575-0061 to find close-to-home activities.
I know there’s activities at the rec center, but we need the staff to be a little more inviting because we know unfortunately that the rec centers could be a place of some turf issues, especially with the population that I deal with. But also just engaging the youth.
Many of the youth want to do things; they want help out, but because they feel that they don’t have any places to go, that’s when you’ll see them at the bus stop sitting or hanging out on the corners. But if you engage them -- even the store owners who allow them to stand out front and give them something to do, give them an idea. It can be endless on some of the things they could actually do, but I think it’s going to take a joint effort between the community and the actual city government to develop those things.
C: What’s one thing any person can do to prevent crime?
SC: Get to know the kids on your street. From what I found working with the City of Cleveland, is that the crimes -- and I’m just talking about burglary and theft -- that happen within the communities and breaking and entering that happens in the community, they are committed by the people who live on or near your street. At this time, I believe -- and don’t quote me -- but it may be a small rise in burglaries and break-ins with youth as the perpetrators.
But if we get to know people -- and relationships are so key -- that they are less likely to make you a victim because there understanding of how hard you work. There is understanding that you yourself prized what you have accomplished. That may give them some incentive to do some things, but really just in a conversation getting to know people instead of just thinking and stereotyping that all kids are bad and they aren’t doing anything. Just really look at them for the talents that are really hidden deep within them.
C: Why should young people or families take responsibility to prevent crime?
SC: Because that’s their responsibility to prevent crime. I think it’s every citizen’s and community member’s responsibility to do what you can to prevent crime. So whether that is, you see something going on and you feel you need to call the police, or if you feel comfortable in saying something, getting other neighbors together. I know they still have block watch and block clubs and those types of things, but because a number of reasons: that’s your neighborhood, that is your street, and just like you wouldn’t want it to happen to you or someone you know, you should take that responsibility of trying to deter that type of activity.
Plus, once that happens, we know those things lead to [other problems.] Think about the perpetrator—especially if it’s a young person, then they have a record, and then usually if there is no intervention, they may continue in the criminal justice system until they become an adult. Then once they become an adult and hit that eighteen-year-old age and a felony. It’s a little bit rougher to get things done on the positive side once they enter to that system. So you have to look at the long-term effect.
MyCom Fact: On school days, the hours of 3 to 6 p.m. are the peak time for youth to be the victim of a crime, get into a car crash, smoke, drink or use drugs, according to the group Fight Crime: Invest in Kids. Find positive alternatives for afterschool hours by calling 216-575-0061.
C: What are some concrete things that people can do to have a better relationship between the older and younger residents in the community?
S: One, I believe it’s just start talking… Streets need to reinstitute …block parties. Everybody doesn’t have to look the same. I think just getting to know who people are. I know that that’s a stretch right now because people are doing so many different things and people are doing so many crazy things at this time, but for the older people that may have lived on that street for decades…I think it would be in the best interest of the neighborhood to rally around that person and just hear what’s been going on over the years. Why is the neighborhood this way? That only happens through talking with people. That’s the only way, because when you start to hear the history of something, especially if you belong to it, you get a better understanding of how it became the way it is now and what you can do to help it to get better or try to restore it to where it was at.
MyCom Fact: Community members who wish to engage with others who support youth can call Neighborhood Leadership Institute at 216-812-8700 to join a neighborhood group.
But that’s only going to come through, again, that talking and the relationship. They have many things in the community I know for the elderly, which is good, and they have some things in the community for the young, but I don’t know if they have anything in the community for intergeneration activities to bring those two together. I know that many of the young people now are being raised by their grandparents, even though they’re not the grandparents we remember. They are sixty, seventy year olds, they are a little younger, but they are still grandparents. I think they could do something with intergeneration activities.
C: Thank you for your time.
S: You’re welcome, thank you.
Interview with Sharyna Cloud, Operation Focus, Part Two, 8/17/2010
Cierra: Hi, welcome to our podcast on MyCom.net. I am Cierra, a 17-year-old student at Jane Addams Business Career Center. I am also a voice of the MyCom movement -- My Commitment, My Community. Today, I will be interviewing Sharyna Cloud, the coordinator for the City of Cleveland’s Department of Operation Focus, an anti-violence and anti-gang project for youth. Hello and welcome to our podcast, Mrs. Cloud.
SC: Hello.
C: Your work takes you to the street right?
SC: Yes, it does.
C: What do you see happening?
SC: Right now, there is a lot of anticipation with the school year starting, because we’ve closed some schools. We, being the City of Cleveland under Major Jackson, with the transformation plan. So just some anticipation about neighborhoods coming together, looking at the school district and how they are going to get along and how those relationships are going to go.
C: MyCom is a network of people who are trying to increase positive opportunities for youth to grow, and who want to see neighborhoods safe and healthy too. What can you tell me about how Operation Focus is keeping children and teens safe and healthy?
SC: Operation Focus was initiated in 2007 when we had a record high year of homicides -- not necessarily youth but just in general. But there were, I believe, anywhere from 12 to 15 youth that were killed, and most of them by gun violence.
[Operation Focus] is an offset of the Boston Ceasefire that deals specifically with groups and gangs who perpetrate gun violence. We adopted that in the City of Cleveland and applied it to our youth.
It was beginning into be seen, that a lot of groups were popping up into the neighborhoods. Neighborhood groups that were representing streets, and also the institutionalized gangs like the bloods, crips, and the folks. They were trying to take over, if you will.
Those neighborhoods [were] operating their own silos, making it very dangerous for the youth and the community at large who wanted to come back and forth between neighborhoods and different sides of town and then within the school district.
C: How do you figure out who needs Operation Focus and then how do you get them to stay involved in it?
SC: We identify the youth of Operation Focus a couple different ways. One is through the school district. They have a safety security force [with] gang officers, so through their incident reports they utilize information that will inform them who’s involved in gangs and groups throughout the city.
We also work closely with Cleveland’s police department. The district commanders usually have some type of information on young people and the older people always causing problems in the neighborhood. They are identified that way, depending on if they are involved in a group and then through their tagging on the buildings and things like that.
Also, [they are identified] through the community, because the community members that live in those neighborhoods know what these kids are doing, see them every day. They see them at the bus stops, so they can also refer those youth to Operation Focus.
We have a call-in, which is really when we notify them that you really need to come to this meeting and bring your parents or family member and they are informed by police, by the community, and by service providers about the things that can happen and the opportunities that can also happen if they decide to leave the life of being a gang member. For those who don’t decide to engage in Operation Focus, they don’t necessarily go out and recommit crime, but we just add that what we are telling them is that you are already on the radar screen and we need you to stop doing what you’re doing because if you continue to do what you are doing, then not just you are going to go down, but in street terms, your entire group [will go down].
To keep them involved, we have outreach workers, which are men and women who have been doing this work on the streets. Some of them are former gang members and two or three of them are former gang leaders…They already know how this lifestyle comes and goes and how youth and young adults enter into it. What better people to put out there as role models, advocates, and mentors but those who went through it and are now law-abiding citizens who are productive and want to give back?
These are men and women who have been doing this work for years. They work with us as part of our outreach team and they walk hand-in- hand with the youth who say they do want to get out of it, so we can hook them up with our service providers on the other side and encourage those pro-social relationships. Many of the youth, we found out, don’t have a lot of in their life. That’s how we keep them engaged.
C: What motivates you to help want to make changes?
SC: That’s a excellent question. I just want to help people be the best that they can be.
I have all sons. I have four sons, and just seeing many of the youth today from when I’m just riding in my car, going to and from work, just seeing the amount of disadvantage jbecause of some of the areas they are growing up in. I know that their exposure rate is usually a four to six block radius. If there is anything that I can do, I’ll put it in place for them as part of Operation Focus.
This is our future. These are the young men and women who will either lead us into something good or lead us into something bad.
When we’re talking about the City of Cleveland, we’re talking about thousands of young men and women who want to get their education, but sometimes don’t know how to navigate through the system, depending on how the household is. [They] want to be productive citizens and want to go to college and want good, stable jobs and to be good parents, but because of what they have been exposed to, they don’t have the tools to do that. If I am in position to able to put some of those things in place along with many other people -- because I definitely won’t do it by myself -- then I want to do that.
When I look at them, I really look at my kids, because it can be any one of them at any time being a victim of or the perpetrator of one of these crimes.
C: Have you ever been involved in a gang?
SC: No, not so to speak. Maybe a clique, but not a gang.
C: Have you been involved in any kind of violence at all when you were growing up?
SC: Actually no, I have been very blessed. I had both of my parents my entire lifetime and they are still alive today. I’m one of six kids, one of two girls out of the six. I actually did not go to public school; I went to private school… I understand one hundred percent now why they wanted to expose me to a different type of arena and different types of people at an early age.
Exposure is, I would say, a third of what a child needs in order to grow up healthy, because with limited exposure comes limited self esteem. Once they get them out of the neighborhoods and expose them to other parts of the city, parts of the state, and any other parts of the country, they want more and they want to do more and be more positive. So I understand why my parents fought so hard and worked so hard, not just for me but for all my brothers and sisters to go to a different type of school setting.
C: Why do people of any age join gangs?
SC: Acceptance. That has been my experience when talking with them and observing them. Acceptance, accountability, structure, those are some of the positive ones. Then, of course, you have some on the negative side: they can get fast money, they can do what they want to do.
If you look at a structure of a gang, it’s pretty much like a family. You have ranks and order. You have someone you have to answer to. There’s certain task that you have to carry out and you have to prove yourself. Just like in a family, a functional family. As you grow older, your parents put more responsibility on you, you have to prove yourself: you can stay out to this curfew, then maybe you can drive. So these are the same type of things, just in a family we word it differently. I think the expectations are still there and many times the youth that we work with, the reason why some of them are actually in gangs is because of dysfunctionalism of the home. They are looking for someone to care for them, ask them some questions even though they might not be the right questions, but they still want to be accountable to somebody.
MyCom Fact: Adults can volunteer to mentor or positively influence children and teens by calling Greater Cleveland Volunteers at 216-391-9500. They have opportunities at any level of time commitment, from a single activity to lifelong community involvement.
C: How do you stand up for yourself now as an adult and how did you stand up for yourself as a teen?
SC: I think anyone who will answer this question honestly [will say] in order to stand up for yourself, you have to know who you are. Many times when you stand up for yourself, the cost for you [is that you] have to sit down with some things.
I had to learn my strengths and weaknesses, and I have also take time to figure out who and what I am dealing with; and that will map out my strategy of how I’m going to stand up for myself, for things that are fair and things that are unfair.
As a young person, I was a little bit more quick tempered. We’re learning, we’re going through a process where we’re trying to figure out what’s going on. Of course we don’t want to be viewed as a somebody who’s weak or soft. I always had a strong personality. From what I can remember I think I had to choose my battles very wisely. But I have always had the gift of gab. I try to let my talking do a lot for me, versus trying anything else first because I have never been the one to like conflict. I never like conflict, and that’s probably the reason why I went into criminal justice because I wanted to figure out why people do what they do, why people comet crimes, what drives them to do those types of things. When you cross over that line of committing a felony offense, especially in society and with a lot of bias and prejudice that we have today, it is hard to cross back over for some people. I wanted to be in a position where I can help people do that and that caused me to have to stand up on a couple of different occasions for the marginalized and for those who are unrepresented most of the time. That’s a good battle to fight because we are always going to have marginalized [groups] and we’re going to have people underrepresented and people who don’t know necessarily how to navigate through certain systems, whether its academic, educational, criminal justice, social service, or financial. There are always going to be some people who are going to need represented.
We’re going to have to learn how to stand for them… Figure out first how to stand up for ourselves before we stand up for anybody else.
C: What advice do you have for youth who don’t know how to make their way out of bad choices?
SC: If there is someone in your life that you know in your heart is a good person, go to them. God places someone in everybody’s life who can lead them in the right direction and that’s the person you need to gravitate toward.
C: Do you think that what you are doing with Operation Focus is working?
SC: I do. I know that we need a more coordinated effort.
Operation Focus took a different turn because not just in Cleveland but many major urban cities, a lot of departments such as social services and law enforcement and community-based organizations work in their own silos. [That means that] they work independently, and communication with one another was not fully developed. So [different departments may be] working with the same person. [The person] may have a law-enforcement issue, but yet they have a social-service issue, but yet there’s some things in the community that they need also. So if everyone gets on the same page or educated about the population that they are serving, that would make for a more streamlined communication process. I think that would help the intended client or target population and also help the organization not to waste resources.
C: Do you have any successful stories or a story that is interesting for us?
SC: [The] initiative was just graduating seventeen young men and women who graduated from high school and one received a GED from Job Corps, and these are young men and women … who have been with us since the end of 2008. The inception of Operation Focus was actually May of 2008, but everything was in place in Fall 2008, and these are young people, some who came on board from a call-in in December of 2008.
They have fought through academic challenges, they fought through some challenges at home, and I know one young man … had a child. He decided not to go to his prom because he wanted to stay home with his son and the mother of his son…We all know how monumental a prom can be, especially when we are talking about someone who we were looking at who wasn’t on track for graduating.
Those types of stories may not be invigorating or make your bones chill but it still feels good to your heart because these are young people who fought for something that they really wanted and with the help of their families and our outreach workers and many other people -- service providers and law enforcement -- who know them, encourage them along the way. We’re happy to say that in the 2010 school year, there were seventeen out of ninety … that graduated from high school and fifteen had decided to go and have been accepted to colleges throughout the state.
C: How can people find out more information about Operation Focus?
SC: Operation Focus is run out of the
Community Relations Board. That’s the department I work for and the Executive Director is Blaine Griffin. Call 216-664-3620, which is my direct line, or call the Community Relations Board main number, which is 216-664-3290 for information.
C: Thank you for your time today, Sharyna, and for participating in this youth podcast for MyCom.
SC: You’re welcome and thank you.