When the Rev. Eugene Rivers, who left the mean streets of his poor Philadelphia neighborhood to go to Harvard, returned to the streets in Boston’s rough Dorchester neighborhood as a minister, he received an important lesson from a tough local drug dealer.
As Rivers tells the story, Selvin Brown, the drug dealer, took the reverend on a tour of the poor black neighborhood’s crack houses and drug hustlers. Rivers, himself a former gang banger in Philadelphia, was impressed by the sophistication of this lucrative industry. He asked how the church ever lost such bright young minds as Brown’s and why it continues to lose so many promising children to the streets.
Brown’s reply, which Rivers repeats almost everywhere he goes, was, “I’m there when Johnny goes out for a loaf of bread for Mama. I’m there, you’re not. When he needs a new pair of gym shoes, I’m there, you’re not. When he simply needs somebody to talk to, to unload what’s on his mind, I’m there and you’re not. I win, you lose.”
Yes, Rev. Rivers decided, it’s all about being there. What happened next resulted in the most dramatic drop in juvenile crime, particularly juvenile homicide, that America has seen in modern times. It also shows how some really obvious remedies to serious problems can be uncovered by good old-fashioned common sense.
Rivers, a Pentecostal, organized other local ministers to get out of their churches and get back to the streets. They got together with the mayor, probation officers and Boston police commanders.
They made a deal 10 years ago. As Rivers put it, they “de-racialized” crime fighting in Boston. Instead of cops sweeping black youths off the streets en masse and black leaders battling the police, the two sides found ways to cooperate.
Contrary to the classic Boys’ Town slogan, Rivers believes there are some boys too “bad” to be helped and who therefore belong in jail. But he believes most can be saved, if only they have someone to give them help and guidance. So the ministers made a deal. They would cooperate with the police to find juveniles suspected of serious crimes if the police would help the ministers save those whose crimes were not yet serious.
More Top Picks Best Electric Pour Over Coffee Maker
“We said to the police, `We’ll make a deal,’ ” Rivers recalled. “Instead of you sweeping up 10 youths off the street, we’ll give you one, but let us keep nine.”
Probation officers also got out from behind their desks and returned to the streets where their job descriptions said they were supposed to be. They enforced curfews, not by throwing kids into custody but by taking them home, where the officers discovered that, for many of these kids, home life was worse than the streets.
The results of all this? There have been only two juvenile homicides in Boston in the last three years. And Rivers is one of the most famous preachers in America. He was the cover feature of the June 1 Newsweek, and last week Rev. Rivers came to the White House to help President Clinton announce $2.2 million in grants to faith-based anti-crime programs in 16 cities.
Obviously the Boston approach has become a national model and for good reason. One single statistic, that Boston has dropped to only one juvenile homicide per year from more than 100 per year, stops people in their tracks nationwide and makes them want to try something like it in their own towns.
But on closer examination, the Boston approach offers something for everyone to like and to dislike. Conservatives have tried to make a poster child of Rivers because he urges residents to help police arrest dangerous criminals. But it takes more than a get-tough approach to reduce crime. It also takes money and manpower to tackle the social roots of criminal behavior.
On the other side of the political spectrum, despite Clinton’s support, many liberals still chafe at the notion of public money being used to cooperate with churches. Yet the church also has been too long overlooked as a valuable civic institution that fills the gap between government and the private business sector.
In most urban ghettos, the church is the only institution left to counter the effects of liquor stores, drug dealers and street hustlers.
Among black Americans, the church has been a center of social and political activism and an incubator for black culture for as long as there have been black people in America. Earlier generations of church leaders organized the civil rights movement. Perhaps Rev. Rivers and other ministers like him signal the beginning of a new chapter in black liberation.
Working alone, there’s not much the police, government, business, the media or the churches can do to save our young people. But, as Rivers has said, working together, there’s no limit to what we can do.
First, we’ve got to be there for them.