WASHINGTON HEIGHTS — When Charles Perry heard about the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Maurice Clay at CICS Loomis-Longwood, his first thought was, “Someone knows who did this.”
No arrests have been made in the January shooting, and the investigation is ongoing, according to the Police Department.
The shooting at CICS Loomis-Longwood was the first of a recent string of fatal shootings of teens outside schools. Between Jan. 23 and 31, four teenagers were shot and killed outside of their high schools: Clay, 18, on Jan. 23; Robert Boston, 16, and Monterio Williams, 17, on Jan. 26 in the Loop; and Daveon Gibson on Jan. 31 in Edgewater.
Perry and other South Side anti-violence organizers said the violence happening at schools is a continuation of conflicts happening in the community, and any solutions will require intensive community work and perhaps new strategies in schools, alongside traditional security measures.
The CICS community is working with the Police Department, and CPS and is implementing “enhanced security measures” at the school.
“Chicago students need a holistic approach and support for comprehensive solutions across our city and communities that tackles the root causes of violence and ensures the safety of all our children,” according to a statement from the school.
Perry has ideas about what can be done.
‘Moment Of Crisis’
Several decades ago, Perry was the person behind the gun, and he was arrested for shooting and wounding a student at a Far South Side high school. After a drug deal gone bad, he went to the school to “make a statement,” he said. He fired his gun in the air and the bullet hit a student, he said.
Perry pleaded guilty to aggravated battery and served five weeks in county jail and two and a half years probation. He was later sentenced to 25 years in federal prison on drug charges and served 18 years.
Now, Perry is the project manager for Endeleo Institute’s Community Changers program, which is aimed at preventing violence in Washington Heights.
Endeleo’s office is just 1 mile east of CICS Loomis-Longwood, a public charter school at 1309 W. 95th St. where Clay was shot and killed after police broke up a “disturbance” among students inside the school. Clay was escorted outside and released to his brother before he was killed.
After hearing the details of what happened to Clay, Perry said part of the problem lies in what is considered “de-escalation.” A situation is not “under control” when those involved have been separated but not counseled, he said.
“You’re not a fight ring man,” he said. “You don’t separate them, send them to their corners and then let the bell ring again, because they’re gonna tear [each other’s] heads off.”
Arne Duncan, a South Sider and former leader of CPS, thinks life coaches should be a part of CPS: someone on call who can help students in a moment of crisis to “make the transition away from violence, heal from trauma, not retaliate,” he said.
“In that moment of crisis, you got to have literally a lifeline, you got to have someone to call who can help you think,” he said.
This is part of what Duncan does through the Life Coach program at Chicago CRED, an anti-gun violence organization he founded in 2016.
Individuals serve as mentors and supporters, or life coaches, to young people who are most at risk of committing or becoming victims of gun violence.
On Feb. 1, Duncan was part of a group of violence intervention organizers who announced a plan to raise $400 million to reduce shootings and homicides in Chicago by 50 percent within five years.
“Violence flows from the neighborhoods into school and flows both ways from schools and neighborhoods, and you need people who are really attuned to the conflicts, to what’s happening, who can work with these young people,” he said.
That’s why many of the Chicago CRED life coaches are formerly incarcerated people: They have the lived experience of committing acts of violence and being victims themselves, and can reach young people they work with in ways others cannot.
But CPS policy prohibits the hiring of people who have been convicted of certain offenses.
So, Duncan and organizers like Perry continue to work in the communities outside of schools, because, as Duncan says, “Schools are part of the community.”
“I wish somehow they were immune,” he said. “But that’s not reality. If there’s a conflict in school that flows back out to the neighborhoods.”
In Perry’s experience — personal and as a community organizer — communities are deeply interwoven, and everyone is connected to each other. That’s the basis of his entire plan for the Community Changers program.
Perry works with about 20 people who have been the victims of violence or could potentially become perpetrators of violence. The program gives them a $1,000 monthly stipend, access to a counselor and other support services, and then endows them with tools and opportunities to go out in their own communities to offer volunteer services or simply talk with their neighbors about opportunities available to them.
“Let me be clear,” Perry said, emphasizing each syllable. “You can’t prevent violence.
“What you can do is educate folks on the harm that violence caused. And hope that they won’t partake in that when they are put in the situation where they would normally react violently.”
The Police Department has increased police presence at some schools, but Duncan said he “wouldn’t call it a security failure.”
“These are absences of relationships, these are absences of positive role models. It’s not a situational issue. I think that way oversimplifies it. This is a structural gap here. And we got to be honest about it and work with real urgency,” he said. “This is literally life and death.”
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