‘All of us are living with trauma’ – nj.com – NJ.com

The thud of basketballs on an indoor court fills the air as kids play. Denim Hornes is among them.

The basketball court in this church-owned multipurpose center in Bridgeton is a refuge for Denim and other children growing up in a city where gunfire is common and kids sometimes get caught in the crossfire.

Under program organizer John Fuqua’s watchful eye, kids are smiling, they’re getting into the game and leaving the cares of the outside world behind for a few hours.

Denim used to be outside all the time. A close brush with danger in February changed that when the 14-year-old was playing in a city home with an 11-year-old relative and ran outside to investigate a commotion.

A dispute that apparently began nearby ended in gunfire. The younger boy was shot in both legs by stray bullets.

The experience left Denim traumatized, his dad says.

Others participating in the basketball program, including coaches, says they have had similar experiences.

Many here say they knew a victim — or were there themselves — when a mass shooting at a birthday party attended by hundreds just outside of Bridgeton in Fairfield Township in May 2021 left three dead and 11 wounded.

“I’m a 45-year-old man and I know 47 people that were murdered in Cumberland County — not that I’ve heard of, or people that I talked to. People that I knew,” Fuqua says. “All of us are living with trauma. The fear of the phone ringing at a certain time of night … who is it gonna be this time.”

Gun violence has killed several Cumberland County children in recent years. A 15-year-old was shot to death in May, allegedly during a drug deal in Vineland. A 10-year-old was killed last summer as she celebrated July 4 in front of her Vineland home. A 9-year-old Bridgeton girl died after she was struck by a stray bullet as she slept in her bed in 2018.

Cumberland County is a place that tends to find itself at the top of the wrong lists when it comes to child health, safety and education — a place where the odds are stacked against many kids from the beginning. But Fuqua and other adults — many of whom said they have grown up within the same cycle of gun violence and trauma — are trying to change the narrative for kids.

Their efforts, coupled with various initiatives from the Cumberland County Prosecutor’s Office to keep kids out of jail and in school, are helping address what families and community leaders say has become a generational problem.

Denim is one of those kids. His father, Dwayne Watford, served 12 years for aggravated manslaughter and says he wants something better for his son, so he got him involved in Fuqua’s program, the nonprofit Life Worth Living, which helps kids see a future beyond the the fear and heartache that’s touched many of their lives.

“Denim has overcome a lot,” his father says. “I try to tell my son, be a leader. If you’re with a group of guys and they decide to do some mischief, don’t do that. Little crimes turn into big crimes. Minutes can change your life … because it happened to me.”

Reimagining a prosecutor’s role

Most think of a prosecutor’s office simply as an agency investigating and prosecuting crime.

But that’s not how Cumberland County Prosecutor Jennifer Webb-McRae sees it. For more than a decade, she has championed programs for kids as part of her office’s attempt to prevent crime by reaching children before they end up in the criminal justice system.

It’s not easy being a kid in Cumberland County and statistics from the annual Kids Count report, the Census and poverty surveys tell part of the story.

• The median income for families with kids is $50,460, less than half the state median.
• About 17% of children live below the poverty threshold.
• More than 12% of residents experience food insecurity, the second-highest rate in the state.
• Substantiated claims of child abuse and neglect exceed the state average.

“When we ignore the issues that become pervasive in criminal justice, like trauma, like mental health, like substance abuse happening in families, then eventually, when people deteriorate, we see the manifestations of not treating these issues on the front-end systems in the criminal justice system,” Webb-McRae says. “It’s much more expensive to incarcerate people, to deal with the aftermath of violence and crime, than if we place some of our efforts and initiatives on the front-end systems that can really help people live their best lives.”

Those efforts include diverting kids from that system when possible, steering them away from gangs, providing support for children experiencing trauma and training police and educators to recognize signs that young people are struggling.

The work began in 2009 with a juvenile delinquency prevention effort called the Cumberland County Positive Youth Development Coalition, funded by the state Attorney General’s Office.

This program brought together multiple entities — law enforcement, schools, religious groups and youth-based organizations — and the results were encouraging.

More than 900 juveniles were arrested in 2012 in Cumberland County and that figure steadily dropped to 247 in 2020, a decrease of 73.7%, according to Tracy Swan, public safety reform strategist with the Cumberland County Prosecutor’s Office.

Nationally, juvenile arrests decreased 47% from 2012 to 2019, while the drop for those same years in Cumberland County was 56.5%, Swan adds.

“That really was about changing policies within law enforcement of what are we going to focus on, what second chances are we going to give kids,” Swan says.

Those second chances include station house adjustments, in which police meet with juvenile offenders accused of low-level crimes, their families and victims to resolve cases and agree to community service or restitution rather than prosecution. Between 2012 and 2020, a total of 702 station house adjustments were conducted for juveniles in the county.

Of kids who participated between 2011 and 2018, only 20% had any additional interaction with police, Swan says. By comparison, she said, the recidivism rate for juveniles who are processed through the court system is about 33%.

The prosecutor’s office has also used grants to help at-risk kids and families with life-skills training, recreational activities, mentorship and mental health services.

In the first two years of a project targeting gangs, guns and youth violence, gun violence dropped significantly, Swan says, though the pandemic has slowed progress.

Keeping kids out of gangs has been a big challenge, officials say.

Cumberland County has suffered a loss of major employers over the last several decades. Those economic drivers provided jobs and helped bolster families, Swan notes. The loss impacted kids and some of them found “family” in the wrong places, she adds.

“If kids don’t feel connected to their school or they don’t feel connected to family or one adult in their life that’s a positive influence, then they can be attracted to negative influences like gangs,” she says.

If lack of a strong male figure in the child’s home is a risk factor, then a program that pairs that child with a mentor, for example, could make a lifelong difference, Webb-McRae adds.

Mentoring the next generation

Back at the indoor basketball court in Bridgeton, Denim Hornes takes a break from the game to talk about how his parents got him involved with Life Worth Living, Fuqua’s nonprofit.

“I used to get in trouble a lot,” he says. “I was being a follower, not a leader and then my dad, he dragged me out of that. He had a talk with me. My mom had a talk with me.”

Their message was straightforward.

“Keep outta trouble, get a good education so you can become successful in life.”

Denim says he loves basketball and wants to attend college at a Division I school. He dreams of an NBA career and wants to start his own business one day. But, he has a pretty dim view of his hometown.

“It’s like hell on earth. A lot of bad stuff … shooting, crimes, kidnapping, drugs,” he says.

The family knows hardship. Growing up in Bridgeton, Watford was surrounded by a loving family, the 48-year-old recalls, but problems between his mother and her boyfriend, someone he regarded as a father figure, hurt the family.

“I think that was my first issue with trust,” says Watford, whose own father wasn’t around when he was young. “After that, I never looked to a father figure or nothing. Whatever I learned in the streets, that’s what I learned.”

He got into a lot of trouble as a juvenile, but it was petty stuff, he says, like throwing rocks at cars. But at 21 that changed when Watford shot and killed a man he says previously threatened him with a gun.

When he was released from prison, he worked to turn his life around. He noticed the rise of gang activity in town and served as a mentor to other young people. That work has included coaching basketball in Fuqua’s program and speaking with kids he encounters around town.

His biggest priority is Denim, who is still dealing with the emotional aftermath of the February shooting. And it wasn’t his first encounter with gun violence. Denim’s cousin, Vincent M. Hornes, was 22 when he was shot to death in 2017.

“That was his idol,” Watford says. “Little Vince always made sure he came and talked to Denim. When Little Vince got killed, that’s when I seen a change in my son. He couldn’t believe it.”

Denim says he worries more about something happening to his parents than anything happening to him.

“If my parents die or my parents get hurt, I’m gonna be hurt more than what I am for myself,” he says.

Back on the basketball court, Fuqua points out two coaches who have turned their lives around and want to help kids.

Nate Cotto grew up in Vineland, got in trouble at an early age and spent nearly two decades in prison for armed robbery.

It was during that time behind bars that Cotto, now 47, says he resolved to change. That journey led him to work with Fuqua as Cotto develops his own program, called Comeback Kids, in Vineland.

“After doing some soul searching while I was in prison, I figured being as I had a hand in tearing down my community, I wanted to use those same hands to build the community up,” Cotto says.

He attributes a lot of his early problems to unresolved trauma and wants to connect kids and their families with professional services to address their own issues.

Working with Cotto is fellow coach Kenyon Harris, a lifelong Bridgeton resident. They met in the county juvenile detention center as kids.

“When I was younger, I had anger problems and trauma that I couldn’t identify when I was a kid,” Harris says. That anger led him to trouble with the law.

A key turning point in the 46-year-old’s life came in 2012, when his younger brother, Braheem Harris, was shot and killed.

“When my little brother died, I didn’t make the decision then to help my community. I went in the dark. I was hurt,” Harris says. “When I was ready, that’s when I called (Fuqua). That was one of my better decisions I ever made in my life. I never knew how much I was going to enjoy interacting with these kids.”

Harris was one of those affected by the mass shooting at the party in Fairfield last year. One of his younger brothers was shot in the leg, and a close family friend was killed.

“My idea is to make sure that I get to these kids and have these conversations with them about gangs, so they don’t make the same mistakes that I made,” he says.

Understanding young minds

Both Cotto and Harris talk about unresolved trauma from their childhood and how that affected their lives.

Understanding youth trauma is part of the prosecutor’s mission.

“The brain of an adolescent is different than the brain of an adult,” Swan says. “It’s not fully formed yet. They don’t think about long-term consequences. They don’t weigh the positives and negatives of a situation. They just don’t have that emotional maturity to kind of put the brakes on risky behavior.”

Police officers and teachers need to understand how kids’ brains work and how trauma can influence their behavior, Swan says. A child who is combative with authority figures and refuses to follow directions may be reacting to something that isn’t immediately obvious.

“If they experience trauma regularly, then they’re always on high alert,” Swan says. “They’re probably not thinking rationally because they are under this physiological state of constant trauma.

“And poverty is an indicator of trauma. A lot of kids in Cumberland County are in severe poverty. You’re constantly in this state of survival.”

All of the prosecutor’s initiatives build upon one another, Swan explains. As they have developed programs, they have learned more about local needs. For example, they heard from educators about how trauma experienced by children led to discipline problems.

“They were saying there just is not enough juvenile-focused counseling services, psychologists, psychiatric services,” Swan says. “They don’t have enough at the schools and there’s just not enough in the county.”

This led to the creation of the Cumberland County Youth Trauma Intervention Protocol (Youth TIP), a version of the state Attorney General’s Handle With Care initiative, which provides a link between police and educators when a juvenile experiences a traumatic event.

Police contact a child’s school if, for example, the youth is a victim or witness to a violent incident, a family member is arrested or there is a death in the home.

“The whole point of it is, if the kid comes to school disruptive, traumatic, crying, disengaged, whatever it may be, that there’s less punitive measures being put forth to that youth because the school is on alert that something happened with this kid,” Swan says.

Kids Count data indicates that 15 percent of Cumberland County residents aged 16-19 are not in school and not working. That’s the highest percentage in the state, with Essex County, which is home to Newark, in second place at 9 percent.

“Being in school can be a protective factor if they are attached and connected at school,” Swan says. “Being out of school is not necessarily good for kids.”

Since the program launched in October 2020, police have issued more than 780 Youth TIPs to schools in the county.

Now a trauma prevention coordinator in the prosecutor’s office is following up with school officials to find out what they are doing with the information gathered and learn what kinds of additional support districts need.

Some don’t understand why the prosecutor is taking on this mission.

“I’ve had people say, why is the prosecutor trying to be a social worker. I’m not really trying to be a social worker,” Webb-McRae says. “I’m saying, if we keep doing the same thing we’ve been doing for the last 50 years, we’re not going to get different results.”

She spoke about the “school-to-prison pipeline” in the U.S. that disproportionately affects minority kids.

“We know that kids of color throughout the nation are more likely to be expelled, disciplined, thrown out of school. We know there’s a connection between expulsion, low education and the likelihood that you’ll be incarcerated later,” Webb-McRae says. “So why wouldn’t a prosecutor or law enforcement be involved in that conversation?”

Credible messengers

Fuqua says he is alarmed by some of the choices kids are making. He describes a case from last December in which a 16-year-old he had been working with was shot and seriously wounded in the middle of the afternoon by another teen a block from the police station in Vineland.

“What does that tell you? That tells me these young people have cojones the size of volleyballs,” he says. “We have a victim currently recovering from gunshot wounds. We have a young man incarcerated for the shooting. So we’ve got two families on different sides of the incident. Nobody wins.”

Last fall, Webb-McRae announced a year-long study focused on juvenile crime. The collaboration between local police, the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago, Rutgers and Clarus Research is examining how to reduce juvenile crime while improving how police and communities interact.

This effort includes teaching cops about child development and how an encounter with a juvenile could be different from dealing with an adult, says Bruce Taylor, senior fellow with NORC.

The goal for officers, when possible, should be to steer kids away from the criminal justice system and toward community-based solutions, he says, by building a rapport with them, earning their trust and understanding the difficulties they face.

“Model the respect you expect in return,” Taylor says. “Flexing authority won’t get us where we want to be.”

Reaching kids isn’t just about the quality of the message and how it’s delivered, though. It also requires the right messenger.

In the last year, grant funds fueled creation of the county’s first Credible Messenger program. These community emissaries are locals who may have served prison time and been involved in gangs but have since turned their lives around.

“They’re credible in that they can go and talk to somebody who is in the life and is currently in a gang,” Swan says.

The initiative launched in Bridgeton in partnership with Fuqua’s Life Worth Living program and was quickly called into action in the aftermath of the Fairfield mass shooting last year.

Fuqua, whose daughter and nephew were among the party attendees, was one of those messengers on the scene that night, talking to families of victims, counseling survivors and providing information about available support services.

They also helped prevent further violence.

“We were around the clock interviewing people,” Fuqua recalls. “So many victims … so many fires you’ve got to put out. We were in homes talking to people about not retaliating, put your guns down, let law enforcement handle it.”

Fuqua gave up a teaching job in Jersey City and returned home to his native Bridgeton in 2007 to mentor his nephew, but the young man was shot to death the following year at age 18.

Fuqua turned this tragedy into a mission, and while his commitment is unwavering, his assessment of life in 2022 is stark.

“Nothing’s changed. In the last 15 years, it’s gotten worse, actually,” he says.

That’s where he hopes credible messengers can help.

While he is one of those messengers, Fuqua’s life took a different path.

“I’ve never been in jail. I’ve never killed anybody, I never sold drugs, but I’m credible because I’m in my community,” he says.

Growing up in a Bridgeton apartment complex at the height of the crack epidemic in the late 1980s and early ‘90s, Fuqua saw plenty of suffering.

Many of his family members and friends got caught up in drugs and violence, but, “I wanted to do something different.”

Race and opportunity

Through Life Worth Living, Fuqua has forged relationships with city and church leaders in Bridgeton to have access to basketball courts and baseball fields for kids.

“The idea is to create fun,” Fuqua says. “If you ain’t sitting around angry, that’s a good thing. Because idle time is the devil’s playground.”

Unlike other communities, Bridgeton doesn’t have a dedicated recreation center and Fuqua wants that to change so that kids aren’t constantly reminded of their limited choices when they look outside.

“The basketball court that I played on my whole life, now when you look through those woods when you stand on that basketball court, you see Kintock (halfway house) and you see South Woods (state prison),” he says.

Bridgeton Mayor Albert Kelly says he’s working with an organization on a plan for a rec center.

“My feeling has always been that the best crime prevention or violence prevention is activities,” Kelly says. “I want to do something that we can utilize continuously on behalf of the youth.”

Between lack of transportation — many families don’t have cars — and parents working odd hours, Bridgeton kids have few chances to get to spots out of town for recreation.

One of the programs at Life Worth Living is called “Beyond the Block.” They acquired a small bus to transport kids to activities out of the area.

“Because if we can show you something different, you might do something different,” Fuqua says.

He sees the generational challenges in his community and wants kids to pursue bigger dreams.

“I know for a fact there are places in America where kids are expected to graduate high school and go on to college or go on to the military and get a career,” he says. “We’re excited when our kids are staying out of trouble because that’s what’s been bred here. Our kids aren’t inheriting great things. They’re inheriting trauma.”

And you can’t ignore the fact that race plays a factor in the opportunities available to young people in Bridgeton, Fuqua says. Bridgeton’s population is 50% Hispanic and 34% Black, while Cumberland County overall is 31% Hispanic and 19% Black.

“Our young kids in the black and brown communities aren’t given the tools to make it,” he says.

Mayor Kelly, who is Black and grew up in Bridgeton, says race is a big reason why many families in his city are stuck in a socio-economic rut.

“There’s always been a bias against people of color,” he says. “I’m not saying everyone’s a racist by any stretch of the imagination, but there is a bias and many of our families of color do not have the resources available to them to be able to independently lift their families out of poverty.”

As work to address these issues continues, Watford hopes his son Denim, who recently turned 15, can prosper in school and on the basketball court, while staying out of trouble.

He tries to use his own experiences and the recent shootings to educate Denim.

“I used to be out on the streets, even after I did 12 years,” Watford admits. “It was hard.”

He has worked since then to build a better life for himself and his son, and tries to reassure Denim that the family will make it.

“I want him to live. I want him to see his dreams,” Watford says. “He worries a lot about me. I tell him, son, I love you and you’re one of the reasons why I’ve changed.”

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Matt Gray may be reached at mgray@njadvancemedia.com.