Gangs - NY Times - Levittown graduation under lockdown

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Published in the New York Times, Saturday, June 10, 2006

June 10, 2006

After Gang Threat, It's Cap, Gown and Lockdown

By DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI

LEVITTOWN, Pa., June 9 — For the 415 seniors at Harry S. Truman High School, graduation day offered one final lesson — unplanned and most unwelcome — about gangs, violence and intimidation.

Members of the Bloods street gang reportedly threatened to kill the school's class president, who was a star athlete and honor student. Besides that, given the outbreak of gang-related shootings here in recent months, the threat transformed the commencement ceremony in this Philadelphia suburb into an odd pageant of anxiety and security.

The 4,500 friends, relatives and spectators who came to the ceremony had to pass through metal detectors before they could enter the stadium, which was decorated with banners, bunting and sprays of yellow carnations. Undercover police detectives milled through the crowd.

Yet when the ceremonies began Friday afternoon, the class of '06 was missing its president, Tyrone Lewis, whom the police had banned from the ceremony because they believed that he, and his family, were in danger from the Bloods. Mr. Lewis's sister had agreed to testify against gang members in a New Jersey murder trial, and Mr. Lewis was recently shot at by three men who the police said they believed belonged to the gang. Also absent from the ceremony was Ahman Fralin, 18, a senior who has been hospitalized, and paralyzed from the neck down since April, when he was shot in the spine as he sat beside Mr. Lewis.

Despite protests from Mr. Lewis's mother, he delivered his speech from a secret spot as the crowd watched on a large television screen.

After being welcomed with raucous applause by the crowd watching on the screen in the stadium, Mr. Lewis, 18, made only passing reference to the circumstances that made him an exile at his own graduation. He asked the crowd to pray for Mr. Fralin and suggested that the police "lockdown" surrounding the graduation ceremony should come as little surprise in an age when police dogs search school lockers for drugs and students have their knapsacks checked for guns each morning.

"We've had some crazy days, but we've also had inspiring days as well," he said.

Simple American rites of passage were not supposed to be this jarring in Levittown, a community that was designed in the early 1950's as an affordable refuge for returning World War II veterans eager to seek serenity in the suburbs.

But law enforcement experts say the episode is another sign of the spread of gangs throughout much of the Northeast in recent years as the Bloods, the Crips and the Latin Kings have expanded operations from poor neighborhoods in major cities to small towns and the suburbs, where they now threaten countless teenagers like Tyrone Lewis, whose status as a gifted student, an accomplished athlete and a popular member of the school community might once have sheltered him from the violence.

Even in those parts of the country where the movement of gangs to the suburbs has slowed, the organizations have become more mobile, allowing them to reach into small towns that once considered themselves immune to urban ills.

"In areas where the suburbs are close and similar to the cities, these gangs really prowl around a lot," said John P. Moore, director of the National Youth Gang Center. "The old image of territoriality is not what it used to be. They're mobile; they're going to move around to do their things. And they're going to run into other gangs, which is when the violence usually begins."

In Levittown, those gang incursions usually come from Trenton, about eight miles northeast of here. In recent years, the authorities have had to fend off sporadic forays by members of the 5-9 Brims faction of the Bloods, who have come to sell narcotics, particularly in Bristol Township, one of the four communities that make up Levittown. The police, and elected officials, assert that the community's gang problem is small and manageable, but parents say that the fear is inescapable.

"You hear about gangs occasionally and you worry about it all the time," said James Drum, who attended the commencement to watch his son, Brian, and son-in-law, Justin, graduate. "The thing you worry about most is the crossfire. Your kid's in the wrong place at the wrong time and its all over."

The police theorize that for Tyrone Lewis, the wrong place was his home. Mr. Lewis's sister Rachel is now in jail on second-degree murder charges after her arrest for allegedly driving the car from which members of the Bloods opened fire on a rival drug dealer last August and killing Anton Cofield, whom the police described as an uninvolved bystander. Ms. Lewis later agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in exchange for reduced charges, and testified against a member of the Trenton Bloods. The police say it was her testimony that led gang members to start a vendetta against her and her family.

Ms. Lewis's lawyer, Edward H. Wiley, declined to comment on the case.

School officials and the police say there is no evidence to suggest that Mr. Lewis had any involvement with any gangs. And he was such a star at the school that classmates voted him most likely to be famous. He set the county record for the most points ever scored by a high school basketball player and won a full scholarship to Niagara University in Niagara Falls, which has a Division 1 basketball program.

But after the shooting in April, the police began hearing rumors that the Bloods had set out to kill Mr. Lewis in retaliation for his sister's testimony. Then, last Friday, the Bristol Township police chief, James McAndrew, told school officials that they had heard credible reports that the Bloods were plotting to kill Mr. Lewis at his graduation ceremony.

"The police told us that there was some suggestion that the gang members wanted to make it a statement by doing it at a public event where he was the center of attention," said David Truelove, a lawyer for the school board.

Mr. Lewis's mother, Marlene, did not return repeated calls. But in an interview on the ABC television program "Good Morning America" on Thursday morning, she said that the gunfire that crippled Mr. Fralin was a simple case of road rage and argued that the death threats against her son were unfounded rumors.

Near Mr. Lewis's home on Friday, some friends and neighbors suggested that the entire episode had been motivated by jealousy, and chastised the police and local officials for overreacting.

"He found his way out of here, and there's some people just can't stand him having the spotlight," said Karen Butler, 15, a neighbor. "He's been walking around here every day, so if the gang wanted to kill him, he'd already be dead."

But Mr. Truelove said that the police and school officials were uncomfortable taking the chance that violence might mar the ceremony.

With the help of John Jordan, president of the Bucks County Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, they struck a deal that allowed Mr. Lewis to deliver his address by way of a satellite hookup.

School officials and students tried to prevent the gang threat from dampening the mood of the ceremony and in many respects succeeded. The graduates clowned around with each other as they marched in to "Pomp and Circumstance" and waved to friends and family in the bleachers as the choir sang "Seasons of Love" from the musical "Rent."

But it was hard to escape signs that this was a most unusual ceremony. A concession stand was closed, because the police did not want the lines of patrons to provide a target for would-be gunmen. Family members received a letter before the ceremony, asking them not to carry large amounts of change or wear metal buckles. When students began tossing a red beach ball during the valedictorian's speech, two security guards in sport coats moved in.

Marilyn Spires, whose cousin graduated, briefly considered skipping the cermony, but decided that the overwhelming show of force by law enforcement would probably deter any violence. After Mr. Lewis made his speech, and it was followed with nothing more raucous than cheering and whoops from the audience, she let out a long sigh of relief.

"All right," Ms. Spires, 19, said. "I would have hated to miss those graduation parties."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/10/nyregion/10graduate.html?pagewanted=print

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