Pubdate: Sun, 12 Nov 2006
Source: Newsday (NY)
Copyright: 2006 Newsday Inc.
Contact:  http://www.newsday.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/308
Author: John Moreno Gonzales, Staff Writer

SINS OF THE FATHERS

Since the mid-1990s, Long Island's gang membership has soared. 
Activists like Hykiem Coney, a youth counselor gunned down three 
weeks ago outside a Uniondale nightspot, have worked to reduce those numbers.

For those trying to leave gangs, the odds can be stacked against 
them. Gangs have an often irresistible pull -- ex-members say they 
become family.

What's more, the violence associated with gangs moves from one 
generation to the next. Children of incarcerated parents are at least 
four times as likely to commit crimes as those whose parents are not 
in prison. Kevin Robinson, Victor Galarza and Sirvorn Edwards, all 
fathers and all ex-gang members, are hoping to beat the odds by 
participating in an unusual Nassau County program, the Community 
Service Corps, which offers jobs and counseling.

"I owe my son."

Kevin Robinson is a bookish man with round eyeglasses that perch on 
puffy cheeks when he counsels a son imprisoned for murder.

Never mind that Robinson is an ex-gang member and the libraries of 
his wisdom were at Clinton, Elmira, Franklin, Oneida, Marcy, 
Gouverneur, Southport and Five Points, all New York prisons.

As he visited his son, Devon Carter, 21, in a North Carolina lockup 
where the young man is serving life without the possibility of 
parole, Robinson said he was finally shouldering his responsibilities 
as a father. The decade he spent away from his son while in prison 
slowly pushed him toward change, Robinson said. But learning that his 
boy may never again be free finally cornered him.

"That night was so much pain and hurting, the last person I thought 
about was myself," Robinson said of the January evening when he 
learned of Carter's conviction on charges of killing a suspected drug 
dealer outside Raleigh. "My biggest worry became his state of mind, 
his safety, his well-being," he said. "I owe my son, big time."

So at the Foothills Correctional Institution north of Charlotte, 
Robinson told his son that it is never too late to embrace learning, 
patience and faith.

With Robinson's mother, Jo Ann, 59, also weighing in, they offered 
Carter a flurry of life lessons and reading tips, everything from the 
pop fiction of Eric Jerome Dickey to the holy Bible. Carter said the 
latter was filled with empty promises.

"I've been praying, but I ain't been reading the Bible. They say 
something, and I think this not be applying to my life, and I put it 
down," he said.

Robinson was once on a path much like his son's.

Carter was born when Robinson was 17 and a member of the Main Street 
Crew in Freeport, a precursor to the more violent Bloods and Crips of today.

By age 21, Robinson had three disorderly conduct violations and a 
conviction for drug dealing, for which he did his first year in 
prison. Released in 1989, he was back the next year for weapons possession.

Alcohol, marijuana and cocaine were parts of his day, he said, 
selling and using. His relationship with Carter's mother frayed as 
they had two other children and she moved to the South.

Yearlong stints continued through the early '90s for drugs and 
weapons charges. Then parole violations caught up to Robinson and he 
was sentenced to 4 years for drug possession.

"People who I grew up with and had respect for, I sold drugs to," he 
said. "I had no sympathy ... I was really like an animal."

Robinson was released Sept. 14, 2005, and called the Community 
Service Corps, which put him up in a Roosevelt halfway house, the 
Dismas House, that offers drug counseling for tenants who need it. At 
first, his decision was purely practical, since he needed a place to 
live to meet the terms of his probation.

But a month into his stay, his life began to change when the program 
found him a job at a Carle Place store that sells light fixtures. 
While visiting the program offices to meet other requirements, 
Robinson grew close to Ashley Frederick, field supervisor for the program.
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