Doing Right in Toledo

Gang Researcher Tells Teens to Think of Mothers, Siblings

By Journal Staff
The Toledo Journal
May 10, 2006 – May 16, 2006

When he’s in front of an audience of teenagers, Steve Nawojczyk focuses less on them than on their moms, their grandmas and their little brothers and sisters.

Teens already think they’re “invincible,” he explained his tactics.

Using words and video – the medium teens are most attuned to – Mr. Nawojczyk (pronounced nuh VOY check) last week talked about gangs and violence to students at four TPS junior high schools and three teen centers.

If not for themselves, he told them, they should stay out of gangs to save their mothers from having to grieve over their graves or to prevent little brothers and sisters from following in their footsteps toward a senseless and violent end.

“You think about what you’re doing and you understand that they’re going to model after what you do,” Mr. Nawojczyk said after he asked students at Jones Junior High to raise their hands if they have younger siblings.

Brought to Toledo by city Youth Commission Co-director Dwayne Morehead, Mr. Nawojczyk spoke from the experience of a 27-year county coroner in Arkansas and, since 1994, as a researcher and lecturer on juvenile violence and gangs.

One career led to the other, he told the Jones students. In 1983, Little Rock, Ark., recorded 38 homicides and his job was to determine causes of death. In 1993, the city had 111 murders – the highest rate in the nation – and “almost all of the increase was by young people killing other young people.”

Mr. Nawojczyk also addressed teens at Leverette, Robinson and East Toledo junior high schools, as well as the Boys & Girls Club, the Grace Community Center and at Chance for Change during his two-day stay.

Mr. Morehead said Toledo is fortunate not to have experienced gang-related violence on the level of Little Rock, but that he doesn’t want that possibility to come about. Mr. Nawojczyk, who speaks to youth nationwide, was the perfect person to address Toledo’s young people, he said.

“We don’t have the gang problem of Little Rock, Arkansas,” Mr. Morehead said. “One of the things we want to do here is address the wannabes. In order for you not to get to that level is to bring somebody in that has experienced that level.”

Mr. Nawojczyk did that in graphic terms, talking about a toddler killed by a stray bullet, his little skull blown apart, in gang gunfire and showing video clips, including one of a young man hit by 10 bullets who passed into a coma, and died days later, while he was being interviewed in the hospital about gang life.

Mr. Nawojczyk also showed a clip of four African American mothers at the front of an Arkansas church and holding lighted candles, weeping and telling the congregation about the hurt they’ll always feel from having lost their children to violence. One young mother’s face, streaming with tears, filled the screen for a few seconds.

“I think the message got through to them,” Mr. Nawojczyk said after his presentation at Jones Junior High. “What I try to do is make them think about somebody besides themselves, because 14- and 15-year-olds, they think they’re invincible already. And that’s why I concentrate so hard on the brothers and sisters and mothers.”

“And that really seems to make an impact.”

Jose Luna, a special assignment teacher at junior high schools, observed the program at Leverette and at Jones. He said Mr. Nawojczyk was able to connect with the youth in a way few adults are able to.

“They live in the neighborhoods every day and they understand that he knows what he’s talking about,” Mr. Luna said. “He isn’t some governmental expert giving statistics or some little pansy program. It is the truth, honesty, straightforward.”

Mr. Nawojczyk did give the students a few numbers, such as six fatal shooting victims personally known by a 15-year-old girl in Little Rock. But he focused on the stories of gang members and their families, and the tragic aftermath of violence.

“I’m not just some typical old white guy standing up here talking statistics,” he said. “They hear statistics all the time. They don’t need to hear statistics.”

The film clips included footage of a crossfire Mr. Nawojczyk and his cameraman found themselves in when he attempted to mediate a dispute between rival gangs. Still photos projected on the Jones auditorium screen included a boy’s shoulder partially blown away by a bullet and a young man, paralyzed by gang gunfire, flashing a gang sign from his wheelchair.

“Some people learn their lesson. Some people don’t,” Mr. Nawojczyk said.

Several photos were “before” and “after” shots of gang members now incarcerated. He said he has interviewed many of them in hospitals and in jails, and said each one talked about being abandoned by gang members who had professed to be their “family.”

“They’ll never come to visit you, they’ll never write you,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what they tell you on the street. You’re just a number. When you go to the penitentiary or something happens to you, I guarantee you that you will never hear from them again.”

A large number of the Jones teenagers raised their hands when Mr. Nawojczyk asked how many of them had a gun in their homes, how many have heard gunshots in their neighborhoods, how many had relatives in prison, and how many knew of people who have been “jumped in” to a gang.

“You are a big part of the solution in here because you can turn things around,” he said.

At the same time, he said he realizes that many of the teens have difficult lives, that they live in homes without much food or words of encouragement and may even be physically, mentally or sexually abused. He advised them to seek out an adult for help.

“You have to talk about those things with somebody that you can trust,” he said. “You have to open up because there are ways that you can be helped if you want to help yourself.”

After 27 years as a coroner, Mr. Nawojczyk has hundreds of murder scene photographs. The images he showed at the junior highs weren’t horrifying, but still made a powerful impression on the teens – such as a photo of a leg of a young shooting victim, a tag hanging from his toe in the county morgue.

“For this age group, I’m not quite as graphic,” he said afterward. When he makes presentations to young people in lockups, he said, “I break out the real hard-core stuff, the brains and all that sort of stuff.”

He began and ended his program at Jones by showing the words “Do Right” on the screen, a message that the teens might have laughed off if given a speaker without Mr. Nawojczyk’s ability to connect.

“If you don’t leave here today with anything but these two words, that’s fine with me,” he said. “Because everybody in this room knows the difference between right and wrong. And if you do right in your life…you’ll be surprised how much right comes back to you.”

He concluded the presentation by reminding the teens that joining a gang will impact their entire families. Enemy gang members aren’t going to call ahead and advise you to make sure your little sister is safely out of the way before spraying your house with bullets in a drive-by, he said.

“So if you gang-bang or you hang out with the bangers and you think that’s cool, you have…not only put yourself into harm’s way, you have dragged your entire family into harm’s way with you,” Mr. Nawojczyk said. “Being cool is temporary. Being dead is permanent. It’s your choice. You have to make the choice.”