Bethea Helps HSC ​“Stomp the Violence”

Doug Bethea called out New Haven’s gun-toting gang members as a bunch of ​“punks” gone overboard with trying to be cool.

Then he challenged a room full of high school students to join him in the quest to make the streets of New Haven’s neighborhoods less deadly. Some of them agreed to start doing that by launching a peer mentoring effort.

Bethea, a longtime community activist and street outreach worker, was the featured speaker Wednesday at a High School in the Community ​“Stomp the Violence” rally, a student organized response to the wave of gun violence that has plagued the black community this winter.

Addressing an audience of students and teachers who packed into the cafeteria, Bethea expressed his anger and frustration with many of New Haven’s young people who act like shooting each other is nothing more than a game of ​“Cowboys and Indians.”

“I’m gonna give it to you real,” Bethea said. ​“I think anybody who’s got to carry a gun to protect themselves who’s not law enforcement is a punk.”

Bethea told the story of his 20-year-old son Robert Scott Bennett’s robbery and murder on Ashmun Street in November of 2006. His son, who lived in West Haven at the time, had stopped by the Dixwell neighborhood to pick up birthday presents from Bethea and his aunt. Bethea had urged Bennett to visit his aunt and leave town quickly before any trouble could start, since Bennett was no longer friends with the Dixwell kids.

But Bennett never made it to his aunt’s house. Bethea found his son ​“face down on the cold cement,” shot in the back while crossing the street.

Bethea uses this tale to urge local teens to avoid hanging out in gangs or in other dangerous situations. While kids in gangs might appear cool, dressed in the same color T‑Shirts as they roam the streets, Bethea assured the crowd that those kids ​“can’t even spell the names of the colors they’re wearing”

“Keep what I’m saying in the back of your minds,” he urged the crowd. ​“Nothing lasts forever. When you grow up, is your police record gonna stop you from being successful?”

As a kid in New Haven, he avoided the drug dealers who loitered outside his home, choosing to spend his high school days on HIllhouse’s basketball courts and at the Dixwell Q House’s after-school events.

His hard work paid off. After Hillhouse, he received an athletic scholarship to study at Husson University in Bangor, Maine. He played basketball in Portugal upon graduating (and got to meet Michael Jordan).

Later, Bethea returned to New Haven to found The National Drill Squad and Drum Corps and work as a community activist. Since his son’s death, he has stepped up his role as inspirational speaker to do his part to help end the violence.

And he spends his days as a street outreach worker — part of a crew who work with teens and young men causing violence.

HSC teacher Sara Thomas said a group of students in her month-long service learning seminar organized Wednesday’s event as their culminating project. The eight student organizers dressed in T‑Shirts declaring ​“Stomp the Violence,” emblazoned with the image of a crossed out footprint. They handed out programs with photos of victims, like Justus Suggs who was killed in 2006 at age 13. They urged fellow students to fill a ​“memory box” with the names of loved ones who have been affected by violence.

Students organizers Jamie Tyson and Leshaye Morgan, seniors at HSC, called the event a success. While HSC has not lost any students to this wave of violence, Tyson said that students there still ​“see what goes on and are affected by the violence in New Haven.” Tyson herself sported two pins commemorating young people who had been killed; she said they were her ​“cousins.”

Morgan and the other student organizers are hoping to keep the energy surrounding the rally alive by forming the peer-mentoring group in their school. Such a group would be a safe place for students to advise one another on a variety of topics, from homework problems to dealing with neighborhood violence.

The idea is to offer an alternative to adult guidance counselors.