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Associated PressGANG MERCHANDISE—Salesclerk Jesse Cheek relaxes on the display case at the Northside Family Sports in Boston. The store was pressured by community leaders to stop selling baseball hats with gang-related insignia.Crime crusaders target gang hatsBOSTON (AP)—Crime fightersin this city's tougher neighborhoods, who have pledged to win their war in the 1990s, can claim a victory as the decade dawns.They beat back gang hats.When word went out Wednesday that Northside Family Sports had started selling baseball style caps inscribed with the names of two local gangs, community activists moved in swiftly.Within hours, the shop's owner promised to stop selling them.“If we let this store go then the one on the next block is going to start selling the same kind of stuff,” said Georgette Watson, a recent target of gang threats.“We've got to stop this kind of thing before it turns around everything we've been working for. added Watson, who has been under 24-hour police protection since a gang allegedly placed a $5,000 bountv on her last month.Watson, founder of the Drop A Dime anti drug tip hot line, was among a contingent of community leaders who went to Jack Malone’s sporting goods store to let him know what they thought of his new merchandise.Malone said he was unaware the hats, which were ordered at the re quest of customers, bore gang-related insignias and assured the activists no more special orders would be taken. The caps, selling for $12.99 each, were inscribed w ith the gang names, “Castlegate and “IVP Intervale.”“I'd rather nip this thing in the bud,” Malone said. “The last thing I w'ant to see is gangs being prom oted. ’ ’His decision was probably made easier by the appearance at his doorstep of the mayor, police com missioner, district police superin tendent and about a dozen community leaders from the Roxbury, Dorchester and Mattapan neigh borhoods.Mayor Raymond L Flynn, Police Commissioner FrancisRoaehe and Police Deputy Superintendent William Celester met with Watson and other community lead ers Wednesday at a doughnut shop adjacent to the sporting goods store.“It's a free country, but that doesn't mean you have to do this kind of thing in this community,” Celester said. “These leaders knowwhat to do.”The activists stressed they didn’t want to come on like vigilantes.“We didn’t come here to close anybody down,” said Joan Almeida of the Neighborhood Justice Network. “We came to talk.”Still, some merchants and residents said the activists had gone too far.“Are we going to stop selling gang members food to eat or clothes to wear?” asked one police officer who did not want to be identified. “It sounds like Hitler's Germany to me.”Yvonne Waith and her daughter, w ho work next door at a beauty parlor. said the activists’ efforts were misplaced.“What about the guns? Never mind the hats,” Waith said. “There are much more important battles than this.”The inner-city battle against gang- and drug-related crime has been fierce. Residents say they want to reclaim the turf lost to gun toting adolescents—not cater to them by producing “status” merchandise.Grass-roots organizer Ben Haith said the community reacted to the logo-inscribed caps “strongly and with outrage because they go against so much of what parents, kids and local merchants have been working for.“There are a lot of people in thecommunity that have businesses*and who feel the pains of the violence here,” he said.f1
Newspaper Details
Fairbanks Daily News Miner
Fairbanks, Alaska, US
Thu, Jan 04, 1990
Page 7
Full Page
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WI, USA 30 May 2022
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