Yaffee Hart sat quietly in the Brooklyn Homes playground on Monday, July 3rd — just a day after a mass shooting rocked the tight-knit community.
In order to let her 15-year-old daughter celebrate Brooklyn Day, Hart extended her daughter’s normal 11 o’clock curfew to one o’clock. But after midnight, the shooting started.
“That night she could not sleep,” said Hart, with a far-away expression on her face. “She was having haunted dreams like flashbacks and she could not sleep.”
Police have made one arrest in connection to the shooting that killed two people — 18-year-old Aaliyah Gonzalez and 20-year-old Kylis Fegbemi — and injured 28 others. As of Monday, three people are still hospitalized from their injuries and are in stable condition, police reported. City agencies and nonprofits responded by descending on the scene with resources, all with the hopes of helping the grieving residents heal. That response will last 45-days from the July 2nd shooting — the biggest in Baltimore’s modern history.
City leaders told reporters last week that they immediately dispatched trauma counselors, who have set up a temporary space in the community rental office. Hart is grateful for that, and took her daughter right away.
“It definitely affected her. And then… me worrying about how she feels, stuff like that…”
Hart added, “We live in crime every day, but it's never that severe. That was a lot.”
But for other residents, there was a profound sense of anger.
“I’ve never seen this much public assistance,” said William Haines, a resident of Brooklyn Homes for 20 years. He kept a watchful eye on his godson who played on the front lawn and gestured to the recreation center across the street from the Haines home. At the time, Mayor Brandon Scott was hosting community leaders for a closed-door roundtable. Haines and other residents shared frustration that the rec center is constantly closed and said there were few local opportunities for kids.
“You know, in my opinion. If you give the people around here something to look forward to, I think the people in this neighborhood will put the guns down,” said Haines. “But they have nothing to look forward to.”
Politicians have described Brooklyn as “disenfranchised.” Federal housing data from HUD shows that in 2019, nine out of 10 households had incomes below 30% of the Baltimore median.
Over the 45 days, city agencies, particularly the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement (MONSE) will help with anything from food assistance, utility help, information on housing or even about moving for some of the residents who want to leave the community.
Haines said it shouldn’t have taken a mass shooting for the city to come to help.
“As long as they keep up the resources and just not after the 45 days forget about us again. We should be okay,” said Haines. “That's all we can do is hope and pray they don't forget about us after 45 days.”
As the week stretched on, more residents ventured outdoors. Members from the violence reduction group Safe Streets and Transformation Health, a Baltimore-based mental health group, grilled burgers in the sticky July heat.
A constant stream of teenagers run in and out of a big, orange RV. It’s the “Peacemobile,” a traveling city-run bus that has video games, a recording studio, even a shower and bathroom to clean up in. Inside, the walls are painted a relaxing blue and the air is scented with calming lavender.
“You can sit here, watch a movie. You can watch a training, a job training,” said Rick Fontaine-Leandry, a coordinated Neighborhood Stabilization response manager with MONSE. “We have laptops, free Wi-Fi so children can come on here and do their homework.”
More than half the shooting victims were teenagers. The Peacemobile offers them a place to be teens, but the bus staff are trained in counseling and can connect teens with other services.
Not just teens, but parents too, said Fontaine-Leandry.
“We use it like a fishing lure to get the children in there. Once the children come, the parents come,” said Fontaine-Leandry, with the kids occupied, staffers can turn towards the parents’ needs. “If you need counseling help, if you need therapy, mental health, you know, services, we have all that stuff on the bus.”
The Peacemobile is less than two-months old and while it spent almost everyday outside the Brooklyn Homes community center in the week after the shooting, that will change. Other neighborhoods need its services, said Fontaine-Leandry. A MONSE spokesperson confirmed that the Peacemobile would likely be in Brooklyn for an average of three-days a week as agency transitions out of “the immediate phase of this stabilization.”
The new interim director of the mayor’s public safety program, Stefanie Mavronis, said that the agency is working with community partners to figure out a long term response — one that goes beyond the 45 days.
“We want to make sure we’re not helicoptering in,” she said. “We know that there's a ton of people right now who want to support off of resources, offer contributions to the community. MONSE is going to play a role in coordinating that.”
