EAST FLATBUSH, Brooklyn (PIX11) – From New York Gov. Kathy Hochul to New York City Mayor Eric Adams, there have been pledges to stop gun violence in the five boroughs for the past year, but one group is tired of waiting for peace.
New York State Assemblywoman Monique Chandlers-Waterman is leading a new charge to end shootings. Chandlers-Waterman and other community leaders gathered Friday by the dozens on a corner in East Flatbush, where a deadly mass shooting erupted the weekend before.
“We need the guns to be put down,” shouted one of Chandlers-Waterman’s supporters. “We need our community to come together and say ‘enough is enough.’ I am sick and tired of standing up and doing press conferences for people that are losing their children.”
The NYPD said an unknown suspect shot four people. One of the victims, 39-year-old father Emmanuel Soray, was killed.
“He had beautiful children in high school and in middle school with hopes and dreams, whose dreams were shattered because their dad is no longer with them,” a local pastor said.
Dozens of community leaders and members have been finding the motivation to stop gun violence that’s been happening for as long as many can remember.
“Whenever this happens in any affluent community that already has resources, they get more resources on top of that. We are demanding more resources for our community,” Chandler-Waterman said passionately.
“It is beyond frustrating that people are dying, and nothing seems to be happening except the same old, same old, same old,” NYC Public Advocate Jumaane Williams said. “There were three shootings around schools just this week. The responses that I see now were the responses I saw 20 years ago, and I was told that was supposed to solve the shootings. So why hasn’t anything changed?”
The main solution the leaders are pushing for is more resources to stop kids, teens, and adults from turning to guns — the type of resources to create programs to lift people out of trouble and poverty.
“This is crazy. This has to end,” Chandler-Waterman said.
