Thursday, March 28, 2024

Akeem Browder: Kalief Browder’s Brother Talks Criminal Justice Reform, Closing Of Rikers [EUR Exclusive]

Kalief Browder 1

*With the announcement last month from New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio that he has begun a long process to close the notorious Rikers campus of prisons, EUR/Electronic Urban Report caught up with Akeem Browder, brother of Kalief Browder, to discuss what role his brother’s case has played in the decision.

At the age of 16, Kalief was arrested for allegedly stealing a backpack. He spent three years in Rikers Island awaiting trial with two of those years in solitary confinement. His case never went to trial and the chargers were ultimately dropped.

Two years after his release, Browder died by suicide. His case is cited by activists who call for the reform of the New York City criminal justice system, and it’s the subject of a six-part documentary series that aired this month on Spike TV called “TIME: The Kalief Browder Story.”

The series highlighted everything from the corrupt and abusive prison culture at Rikers to the biased nature of the criminal justice system. Browder’s mom knew her son’s imprisonment was the result of a flawed and unjust system. His dad thought otherwise. In one particular episode, Browder’s mother, Venida, recalled asking his father for assistance paying their son’s bail. But she said he refused to help because he believed his son was “bad” and that “if Kalief is in Rikers, something is wrong.”

Akeem has been a major advocate for both closing Rikers Island – he is the founder of www.shutdownrikers.com — and the “Raise The Age” initiative, a public awareness campaign that believes in the need for a comprehensive approach to raise the age of criminal responsibility in New York State.

Check out our Q&A with Akeem below.

OTHER NEWS YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED: Kalief Browder’s Sister Says His Tragic Story ‘Needed to be Told’ [EUR Exclusive]

Talk about the role your brother’s case has had in igniting political reform with regards to the justice system in New York.

AKEEM: Kalief made such a change on how we view the department of corrections, not just in New York but all throughout the United States people are having talks about it. We’re all moved by Kalief’s stand on making the system work, instead of what everyone usually does which is just falling in line and not speaking out against it, especially when you’re innocent. So I think the effect that he made is literally what’s going on now, everyone is speaking and we need to take it further from speaking to acting, cause that’s also what he did. He stood against what the norm is, which is to just take a plea and cop-out.

What’s your response to Mayor de Blasio’s announcement that, while it will take some time, Rikers will be shutting down for good.

AKEEM: Yeah, it sounds good, right? It sounds great. But we gotta remember that we’ve been getting lip service from Mayor de Blasio since his induction. So the activists that actually supported and marched and wrote to their state, local and federal electives, these people deserve a victory. By saying Kalief’s name was a victory, and used to say that’s why we’re going to shut down Rikers, that’s an actual victory that we can’t take away from the people. But let’s get down to it, ten years is way too long. We’ve been crying shut down Rikers for three years, and yet when it finally happens, the victory is tainted by saying “we’re going to shut down Rikers ten, or so, years from now.”

But it also comes with a price. $10.6 billion to shut down a jail that runs per year on a $1.5 billion budget. And that’s just operational costs. But what about the thought that by shutting down Rikers, he’s also stating that he wants to open up local jails in our communities. He has four jails that he wants to open up in our communities. I can only imagine the smiles on peoples faces while saying “we’re going to shut down Rikers” turn to frowns when he says “but we’re opening up four new jails in our local cities,” and it’s going to be smaller jails that’ll roughly hold 5000 people. But with the thought that we’re going to shut down Rikers, what are we doing? We’re going to transfer them to four different jails? Is that what our society wants? I don’t think so. And I definitely won’t let Kalief’s name be attached to something so villainous as shutting down Rikers and then opening up new jails in Kalief’s name. That’s not going to happen, because the walls of Rikers Island didn’t kill Kalief. Those officers that work there beat Kalief, they starved Kalief, they neglected Kalief, they abused him in ways that…. if you just transfer those officers to another jail then we just have the same situation but now even stronger because the Department of Corrections’ union is too powerful.

We’ve seen it operate under Norman Seabrook. They filed federal charged against him but he’s been the union president for decades and yet he’s single-handedly went up to senators gun drawn — he was a thug that went around expressing his power with a union behind him big enough to be a small military. So what we did was create a problem in New York City that seems untouchable. So when the people stand up and say shut down Rikers, that small mob — cause military is probably the wrong name cause then you demonize what we have as our protector in the United States. This is a mob of people. They’re not military trained and they’re definitely not trained to deal with the mentally ill. Yet we have people that’s high-priced babysitters that’s abusers. What do we do when we see videos of nannies beating on children? We are outraged, we want justice. Yet when they do it to our kids in the Department of Corrections, it’s unheard until something like ‘TIME: The Kalief Browder Story’ comes out.

Are you looking to create changes in New York only, or is this more than a local issue?

AKEEM: Absolutely. I work with Exodus Transitional Community, which is a non-profit organization that serves 1500 people a year that’s justice impacted. They’re not just in New York. In all the states that I’ve been going to we realize the same trend that’s going on: the people that’s been impacted by the justice system, they’re not thought of until society wakes up to a show like ‘TIME: The Kalief Browder Story.’ So what we’re trying to do is change law, and with that law we are saying New York is the only state in the United States that has no speedy trial. I don’t know if you know the effect of a speedy trial, but that’s your constitutional right to have a speedy trial to face your accuser and literally have a chance to get out as soon as possible after indictment. That’s what we’re trying to push in Albany right now, and that bares Kalief’s name, The Kalief Law.

It keeps getting turned down because our Republicans really don’t have the same view as us, as the Democrats in New York. But we’re also trying to push for raise the age, which is another law that we’re saying New York and North Carolina, which New York is supposed to be the most innovative city in the United States and it’s known all over the world. However, we still have an old system that charges 16-year-olds as adults. And I think that’s shameful when we’re also speaking on a thought that New York is one of the most progressive states. We’re just not. We just have the impression of being something great. We can get there, with the people that’s been advocates for what we’re doing in Kalief’s name. We have the people behind us. We petition, we go up to Albany and have these talks. It’s just a matter of when it will happen. We need action.

How does shutdownrikers.net, and the “Raise The Age” initiative, tie into your efforts to bring about change?

AKEEM: ShutDownRikers started three months after Kalief passed and that’s a grassroots organization that’s run under Exodus Transitional Community. They’ve been real supportive in making sure they help us keep Kalief’s name alive. So in Kalief ‘s name I stared shutdownrikers, which is under The Kalief Browder Foundation. Raise The Age is just another initiative, and we realized that we can’t attack it just by marching. Marching serves a purpose. I brought Black Lives Matter to New York City in the abolition phase, and by bringing it to the streets, what we’re saying is, we need the people involved. We need the people of New York, as you’re going to work, to hear what we have to say. With Raise The Age, it takes a different initiative. Yeah, we do marches but we realize we need to attack in many different ways. We can’t just only march in the streets and keep getting arrested. We’re taking a stand in Kalief’s name. We won’t let Kalief die in vain. He was a prophet that brought eyes to this field. If we just let it die, or if we didn’t have reporters like you, or Spike TV doing a show of it, it would just go on to another story and a young man would just be dead in vain.

Do you mind sharing with our readers your last conversation with Kalief?

AKEEM: The day before Kalief hung himself, he was having a hard time. When they released him the family had to pick up the pieces. We became the therapists. We didn’t have the same help that someone who actually leaves Rikers, or the Department of Corrections, where they might be sent to places like Osborne, or Fortune Society or Exodus. He is released as a free man, no sentence, no charge, and so he had a lot of things that we had to fight and combat with, which is hard for a family. When someone’s serving time, the family is serving time with him. So when he came home it was…. if you weren’t on Rikers you would never know, or if you weren’t in jail period, but Rikers specifically, you would never know the tortures, the nightmares that you experience when you’re home.

Unfortunately I was actually a detainee on Rikers and I was there at 14 going on 15. The tortures that Kalief shared, luckily I’m an adult and I moved passed it so I was able to help him try and focus on school. He wanted a job so he could help mom cause he felt bad for her. He thought he was a man but his mind was stuck on that 16-year-old mindset that was kidnapped. So when he came home, even though he looked like a man and he’s the age of a young man, he was still stuck in the mindset of helping mommy put food on the table and stuff like that, and I was like, “No Kalief, don’t worry about that. You need to focus on school,” cause that’s all I could think of to help him.

In “TIME: The Kalief Browder Story” we learn about the vines growing outside the window where Kalief hung himself. Just as your late mother believed, I too was left feeling that the spirit of your brother lives on in those vines, which appeared after his death. Your family moved out last year because your father sold the home, are the vines still growing?

AKEEM: The last time I was in my mom’s old house, where all of us was raised… it’s really a tough thing cause none of the family members consider him our father. We’re adopted. My mother made this family what it is, we’re all adopted kids brought together. We didn’t even know we were adopted until a late age. So when that house got taken away from us, a huge part of family died with that house. So that vine, the last time I was there, I actually had to go into the house to get some of the stuff out, and the last thing I did was, since this guy (or the father) sold the house three days after my mother passes, I ended up having to sneak into the house to get the stuff out and I had to go through the window Kalief took his life out of, cause he locked up the house. Kalief found a way out and since he couldn’t go through the bars on the windows, he went through the vent where the air conditioner goes. And so as I was going in there, it’s this really eerie, haunting feeling where Kalief left and I had to leave through the same vent and those vines were still there.

To learn more about Kalief Browder’s story, check out the Spike TV series. Additionally, visit shutdownrikers.com or the Exodus Transitional Community website to learn more about how you can get involved with the fight for criminal justice reform.

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