Publication Date: Wednesday, February 09, 2005
Our Town: Death of a young friend
Our Town: Death of a young friend
(February 09, 2005) by Don Kazak
Derrick Stamper got a class assignment last September to write a poem beginning with, "I am from ...." He knew what to write.
Stamper -- "DJ" to his friends -- is 15, lives in East Palo Alto and is a sophomore at Menlo-Atherton High School.
The poem he wrote has since touched many people and created quiet ripples.
A few days before his assignment, a boy named Jamel Mims, 15, was shot and killed while standing in a front yard of an East Palo Alto home on the evening of Aug. 27 -- a senseless, drive-by shooting.
Derrick and Jamel had been neighborhood and school friends, Derrick recalled last week. They attended summer school together at Woodside High School. They liked to play video games and basketball.
"He made everyone laugh," Derrick said. "He was ghetto, but he was just a regular person, too."
Derrick said he half expected to see Jamel when classes started last fall at M-A. "Everything slowed down," he said.
Derrick is shy, soft-spoken, quick to relax yet with a bright smile -- and much older than a 15-year-old should be.
His poem, "Never Too Young," evokes Jamel:
I am from trouble and pain
Where it rains and I can't feel it
I'm from teenagers on probation
And I may be one
I'm from where you live life
Like there is no heaven
I've had a couple of close friends
And I almost lost seven
I'm from where you say I love you
Just in case you don't wake up
From where quality time is special
Feels like you haven't had enough
I'm from where hard times are regular
It's on a daily basis
From where we never get together
And funerals are the only special occasions
That's the time we stick together
And separate when it's done
I'm from EAST PALO ALTO
And the only thing popping is a gun
Derrick read the poem at Jamel's memorial service.
Steve Belcher, East Palo Alto's interim police chief, attended the service. The poem "tugged at his heart-strings," he recalled last week, speaking at a press conference for the roll-out of a new campaign to reduce drug and gang-related violence in East Palo Alto.
The effort, the "East Palo Alto Crime Reduction Task Force," is the most aggressive and carefully thought-out anti-violence campaign ever in East Palo Alto. It was put together by Rose Jabobs Gibson, San Mateo County supervisor and former East Palo Alto mayor. It includes police, school officials, ministers, nonprofits, and the county sheriff, parole and probation departments.
A major target is gang-related violence. It will also attempt to identify the most violent offenders now on parole or probation in the community and keep close tabs on them.
"People expressed concern (last year) that we may be moving back to the earlier days, " Jacobs Gibson said at the press conference -- referring to the early 1990s' wide-open drug-related violence on the streets. "And no one wanted that to happen."
The response then was to create a "Red Team" of police officials from Palo Alto, East Palo Alto, Menlo Park, the CHP and sheriff's department to go after the perpetrators. It worked. This time the idea is to tackle the problem from the other end as well, using heavy prevention efforts to try to head kids off from being another generation of perpetrators.
The plans for the Crime Reduction Task Force were detailed in a long report released last week. Derrick's poem was included as part of the report.
But Jamel Mims -- "Tu," as everyone called him -- wasn't the first young friend Derrick lost to gun violence. Another, Travis from Menlo Park, died a year earlier.
"They haven't found his killer, either," Derrick said.
Derrick wrote another poem in October: "Wake-Up Call," which ends with the line: Tu didn't go that far he still in heart range.
I walked into the M-A library with Derrick last week, looking for a quiet place to talk. A librarian saw us, smiled and said to me, "You're with a real poet."
One wishes he had happier things to write about.
Weekly Senior Staff Writer Don Kazak can be e-mailed at dkazak@paweekly.com.
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