- yesterday
A look at the case of Damien Bynoe, a 15-year-old charged in the shooting deaths of two Boston youngsters; the Boston gang culture; and the passage of juvenile crime laws in Massachusetts.
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00:01Frontline is a presentation of the Documentary Consortium.
00:08Last week, a group of public health researchers announced the results of a national study
00:13calling violence in America a public health emergency.
00:17Firearm homicide continues to be the second leading cause of death among teenagers.
00:21Among their findings, during the late 1980s,
00:24shooting deaths among African-American teenage males increased more than 200%.
00:30And every place that I have a talk with parents,
00:33they are absolutely petrified about the fact that guns are found every day in their children's schools,
00:40each one of which could be the cause of their child's sudden death.
00:46Tonight on Frontline, kids and guns, the epidemic of urban violence in America.
00:52These kids have got to stop this, this killing.
00:55Frontline producer June Cross investigates one murder,
01:00and how today's teenagers survive in the inner city.
01:04We've got to decide if we want to do something about violence,
01:08because what we're doing now is not solving the problem.
01:12Tonight on Frontline, a kid kills.
01:16With tools.
01:17With funding provided by the financial support of viewers like you.
01:31And by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
01:37This is Frontline.
01:38This all happened in Boston, Massachusetts.
02:00It could have happened anywhere in the United States.
02:04Anywhere groups of young black men walk with a swagger
02:08that makes pedestrians want to cross the street.
02:11I used to look at those young men and quickly look away.
02:17Now, I search their faces and wonder what stories they might tell.
02:29This story is about some of those young men.
02:32About a gun that's never been found.
02:35And the people whose lives are changed.
02:50Six shots fired.
02:51A 911 call.
02:53Two male victims and cardiac arrest.
02:58We could tell just on our arrival here that we were dealing with two bystanders,
03:03our innocent victims.
03:04One of the children was a fairly small child.
03:08I'm talking somebody less than four and a half feet tall.
03:15The shootings occurred about 8.15 last night,
03:18as 11-year-old Charles Copney and Corey Grant, 15,
03:21played outside Copney's house on Highland Avenue.
03:24Neighbors say a group of teenage boys approached.
03:26Shots were fired, and everyone scattered.
03:29Charles Copney, who was supposed to go inside momentarily,
03:32instead became the youngest fatal shooting victim in Boston's history.
03:46I'm tired of covering stories like this one.
03:51Two kids dead.
03:52Police search for suspects.
03:54More later.
03:55Last year, 3,300 kids under 19 were shot dead in this country.
04:02113 of them lived in Boston, Massachusetts.
04:07Cory Grant, 15, victim number 44.
04:13Charles Copney, 11, victim number 45.
04:18The events of that rainy spring night would make headlines for months.
04:25Three suspects would face a judge for their role in the shootings.
04:3016-year-old Willie Dunn, 15-year-old Teron Harris, and the trigger man, 15-year-old Damian Bino.
04:43Bino, Dunn, and Harris were all freshmen in high school.
04:48They considered themselves junior members of a local gang known as the trailblazers.
04:57They lived within six blocks of each other, in the neighborhood of a housing project known as Orchard Park.
05:03As you drive around Orchard Park in the wintertime, the place looks deserted.
05:20Ordered apartments.
05:21Lots littered with trash.
05:22Lots littered with trash.
05:23A majestic school building, abandoned.
05:27Some months after the shooting, I came to Orchard Park.
05:32To find out why young black men are killing each other.
05:34To find out what had turned Damian Bino into a kid with a gun.
05:40In the beginning, almost no one would talk.
05:45But I had to find out why young black men are killing each other.
05:48To find out what had turned Damian Bino into a kid with a gun.
05:52In the beginning, almost no one would talk.
05:56I wouldn't even talk to no reporter.
05:59It's all a bunch of bull.
06:01Jeffrey Bino is Damian's cousin.
06:04It's hard.
06:06Because I know when it first happened, we was getting a lot of abuse.
06:11And I mean, the media just ate it up.
06:14They would come to my house.
06:15He told me that Orchard Park felt exploited by press coverage about the shooting.
06:20I mean, they just hogged all of us down, you know.
06:24And nobody wanted to do the positive stuff that Damian and all the kids have been through.
06:28They just wanted to do the negative stuff of why Damian did this or why Damian did that.
06:32See, when I was growing up, it was Orchard Park helping.
06:35What Jeff wanted to talk about was Orchard Park's youth outreach program.
06:39A program designed to give teenagers some positive things to do and some young people to look up to.
06:48The peer leaders are the cream of the crop, paid under a city program to work after school.
06:54Most of these kids are grown, like Tamika Harris.
06:59She's in the ninth grade.
07:00That's one of our basketball superstars.
07:02And she's really going to be somebody.
07:04This is the tutoring class.
07:06Dana Jones in the tutoring class.
07:09Where's her role model?
07:11Oh, this is her role model.
07:13Because Sabina helps her a lot, too.
07:15Sabina's like one of our first, one of my first older girls that go to college.
07:19She went to Northeastern.
07:21Damian Bino had been a peer leader in the months before the shooting.
07:26Damian was one of them kids that we call wannabes.
07:30He knew the program was up here.
07:33He knew what he had to do to stay in the program.
07:35Damian was a peer leader.
07:36Damian was a good peer leader until he started being a wannabe.
07:43Some of the peer leaders were shy of cameras at first.
07:46What's your name?
07:48As part of my research for the story, I taught them to use camcorders.
07:55So they could present Orchard Park through their own eyes.
07:59Look at these guys over here.
08:01Put it up on your shoulder.
08:05Put it up on your shoulder, like that.
08:07Now.
08:09They made a video advocating a new gym.
08:13Their neighborhood gym has been closed for seven years.
08:18It's closed down.
08:19How long has it been closed?
08:22I don't know.
08:23It's been closed for a while, though.
08:25A while, huh?
08:26So how does it feel not to have a gym in your development?
08:29It feels boring.
08:31You look at Orchard Park as a human body.
08:34This gym is the heart.
08:36And now this gym is closed.
08:37So the body's dead.
08:38And that's where all the violence and the frustration of the teens is coming from.
08:42When youth worker Kevin Gaskins was growing up in Orchard Park, the gym had everything for kids who had little.
08:49We could go over to the gym.
08:50We could play sports.
08:51We could play pool.
08:52We could go swimming.
08:53We could go on trips.
08:54And we could eat dinner there.
08:55And we could go home.
08:56It didn't matter whether there was dinner on the table because we had already ate.
08:59You know, you do your homework, go to bed and go to school the next day.
09:02Whereas now, if you don't eat at the gym and you don't eat at home, then you got to find a way to get a meal.
09:08And what do you end up doing?
09:10You end up selling.
09:12Selling crack because that's available.
09:14Get your money.
09:16Go to some shop.
09:17Get your sub or whatever for the night.
09:19You either go home or go out there and make extra money for them all.
09:23Yeah, that's my new car.
09:27Kevin's day is often spent working as a substitute parent.
09:31You know why you on TV?
09:33Why?
09:34Because I found you a mini-mart when you should be in school.
09:36So?
09:37Tell me about it.
09:38Tell you about what?
09:39Why you ain't in school.
09:40Because I cuss my TV off, that's why.
09:42Why?
09:43She got on my nerves, man.
09:44She got on your nerves?
09:45Yeah.
09:46Just because I came in late at 9.30.
09:49This day, he'll decide to keep a close eye on Brian by giving him a job as a peer leader.
09:54That's why I cussed her up.
09:56Don't sweat that.
09:58Kiki story.
09:59As I began looking at the peer leader's footage, it occurred to me much of it was shot within boundaries.
10:11Inside their teen center.
10:14Within the lines of a basketball court or a football field.
10:18The places where they feel safe.
10:213 OP!
10:221, 2, 3 OP!
10:23Yeah!
10:24You know how they feel all in there?
10:28Among the peer leaders were some I knew could make it out of Orchard Park.
10:31There was Kiki, who wants to be a biologist.
10:36And Randy, who wants to play for the NBA, but will settle for being a mechanic.
10:43Jamisa, a talented writer.
10:46Terrell, the jokester.
10:49Danina, who told me she wants to be a producer for Frontline.
10:54And Gary, Damien Bino's brother.
10:57He wants to do anything that will make him $300,000 a year.
11:04I wanted to bring up one other subject.
11:06It's probably a little bit sensitive.
11:08None of them was comfortable talking about the shooting.
11:12How would you deal with your friend that killed somebody or, you know, stabs him?
11:17You know, anything to somebody.
11:18You just...
11:19We could do this your friend.
11:20You're gonna be like, why you do it?
11:21But you ain't gonna, like, say...
11:22You know the person's wrong for doing what they did, but still, you still...
11:26They're your friends.
11:27They're your friends.
11:28Mm-hmm.
11:29And you also feel sorry for the person that it happened to.
11:31That it happened to and their family, but...
11:33What could you do?
11:34I felt mad that it happened to...
11:37That it was...
11:38It had to have been the dudes who did it.
11:41Mm-hmm.
11:42You know, I don't think they would...
11:43It was time for them to do what they...
11:45What they're doing now.
11:47So, I just...
11:48I'm just glad it didn't happen to me.
11:51You think it could happen to you?
11:53Do I think it could happen to you?
11:54Yeah.
11:55You said you're glad it didn't happen to me.
11:56As if...
11:57You could see yourself having caught and caught up in a situation like that.
12:00Sure.
12:01So...
12:04How?
12:05How could...
12:06We don't want to talk about this, do you know what I'm saying?
12:10Why not?
12:11It's gonna...
12:12Every time somebody interviews us, that's...
12:13They all gonna bring us something that...
12:14Have happened in here.
12:16Or...
12:17With somebody we knew.
12:18It's easy for me to come into Orchard Park and start asking nosy questions.
12:30I don't have to live here.
12:33I can go home to suburban Boston.
12:35I don't have to live with the consequences of saying that I know a murderer.
12:40That I feel sympathy for his family.
12:43I don't ride the school bus every day with friends of the kids who were killed.
12:50I think some kids are playing some basketball.
12:52The reality is, there's no witness protection program for those who put their neighbor's
12:57business on the news.
12:59What?
13:00I saw Kiki on TV last time.
13:02I'm on this one!
13:03In Orchard Park, reminders that bullets have no names are everywhere.
13:12Just before I arrived, two young men had been killed within three weeks of each other.
13:19These are all...
13:20Most of the members are the blazers.
13:22Alright?
13:23The ones that are circled.
13:25My man Peanut, Ed, and Terrain.
13:28The ones that are circled are the one that's gone.
13:30You know, the one that ain't here with us no more, so...
13:35Peanut.
13:37Every community like this has someone like him.
13:40A kid who gets along with everybody.
13:43But then gets caught in the crossfire.
13:48This Peanut had three brothers.
13:51Shaquem witnessed his murder after a high school football game.
13:55I can't really know how to handle my brother's death, you know what I'm saying?
13:59I'd be ready to just go and start...
14:01You know what I'm saying?
14:02I'd just be ready to do some ill shit.
14:04Holy shit, that's out of your mind.
14:06I try to redeem myself, you know what I'm saying?
14:10By just chillin', man, with my boys and shit.
14:12Sometime I'll drink.
14:14I'll give me a 40 ounce and I'll drink all of it.
14:16So that I'll just be too high to do anything.
14:19You know what I'm saying?
14:20I'll be just nice and lit.
14:21And I can't do nothing because I'll be too high.
14:24Shake it out.
14:25You fuck around with Shaquem in a red and black outfit.
14:28I'm robin' up the head matches.
14:30You wanna fuck around to body kill my brother so I'm killin' Jack.
14:33You might look at Shaquem and see a hardened gangster.
14:36I saw an 11th grader trying to deal with death and violence at an early age.
14:42Just everyone lives day by day, you know what I'm saying?
14:54Ain't nobody promised tomorrow, you know what I'm saying?
14:56And I really, I got a mind that don't really care about anything.
15:00I don't give a fuck about today or tomorrow, you know what I'm saying?
15:05There are no counseling programs for those like Shaquem and his brothers.
15:09No resources of any kind for youths over 17.
15:16Orchard Park is isolated in a way that's hard to imagine.
15:21There are few jobs nearby.
15:23No supermarkets.
15:25No newspaper delivery.
15:28And there are only 16 peer leader jobs for 200 teenagers.
15:34These days black men can't get no job.
15:36Have you ever tried to get, have you tried, aside from in here?
15:40No.
15:41Cause I ain't gonna get it.
15:42So why you gonna try?
15:44You gonna see a little white boy get it?
15:46I know.
15:47They tell you, don't call us, we'll call you.
15:50I never call.
15:51You gonna check out the job, you see a white kid sitting at the desk like,
15:53I got your job.
15:55Or a more educated person.
15:57Or old desk.
15:58Orchard Park is like a small town.
16:09The kind of place where those sharing hardship help each other out and keep each other's secrets.
16:15Tenants pay 30% of their monthly income for rent.
16:23Most scrape by on $6,000 to $8,000 a year.
16:30Those that work mostly keep to themselves and mind their own business.
16:35Others get by any way they can.
16:43For Jeff Bino, Orchard Park is more than just home.
16:47It's like the family compound.
16:49My whole family, my aunts and all of them, we all grew up in Orchard Park.
16:53Right.
16:54And we used to take pride because we used to have the whole Albany side and they used to call that the Bino side.
16:58But we just used to take care of just our side.
17:01You know, we have Sundays, we used to go out there and help my grandfather clean up the grounds, pick up the trash.
17:06And we just took pride in that.
17:08You know, we just take pride in that.
17:10I love where I live from.
17:12I love that I grew up in Orchard Park.
17:14Can't nobody put this place down.
17:15Not to me, because I love this place.
17:18Jeff's mother, Edna, Damian's aunt, grew up here.
17:22My father was a veteran when we came into the housing project.
17:25Huh.
17:27And been there ever since.
17:29Ever since.
17:31If Orchard Park is like a small town, Edna Bino, president of the Tenants Association, is its mayor.
17:39For years, she's battled the federal, state, and city bureaucracies for renovation money.
17:45Construction's finally due to start in October.
17:48We'll have each section have their own heating system, like underneath the basement.
17:52So they won't have that problem that when this goes out, the other part of the project won't go out.
17:57When I first came here, people told me nothing happens without Edna Bino's say-so.
18:02We're trying to rush it along, because I know you all are tired of living like we're living.
18:08And we need to see something positive out here.
18:10That kind of take-charge attitude is typical of the Bino family.
18:17They're a family of West Indian immigrants, raised in a community of brownstones not two blocks from the Orchard Park projects.
18:24As they've made it in America, they've moved away.
18:30One Bino served on the board that administers all the projects in Boston.
18:35Another is a distinguished lawyer who ran for the State Senate.
18:40And one Bino is the only African American who owns an NBA team.
18:45Peter Bino is a partner in the Denver Nuggets.
18:50I don't think we've ever looked at our family or, you know, segmented our family between rich and poor.
18:55It's just been a family.
18:56And I think, as I said, each unit on its own has, you know, found or at least tried to find its own way.
19:05Each unit on its own, trying to find its own way.
19:08As the Binos got more successful, their family became more insular, like families everywhere.
19:17And some units had a harder time than others.
19:23Peter Bino had 13 cousins who grew up in Orchard Park.
19:28Among them were Edna and Rhonda Bino, Damian and Gary's mother.
19:34I learned to deal with life by myself.
19:39I made my bed, now I got to make it.
19:41Like my mother said, you decide to have kids, you got to take care of them.
19:45Maybe all your sisters got kids.
19:48It seems like you all would kind of...
19:50Stick together?
19:51Yeah.
19:53Some do, some don't.
19:57You know, that's life.
20:00Rhonda Bino is a displaced piece of the Bino family.
20:04The 10th of 13 children.
20:07She stays involved in city programs, but is still searching for a steady job.
20:13She and Damian's father, Gary Robinson, separated when Damian was five.
20:20Damian used to see him, and he survived right past him.
20:23Hmm.
20:25So he never acknowledged him at all? No way?
20:27When Damian was a baby.
20:29But once Damian started walking and talking.
20:30I go over there and want to see him.
20:34She said, first thing that comes out of her mouth was, do you have any money?
20:38Hey, I'm paying you support.
20:40Now you want me to give you money too?
20:43Come on.
20:45You're working.
20:46Sometimes you go over to my mother's house without the kids.
20:50And you want money.
20:52And you're working and you still want more money.
20:55What are you doing that you need all of this money?
20:59How much money was he giving you?
21:01Nothing.
21:03Nothing. Okay.
21:04I understand because he says he was giving you money and he didn't know where it was going.
21:07He never gave me a dime.
21:09Never.
21:11My kids will tell you.
21:13Everybody can tell you around it.
21:14I raised them from when they were babies by myself.
21:17Can we talk about your dad?
21:18You didn't know your dad real well, right?
21:21I know him, but I didn't like him because he left me.
21:24I hated them because they called my house and told me and me or my brother he's going to come get us.
21:31We ought to be all packed and everything ready to go spend the night with him and he don't even come and everything.
21:39Damien's problems began when his mother and father separated.
21:43He was left back in first grade.
21:46His teachers said he cried easily and couldn't say what was bothering him.
21:50His middle school guidance counselor says he was a good student.
21:55He was not a student that you would call difficult in any way.
22:00His mother was one of the most visible presence in terms of parents of any parents we have.
22:08Yet as a high school freshman, Damien was reading at a fourth grade level.
22:13His academic work sank and he started getting in fights.
22:16Rhonda, his mother, felt Damien was old enough to take care of himself.
22:23That kid had a lot of problems and she never knew how to deal with him.
22:28And nobody took the time to show her, you know.
22:34And she was into the school, so I don't really know how.
22:38Maybe she just blocked that stuff out.
22:40She might have just blocked it out and she didn't want to know that something was really wrong with her son.
22:43Me and Kevin could see it coming.
22:47Because every time we tried to talk to him, he used to tell me and Kevin, no, I'm not doing that.
22:51You know, the kids used to tell us, yeah, Damien's out there selling drugs, Jeff.
22:54Damien's doing that, Jeff.
22:56And me and Kevin walked right by over there.
22:58We was like, Damien, what you doing?
22:59We going to the club, what you doing?
23:00Oh, I'll be up there.
23:01I'll be up there.
23:07By the time he was 14, Damien wanted independence.
23:11He found it on the streets.
23:14In the streets, the young teenager could pretend to be a man.
23:18Earn enough to be independent of his mind.
23:21The shoes, the coats, the jewelry.
23:29They call it living large.
23:32This gang phenomenon's just been in Boston these last five years.
23:38Instead of Bloods and Crips, like in L.A., the kids here go for pro sports teams.
23:43The Raiders, the Blackhawks, the Trailblazers.
23:50The Trailblazers turf is Orchard Park.
23:54Like my man, L.M.L.J.
23:55Said he's paid out of Boston, but from OP, there's only one way.
23:58And that's to come out strong, nice and long like the boat cloud.
24:02Rolling through Dudley, making a piss-up blazer town.
24:05Get the stage, you know what I'm saying?
24:07People talk a lot about peer pressure.
24:10Here it is in action.
24:11These guys all grew up together.
24:22They bought one another food when times were hard.
24:26They fought together when people laughed at them because they were from the projects.
24:33Their code is simple.
24:35They pull out a knife, you pull out a gun.
24:37They put one of your friends in the hospital.
24:40You put one of theirs in the morgue.
24:43It's as American as Al Capone.
24:45They just want that security that they don't get at home, I think.
24:56They get it from their friends.
24:58And they get that bond that somebody will always watch their back.
25:03Because, you know, it's really tough out in these streets now with all these so-called gangs.
25:12There's no one leader, but there are several top dogs.
25:16Guys who've earned respect by fighting hard and not getting caught.
25:20They get loose busting their cap and they can't say again.
25:23We're out of here.
25:25Get out with O.B.
25:28I want to be one of the top.
25:31I want to be one of the top.
25:33That's one of the big ones.
25:35Wanted to be a top dog?
25:37Yeah.
25:38What was it about being a top dog that you thought would be cool?
25:41You get a lot of respect.
25:44Did you not get respect otherwise?
25:46Yeah, but I mean you get much respect even from other gangs that you got beef for.
25:50You see them in a club.
25:52You see them in a club.
25:53They be wanting to buy you club soldiers.
25:54That's how bad they be scared of you, you know.
25:57Damien.
26:00I tried.
26:02And he knows I tried.
26:03And he'll tell you in a minute.
26:05My mother told me.
26:07Your mother told you what?
26:08About the streets will get you first.
26:10I need some money.
26:11I don't want to ask my mother all the time for some money, you know.
26:13So I just...
26:15It was like one day I just had some money in my pocket
26:17and then I went to go buy, um, eight balls and stuff like that
26:22and then went to just start selling.
26:24Mm-hmm.
26:25So you wanted to go buy an eight ball jacket?
26:27No.
26:28Eight ball.
26:29Drugs.
26:30Eight ball.
26:31Damien was arrested for selling drugs outside his building
26:35five months before the shooting.
26:38I give them everything they want.
26:39What the hell do you need to sell drugs for?
26:41Oh, yeah.
26:42I tore him up.
26:44I mean, I beat him from the police station.
26:46I was at home.
26:47The cops had to stop me.
26:49Excuse me?
26:51That's what?
26:52That is mine.
26:53And I could do whatever I wanted to do to him.
26:55You mind your business.
26:57And you weren't listening to...
26:59You wouldn't listen to your dad because he hadn't been there.
27:01You were tired of listening to your mom.
27:03You weren't listening to Jeff.
27:06So what were you...
27:07There must have been something telling you that this is the way to go.
27:10I just...
27:11I was making some money and I was like, so I'll just stay with this.
27:15Mm-hmm.
27:16Were there people there who you looked up to and admired?
27:20In Orchard Park?
27:22If you looked around at the guys that...
27:23The older guys that you wanted to hang with.
27:25Who were they?
27:26Um...
27:28I used to look up to my...
27:30Dana, mostly Dana.
27:31That's why I used to look up to him a lot.
27:33Look there, Dana.
27:35Ah, look at Dana.
27:36Ah, ah, ah, ah.
27:39Dana, the guy Damien looked up to and admired, is 20 years old.
27:44Ah, ah, ah.
27:45He's smart enough to be in college, but he's never graduated high school.
27:50Ah, ah, ah.
27:51He's a role model all over Orchard Park.
27:54He coaches sports.
27:55He's even gotten rival gangs together in a football league.
28:00Get out with O.P.
28:02Get out with O.P.
28:04He didn't trust my camera crew, so this interview was taped on a camcorder in a hallway.
28:10Are you a member of the Blazers, Dana?
28:12Nah.
28:13Come on, Dana.
28:14Come on, Dana, you gotta tell us.
28:15Dana, don't bullshit me.
28:16I ain't.
28:17Come on, Dana.
28:18Everybody tells me leader of the Blazers.
28:20You're a liar.
28:21Yeah.
28:22I ain't no leader.
28:24I'm not qualified for no leader.
28:26You don't have any problem telling your boys what to do around here, right?
28:29I never, never told them what to do.
28:33Now, where did I get this impression from?
28:36I don't know.
28:37I know.
28:38Some of them could beat me out there.
28:40I'm sure they could, but they wouldn't dare.
28:45Yeah, something like that.
28:47Once we started talking, I discovered a man who wanted the fast money and got trapped by the fast life.
28:56Whatever happens, happens.
28:57That's what I said.
28:58Okay.
28:59I don't want to die.
29:00I don't want to get shot or stabbed.
29:01I've never been.
29:02You know?
29:03I ain't gonna stop me from going where I gotta go.
29:07Going to my destination.
29:08Whatever it happened to me.
29:09I'm scared.
29:10Well, I'm not scared.
29:11Dana was out on bail when we met.
29:15Last week, he started serving a two-and-a-half-year term for attempted murder.
29:23His story repeats itself every day on the streets.
29:32The local roller rink.
29:35The peer leaders stay to one side, under a wall listing the names of children killed on the streets of Boston.
29:42Just minutes before the camera turned on, Gary Bino was accosted by a group of kids from outside Orchard Park.
29:53He says it happens a lot.
29:56So often that he's joined the junior trailblazers for protection.
30:03On this day, Gary, a fluid skater, will not venture onto the floor.
30:12The violence isn't just happening in black communities.
30:16The murder rate in white America is twice that of any other nation.
30:21Nearly seven white teenagers are murdered each day.
30:26But young black men are being killed at the rate of nine a day.
30:29And there's fewer of them in the population.
30:33The difference between white and non-white communities is the availability of illegal guns.
30:38On the streets, they're called straps.
30:43Where do the straps come from?
30:45Buying from the store.
30:47Buying from the store.
30:48There's like a guy that has a gun license that's Noah's, and he's like a base head and everything.
30:53And we used to give him crack and everything.
30:57And he used to go buy his guns from the store.
30:59People were giving him money.
31:00We all used to pitch in and we all used to share the guns.
31:02A kid can get a gun a lot easier if he didn't go to the store and buy a pencil.
31:06It's just that easy.
31:08It's just that easy.
31:12Easier than getting a pencil?
31:14A pencil, you hear me?
31:15Yeah.
31:16A pencil. It's just that easy.
31:17I met a man who smuggles guns into Orchard Park.
31:23He showed me three duffel bags full of guns he'd just brought back from out of state on a Greyhound bus.
31:30There were more than you see in this shot.
31:34The man in charge of keeping those guns off the streets of Boston is Special Agent Terry McArdle of the Treasury Department.
31:41It's not the firearm, it's the individual who possesses it, and it's not the firearm we want to get off the street.
31:51It's the person that uses it illegally that we want to get off the street.
31:58Agent McArdle says Boston is the minor leagues compared to what goes on in New York or L.A.
32:05Juvenile homicides account for only 10 or 12 percent of the total.
32:09But doctors here say violence among teenagers is rising so fast, it needs to be treated not just as a crime, but as a public health problem.
32:22Deborah Prothro-Stiff is an assistant dean at the Harvard School of Public Health.
32:26Violence is not human nature, it's learned behavior and somewhere some people taught that child to use violence and didn't teach that child other options or alternatives to violence in terms of solving the problem.
32:43Damien Bino became a killer because of the kind of argument that boys used to settle with a fist fight.
32:56It all started with a fight between the Orchard Park Trail Blazers and the Highland Avenue Blackhawks.
33:05The Blackhawks are younger than the Blazers, still afraid their mothers will see their faces on TV.
33:11This thought of a little thing that every time you bump into them, it was problems.
33:18What kind of problems? Like when you would bump into them, what would happen?
33:22Shooting at each other. See, we always be strapped. Show them a strap. We always be strapped.
33:28Let's see. Let me see.
33:30Now you guys strap all the time? Yeah, all the time. All the time.
33:39On the streets, the rumor is that Damien had been jumped by boys from Highland Avenue and later beaten by Corey Grant.
33:47Corey stood six feet tall and weighed nearly 200 pounds.
33:52But you never had any problem with her? No.
33:54No.
33:55I never had any problem. And you didn't have any problem. You had no problem with the kids from Highland?
34:00Oh, yeah. I did have problems with the kids from Highland, but not him.
34:03Not him.
34:05Damien says he began carrying a gun, just in case.
34:16April 20th, 1991, was the Saturday after spring break.
34:20Damien was supposed to have gone to a wrestling match with the peer leaders.
34:25Instead, on the basketball court, he ran into his buddy, Willie Dunn.
34:30You know, he just asked, Damien, you want to go to Highland?
34:36Because he told me he had some problems with them. I was like, all right.
34:39And then I went to my house. And I went to go and get the gun from my house.
34:44Everything and then, and then, you know.
34:47The gun was at your house?
34:49Yeah.
34:51They ran into Teron Harris. The three boys left Orchard Park, walking a quarter mile west towards Highland Avenue.
34:58As they passed the corner of Highland and Center Streets, a group of boys sitting on the brownstone steps spotted them.
35:07One of them was Corey Grant.
35:10Corey's father, James, heard the exchange.
35:13It wasn't like no one said, excuse my language, I'm going to say something that, what the fuck are you doing up here?
35:20You know how the kids talk today just like, you off my turf. You know how the kids say?
35:24They was yelling at us and they threw a bottle in. And I turned, Will turned, and then the other kid turned.
35:31Then they just, they just, two guys just jumped out the stairs and ran up the street and was like, go get the guns or something.
35:37And I just was like, oh. Then I turned to work at Will, and Will was like, nah. He was like, nah. And then I just, you know, pulled out and just started shooting.
35:47And I hear, ha, wah, wah, wah, wah.
35:52Pat Coatney's son, Charles, was crossing the street as the shots rang out.
35:56Upstairs ringing the doorbell saying, Pat, you better get out here in a hurry.
36:00We didn't even know if we hit anybody, you know. And then, you know, next thing you know, his sister told us that one was in critical condition and one was dead.
36:15And then Will was like, oh man, you killed somebody and everything. And I was like, wow, you know, scared and everything.
36:22You know, and I was like, then I went to my house, then I played, was playing Nintendo. My, my brother was sleeping and my mother.
36:30I was in the bed. So he said, Ma, you gonna sleep? I said, yeah. I said, what's the matter with you? He said, nah, I'm tired. So go on to bed.
36:39All the time he knew he had something tell me. He didn't tell me.
36:43You know, it was like, not you. Gary, maybe? Not you.
36:49Not you. Because Gary is a stubborn one.
36:53That's the one I figured I had problems with, because he's a mean one.
36:57Damien wasn't mean.
36:59Damien was a sweetheart.
37:02Charles Kopney was only 11 years old.
37:06His murder shocked the city in a way the murders of older boys hadn't.
37:11The case would become the apocryphal, cold-blooded crime.
37:15James Grant cannot forget that dreadful night last April when gang members shot and killed his 15-year-old son, Corey.
37:24James Grant held his dying son in his arms and watched his world slip away.
37:28I was yelling to see a Corey, Corey, Corey.
37:32And I reached down for his left hand and tried to see if it was there was a pulse. No pulse.
37:38His last wind, his breath came out.
37:40Oh.
37:44It's really tough, you know, I...
37:47A lot of people feel like, oh, just, you know, life goes on, you know.
37:52It's easy to say it.
37:53Because people don't ever really experience or know what it's like to say, this is part of you.
37:59It's tough thing for me to say, like, there's different types of death.
38:05It's not like saying your brother, your mother, your father.
38:09This is part of you.
38:10They surround us, but the murderers walk free.
38:15My hands walk, and see, yours gone wins out.
38:18I'm a nut. The whole fucking system's nuts.
38:21Marilyn Abramovsky had a particular interest in this case.
38:25For eight years, she and other mothers of murdered children had worked to pass a crime bill
38:31that would make juveniles convicted of murder serve time as adults.
38:34At this date's expense!
38:37It turned out Damien Bino would be the first tried under the new law.
38:42He'd go to adult court, unless he could prove he was rehabilitatable.
38:51I happen to know the judge in this case.
38:54Paul McGill and I were in the same class at Harvard College.
38:58We graduated two days after Damien Bino was born.
39:01The evidence before me was that, oops, he was a mum and apple pie kid.
39:08The evidence that came before me basically was, prior to November,
39:13he had never been into any real serious trouble.
39:18In his ruling, Judge McGill described Damien as the product of a single parent home,
39:24whose hunger for a father figure led him to kill, in order to be accepted by the trailblazers.
39:29He said Damien was rehabilitatable.
39:33The mothers of Charles and Cory felt he'd just kicked dirt on their son's caskets.
39:38They come up with the same shit all the time.
39:43Single parent, poor, no father.
39:47No father.
39:49And you come up into my house on Highland Ave, or you go to Debra Grant's house, or you go to Jane's house.
39:56Wow.
39:58You're a single parent, or you're not supposed to live in an apartment like this.
40:03You know, have a seat.
40:06Quite strange, huh?
40:07There's no way that Damien Bino should have been not tried as an adult. I'm sorry.
40:13That's just, that's just how I feel.
40:16Can you give them a reason why you shouldn't be in adult prison?
40:23Um, I think I can get help. I think, I think I can get help.
40:28And I can, I can, um, I can be, uh, with the, I mean, mental, what's, I don't know how to say that.
40:37Rehabilitated.
40:38Rehabilitated.
40:40By the fall, Pat Kopney and Debra Grant Hall had joined Mothers of Murdered Children.
40:46They wanted mandatory sentences for convicted juvenile killers.
40:52During his campaign for governor, Weld promised to get tough on crime.
40:56Today, he announced a proposal to crack down specifically on juvenile offenders.
41:00Our message here, I hope, is, is clear and unmistakable that juveniles who commit acts of violence will be treated with the same level of seriousness as adults who commit acts of violence.
41:12The governor's timing put the spotlight on Judge McGill.
41:16Two days after the new crime bill was introduced, Damien's co-defendants, Willie Dunn and Teron Harris, began hearings to see whether they'd be tried as adults.
41:26The outcome would be very different for Harris and for Willie Dunn.
41:35They look at kids like you and they say, those kids are just criminals.
41:40You know, they have these guns illegally and they're just, you know, using them all illegally.
41:44Why shouldn't we lock them all away?
41:46What do you say to people like that?
41:48Put them in a, in a project like we are.
41:51Getting them the same amount of money we, our parents making everything.
41:53See what they do.
41:54Willie was repeating ninth grade when he got arrested, yet he tested at a 12th grade math level.
42:04He's the kind of kid who should be buying into the system.
42:09Instead, he'd already done the calculations and opted out.
42:13If you don't make no money, your parents don't make no money.
42:17You don't look forward to nothing, then you can't go in the way in life.
42:20You can't go to college, your parents don't make enough money, go to college.
42:22So you figure, hey, you ain't gonna be nothing when you grow up.
42:25You ain't got nothing going for yourself.
42:26So, hey, might as well go out and sell some drugs and everything.
42:29Willie Dunn grew up in what could be called the wrong side of the tracks in Orchard Park.
42:41The Harrison Avenue side.
42:46There are more abandoned apartments here.
42:49More drug customers.
42:52Maintenance crews are scared to come in.
42:57In some apartments, stray bullets have left their mark.
43:00Willie was raised by his grandparents.
43:08But his grandmother died when he was seven.
43:11All that remains of her is an oil painting.
43:16After my grandmother died, that's when I kept drifting and drifting and drifting and drifting.
43:22What was it about her death that affected you?
43:25I don't know, it just made me feel like, who cares, forget that, forget this.
43:31When he turned 13, Willie started hanging out with the older trailblazers.
43:37He started skipping school.
43:40His grandfather seemed unable to do anything about it.
43:44He was by this time dying from lung cancer.
43:47And Willie was uncertain where he'd end up living.
43:53Who was taking care of you while you were in the hospital?
43:55Nobody.
43:56Nobody?
43:57Just me and my sisters.
43:58My uncle would come down and check on us, make sure we all right, we're full and everything.
44:01But that's about it.
44:05In the year prior to the murders, Willie had been getting in more and more trouble with the law.
44:11Always with Damien Bino and Teron Harris.
44:14Every time he had a problem, there it was, those two.
44:20Trina Dunn is Willie's aunt.
44:22Got, like, into some trouble, and he, my father was getting sicker and sick of the cancer.
44:27And, you know, then the last incident he got into trouble, my father had said, well, I'm not going to get him out.
44:33He needs some counseling.
44:34Jerry Hines is Willie Dunn's attorney.
44:37In December of 1990, there was a psychologist of the court who said quite clearly that here's a kid who is a risk of hurting himself or others unless somebody does something.
44:53But that recommendation was allowed to just sit there.
44:59Six weeks before the shooting, Dunn had been charged with assault and larceny.
45:04He was already on probation for gun possession.
45:08He could have been held in the Department of Youth Services.
45:11Instead, the judge released Willie Dunn to the custody of his mother, a heroin addict who hadn't lived with her son since he was five months old.
45:22How did this happen?
45:24So, this same judge, Mr. Paul McGill, he's the individual who my sister had went to court, you know, I guess trying to make up for the lost time.
45:34She went to court and he released Willie in the care of my sister.
45:40He released and we didn't even know, my father didn't even know.
45:46Judge McGill says he has no recollection of releasing Willie Dunn.
45:51But three days later, Willie stood next to Damien Bino as he fired the gun that killed Corey Grant and Charles Copney.
45:59After the killings, Judge McGill ruled that Willie Dunn could not be rehabilitated.
46:07He would be tried as an adult.
46:10Here is a kid who's really going to be sacrificed, who really has been sacrificed to the public hostility around a juvenile justice system that seems to be lenient with kids who kill kids.
46:27Damien Bino killed two people.
46:34He'll be free in five years, maybe even sooner.
46:38If Willie Dunn is convicted of first-degree murder, he could get life in prison.
46:44I mean, you have to admit to an outsider, not knowing the facts of the case.
46:51But it just sounds strange, you know, that the trigger man gets to stay in the juvenile system and the two guys that went with him just kind of went along for the ride and end up looking at life in Walpole.
47:00It may sound strange, but it's what the law dictated.
47:04I can only follow the law and the legislature said the sole concern that I had in looking at these three individuals was could any of them be amenable to treatment?
47:15If so, they stayed in the juvenile system.
47:16In Judge McGill's opinion, Willie Dunn at 16 showed no signs of ever becoming a productive citizen.
47:25The judge heard only two witnesses testify in his behalf.
47:30Twenty-one persons testified in support of Damien Bino.
47:34Judge McGill says it was the preponderance of evidence that led him to make his decision.
47:38Pat Kopney's got another theory.
47:40Evidently, a judge must have knew who he knew in Roxbury District Court.
47:43So what is that?
47:45What do you mean?
47:47Bino's very well known in Massachusetts.
47:49I'm a Bostonian myself.
47:51And I know that.
47:53You think it was the Bino name that got Damien on it?
47:56Oh, you're absolutely right.
47:58You know, there are those that look at the kind of the Bino family connections and start.
48:02They need to stop.
48:03They need to stop.
48:04And say Damien got this deal and Willie and Taran are going up because of the Bino name.
48:14They have nothing to do with the Bino name, honey.
48:17Jamie had a very good lawyer.
48:20All right.
48:22And Taran and Willie could have had the same thing if their lawyer was doing what they're supposed to be doing.
48:27They should have had their stuff together.
48:29So the Bino family did not pay.
48:32Did not pay not one dime for the defense of Damien Vidal.
48:39Not one dime.
48:40They didn't even go to court.
48:42All right.
48:43Since I got in trouble, my mother was telling me stuff like they don't even want to help us out with nothing like that.
48:52They don't want nothing to do with us.
48:53When I went for that, we used to all have family reunions and have fun together.
49:00Now when I got locked up, they don't even want that.
49:02A dozen different Binos declined to be interviewed about Damien.
49:08John Bino III was an exception.
49:11It's another kid.
49:12It's another kid.
49:13Just another kid.
49:14It's another kid that had a problem.
49:16And, you know, it's another kid that's gotten into trouble.
49:19It's, I think, because of the name and the name recognition that's been around for the last several years.
49:26It might have been blown out of proportion.
49:27But let's look at the child, not the name.
49:30You know, there's a child that needs help, okay, to put his life back together.
49:39Don't forget his name.
49:41Okay?
49:42Forget my name.
49:44We're individuals.
49:45You had told me something about they wanted you to change his name.
49:48Yeah, changed Damien's last name.
49:50That must be kind of, you must feel like it's a slap in the face to you.
49:54It was when they first said it.
49:56Still is, but I don't let them bother me.
49:59I told Damien.
50:00I wasn't supposed to tell him, but I told him.
50:02Anywhere.
50:03Because I don't keep nothing from my kids.
50:04I let them know everything that's going down.
50:07And Damien was like, kind of hurt.
50:09And he wants to write his grandfather.
50:11And ask him why he felt like that.
50:14Told him it's up to him.
50:17A family falling apart.
50:21A community of strangers coming together.
50:23A younger generation of kids split by rivalry and feelings of vengeance.
50:30I've come to understand that the word victim in this case includes all those whose lives have been touched by the shooting.
50:38This is the ceremonial signing of the bill which is now known as, and forever forward from this point on, known as the Cockney Grant Act of 1991.
50:51So I'm happy to sign the bill.
50:54In January, Governor Weld signed a revised juvenile crime bill.
51:01One intended to send a message to kids who use guns.
51:05Chapter 488 of the Acts of 1991.
51:08It establishes mandatory sentences from 10 to 20 years for juveniles convicted of violent crimes.
51:13Sentence for juveniles convicted of first degree murder.
51:17The mothers say they want equal justice.
51:20They know it won't work out that way.
51:23Pat Kopney told me that between the laws and the guns, half of the black males in this generation are going to be locked up.
51:34The other half will be lying six feet under.
51:42There's widespread suspicion among blacks that those who run the system don't care if it does work out that way.
51:49Something's wrong out there, and I can't change the world, and we can change the laws.
52:00But the laws are for the black kids because the white kids are getting away with it.
52:05Our black kids are the ones that's going to save time.
52:08Somebody's giving them the guns.
52:10Somebody's giving them the stuff to tell them the drug is to do what they're doing.
52:14They don't have the money to buy the drugs.
52:21Somebody's bringing the drugs into them.
52:23All right.
52:25But to point the finger of blame at the white man ignores the seeds of the solution.
52:31Play tough, man. Play hard, all right? Don't give up.
52:33Don't give up. Play defense tough, man. All right?
52:36On three. Hard work. One, two, three. Hard work.
52:39All right, let's go, man.
52:40Jeff Bino coaches players who dream of being basketball stars.
52:46There's no one here who dreams of owning a team.
52:50Peter Bino supports charities in Chicago, but he hasn't set foot in Orchard Park in years.
52:59Judge McGill works three blocks from Orchard Park.
53:02Some of these youngsters have even been in his court.
53:05But they don't know how to grow up to become judges.
53:11Ripple!
53:13Where is it for?
53:15For all cities, can you see?
53:22Say, can you see?
53:27By the dark was my blind.
53:39What's so proud of me now?
53:45tougher laws more jobs more programs all of these are partial answers the real problem
54:07is the too few professional adults black or white people like me find time in their
54:13day to support teenagers growing up in places like Orchard Park
54:23what would have to change to change all of this the world the world I don't think once it starts
54:29you never be able to stop it you just got to get more positive people a little person can't change
54:33everything so it's like everybody gotta chip in yeah on today's forum we're going to discuss the
54:42topic of Nintendo there are teenagers like these all over the country living with one foot in their
54:48dreams and the other in the reality of the streets I came to Orchard Park to report a story I found a
54:58group of kids who broke through my journalistic veneer I look at them and I wonder if put in
55:06their shoes I would choose to do the right thing or take the easy way out I've come to think of them
55:16as my kids so I'll be coming back to Orchard Park that's my way of chipping in
55:23is
55:28some
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57:27is there racial discrimination in mortgage lending?
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57:32I was advised the committee turn your application down.
57:36Why was green turned down?
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