Brooklyn DA Gets Moms to Protest Gang Paraphernalia Peddlers
The office of District Attorney Charles Hynes is fed up with gang violence. So it’s decided to start its own gang of sorts. Of moms.
Hynes’ office is working with Mothers Against Gangs to protest retail stores that sell sports memorabilia in gang colors and styles, the New York Daily News reports.
“It’s not against the law to sell this stuff… . It’s the knowledge of to whom they’re selling it that worries me,” Hynes is quoted saying. “A kid will buy one of these hats unknowingly, and he’ll walk out and get beat up, or even more seriously, murdered.”
Hynes couldn’t take a legal position against the retailers, so with the help of his gang bureau chief, Deanna Rodriguez, he reached out to area moms.
The paper notes that local sports stores had agreed to pull a red paisley Yankees hat off the shelf because it appeals to the Bloods. When Hynes’ detectives went looking for them with a reporter, they were still for sale.
That prompted mom Frances Brown, of Red Hook, to tell the Daily News that she plans to picket the store.
