The message is simple. It's all the time: "One, we're going to stop the violence and then we're going to go in and find out how we can help you. And then we're going to find out from you, how you are going to help yourself. OK?"

 Don't think big, think simple. And put all the pieces together. I'm not going to solve everything all at once here. I can solve the problems just in that street corner right now. Let's work on that street corner and then go to the next one. If something happens at the next one, don't get diverted from your original goal.

If it's simple then not a lot can go wrong with it, because then you don't forget what you say, you don't forget what your mission is. Your mission is just to make your neighborhood better.

 If you go to the house, now all of a sudden, the kid doesn't see you sitting behind your desk with a shirt and tie on. Or a dress on. He sees you at his front door with dungarees and a clipboard and flashlight saying, "Mother, how's he doing? I'm checking up to make sure he's in. How is he doing for you?" And now you're entirely in his world. You've never been there before and now you're in his world. So he doesn't control his own environment any more. So you've taken that away from him and you make him adhere to the rules. "You want to stay here? You go along with the curfews, you go along with your terms of probation because they mean something. This is a sentence that you will do in the community."

 What we do is we tell them "We've been there, done this." We can name off a litany of gangs that have been taken out after they were given fair warning. And then we have the power, by virtue of the success of the Ceasefire group, to come back and say "These five guys are in jail now, doing life sentences. On the other hand, these fifteen to twenty are out working or in school because they followed through with the one thing we asked them to do--put the guns down. Stop the violence and we'll work with you. If you listen to us, put the guns down, stop the violence, we will work with you." And now we've got living proof that we back up what we say, that we're real.

You know you can tell somebody "You better not do that, you're going to go to jail. You better not do that or you're going to get in trouble." But if you're not there every day reinforcing that, then it's just idle threats.

So now, effectively through Ceasefire, and all the parties that sit at a Ceasefire table, that get involved in Ceasefire, we quality control each other. "You said you were going to do this. Have you done that yet for those kids because they want to know."

 What I found out in the summer of 1992 was the immense power Probation has, and had on the kids in the community who were most likely to do the shooting or most likely to be shot, because most of them were on probation. Most of them had already been before the court; most of them were already court-involved. Most of them we had intimate knowledge of, we just didn't know what we could do with them. And when we found out that a probation officer has the ultimate power of arrest on reasonable suspicion that violation exists, i.e., you're out after curfew, you're on a restricted street, you're in a group larger than 2. You tell me you don't work, yet you have $1000 worth of gold on your neck and I have FIO reports from the Police Dept., who I am now working intimately with, that says you're at the corner of Walk and Don't Walk out after 8:00 at night, ALLEGEDLY involved in the transaction of narcotics. I have enough reasonable suspicion to effectuate an arrest for violation of probation. And that's what we did. It was that simple.

 So now when we open the door, people say, "Oh, we heard that you guys were out, that you want to help. This is good. Here, we need help this way", and go from there.

So you can't fail doing it. Because you're always going to be able to help somebody. There's always going to be somebody who's receptive to the message that you're putting out there. So it's a good thing.

 You have to invest, you have to invest, you have to be here. You have to do time. You have to do the time in the community as much as the kids are doing time in the community.

Two, you have to be real. You have to follow up on what you say you're going to do for them.

And three, you have to provide an alternative. You have to think outside of your role and outside of your function and be a real human being.

"I'm not talking to you as a probation officer, young man or young lady, I'm talking to you as a human being, an adult working with a kid that's in trouble. How can I help you? Who can I call for you? What advice do you think you might need from me? What answers do you need? If I can't/don't have it, I will find it out for you. Come back tomorrow and I will get you the right answer."

Follow through with what you say and the kids will talk. And the kids talk amongst themselves. They know who's real. Kids know who's real and who's fake. They know who the suits are and who the real people are. They know who they can rely on. Because they've been so damaged, these kids, that when somebody follows through with a promise, it might be the first time that's ever happened to them. So they're not going to forget you and they're going to come back to you, looking for help, or just to say "Hi, how are you?" Just for a semblance of normalcy in their life. Because basically, at heart, they're just kids. They're kids looking for adults to act like adults.

 When we became real, when you say to a kid, "How are you?" and he comes back with the rote answer, "Yeah, I'm cool, I'm fine, everything's fine", and then you come back with the next question, "No, really, How are you? I really want to know how YOU are. How are things at home? Tell me about your life outside of you right here, right now, what I can see. Tell me about the things I can't see. I want to know about what you feel every day because I'm concerned for you and what you see and feel and the existence you have to survive in every day. I'm not just going to fill up this paper. I actually care about you, amazing as that may sound, that somebody in Probation, or a police officer or a probation officer, or a federal agent actually cares about how you are doing as a human being. We do. BUT -- put the gun down. Violence doesn't solve any of this. You put the gun down and you listen. You pick up a gun and we will find you."

And the kids understand that. So what they see as the answer to all their problems is violence upon violence upon violence, but it doesn't have to be. Doesn't have to be. So when they do in fact put the weapons down, things will happen to them. But they have to open up, they have to give, they have to give a lot, too. They are asking for people to give a lot, they have to give, too. And it's been a quid pro quo.

 Now in my conversations with the kids that I run into, after you cut through the superfluous, their feeling is that they want to find out whether this guy is real or not, whether he in fact IS a real human being -- because there's still an apprehension on their part, "How is this adult going to let me down?" After you build up a certain degree of trust with them, I feel that what I'm getting back from the kids, it doesn't have to end tomorrow. They don't believe that it's going to end tomorrow any more. They have some dreams, they have some hopes, they have some ambitions. It doesn't have to be the NBA in this neighborhood, or it doesn't have to be the NFL. Maybe it's college now, maybe it's a trade. Now maybe it's a job. Now maybe it's a family. Now maybe it's growing up normal without having the fear of running into a police officer or probation officer. You don't have to be part of this system to be a success. You can make it on your own. You don't need to have a Red Badge of Courage, i.e., a court record, so that you can be cool with the guys out on the street.

 The attitude now is: "OK, you made a mistake. You're here in my office because we're in the courthouse. You're on probation. There's a way out of this if you cooperate. If we work together we can solve this problem. But I'm not going to solve it today, or tomorrow, or next week. It's going to take some time. You stay with me and we'll work together. Are you willing to do that?"

"Yes."

Because they know the system works because they've heard the system works, because there's faith in the system, there's trust in the system. The system that they didn't have any faith in before, they've seen now in the community, they've built up some familiarity with that face behind the badge and behind the title. Now they'll make a random phone call -- "Hey, I heard you at my school. You talked about getting me a job or getting a job for kids. Can you get jobs for kids? Can I come in and talk with you? I'm not on probation."

"Yeah, that's fine. Come on in. I'd love to see you. Come on in."

"Hi, I know you, I saw you at a school."

That's a pretty good thing, because then you know you've made an impact on them, they've listened to you.

And what that also tells me is they are listening. They're listening. They're looking for hope and if you open the door and give them some hope, collectively and uniformly, and unified hope, they are going to come in. They are going to come in and sit down and talk with you and ask for some solutions and some answers to their questions. I've seen that happen. I've seen it in Boston, I've seen it in the neighborhood, I've seen it in my office, I've seen it in the schools. So I know the kids are listening. And they are waiting for us to follow through on what we say.

So that's why adults have to act like adults. Follow through what you say to kids so you're true. You have to be honest and upfront with them. And committed.

 Our goal is the same: We want to see the kids make it. What message can we give to the kids, that they will hear, that we're on the same page? That we're not fighting each other. "You want to see him survive; I want to see him survive. You want to see him succeed; I want to see him succeed. I want the neighborhood to be safe and you want the neighborhood to be safe. How do we get that message across? Let's say the same thing: "We love you, but we'd rather see you in jail than dead."

 You can't solve the problem and go away, you have to come back tomorrow and do it all over again or the problem pops up again. You got to change your focus, there's always something to do, because there is always going to be somebody to test you.

 What Night Light has proven to be is an excuse for the offender, the young offender not to be out on the street by virtue of the fact that we are working late at night with the police department and we're driving around in the neighborhoods knocking on doors, enforcing curfews. The kids now use us as a reason not to be out on the street and be seen. They tell their friends, my probation officer may come by tonight, I have to be home, he can lock me up if I'm not.

 We know where the potential beefs are, because the kids tell us. They talk to us because there's been a certain amount of trust built up between the kids that live in the neighborhood and adults, police, law enforcement, probation. So we can now get to a spot before something happens.

 You need commitment, follow-through, honesty, respect, a lot of effort, a lot of commitment, and a lot of love. You actually have to like and love the people that you're working with.