Ask a young person in Brownsville or East New York what would make their block safer, and you probably will not hear a call for more arrests. You will hear about a school that pushed them out, a summer with no job, a train ride that feels dangerous, a family one rent check away from losing their home. Young people know what safety feels like, and what it costs when it is missing. They live the answer every day. The problem is that almost no one with the power to act has asked them.
For too long, public safety policy in New York has been written in rooms that do not include the people most affected by it, especially young people in communities shaped by poverty, violence, disconnection, and contact with the legal system. We decide what they need without asking what they carry. Even as murders and shootings in Brooklyn are declining below record-breaking lows, many of those most affected by gun violence remain unheard, and the cost shows up as preventable harm and wasted potential.
The three of us see this from different seats. One of us heads the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office. Two of us lead community organizations that work with young people and families every day. We do not agree on everything. We do agree on this: you cannot build safety for young people without them. That belief is why we are launching the NYC Unfiltered Youth Listening Tour, presented by The Black Institute and Good Call with support from the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office. The tour creates structured, honest spaces for New Yorkers ages 15 to 24 to talk about the conditions that decide whether they are safe: public safety itself, education, economic fairness, environmental justice, and immigration. These are not separate from safety. They are what safety is made of. A young person who feels safe at school, whose family can make rent, whose neighborhood has clean air and steady work, is a young person less likely to be harmed or to cause harm.
Here is the part that usually gets skipped. Most listening tours end when the microphone is turned off. Stories get collected, a report gets published, and nothing in a young person’s life changes. We are committing to the opposite. Every session will connect participants to something concrete: internships, workforce programs, mentorship, leadership training, and civic opportunities. The recommendations young people make will go straight to local leaders who can act on them, and we will say publicly what we heard and what we did with it.
Accountability is the point. It matters that a prosecutor’s office is part of this effort. When a District Attorney says safety starts with opportunity and trust rather than punishment, that is not a soft position. It is a smart and practical one. Prevention is cheaper, more humane, and more effective than the alternative, and the people who can tell us where prevention should start are the young people watching their friends fall through the gaps.
Young people affected by violence, poverty, and the legal system are too often treated as problems to be managed. They are not problems. They are the experts on their own lives. They know where systems break, where support disappears, and what safety looks like beyond a courtroom or a cell. Treating them as partners is not charity. It is how you get policy that works. The first pilot begins in Brownsville, reaches 25 young people, and asks a direct question: what would New York look like if the people who live with the consequences of our safety policies helped write them?
We think the answer points toward a safer, fairer city. We are ready to listen. The harder promise, the one we intend to keep, is to act on what we hear.
Eric Gonzalez is the Brooklyn District Attorney, Tuulikki Robertson is the executive director of The Black Institute, and Kim Belizaire is the executive
director of Good Call.
