Battery is Absent from Gang Mediation

According to Dawson, while some participants were guarded in what they shared during the meeting, others were expressive of their frustration with the recent spate of shootings.  When asked about Brandon Smith’s absence, the director of the Leadership Intervention Unit told News Five that Smith wasn’t feeling well while in police custody overnight.  Smith, who is known primarily by his alias, Battery, was detained as part of an immediate sweep by the police department in an attempt to prevent reprisals in the wake of Darien Banks’ murder.

William Dawson

William Dawson, Director, Leadership Intervention Unit

“In these meetings, you will never get people to really express their true emotions, but we didn’t really sense that urgency or that tension, like I said, where we are worried that there will be major retaliation. I think both groups, I can say, have been willing to open up themselves to dialogue and that is what we want.  We know that where there is a life loss or there is injury or there is hurt and so we are looking at this from a psychiatric perspective and a psycho-social perspective where we have to afford the individuals who are suffering from either the grief or the loss or the pain to be able to access the care and forum to vent their frustration because most of the time these guys operate on each other’s emotions.  So when we get the groups together to get them to open up, a lot of the actual tension subsides.  That is not saying that we can guarantee that there won’t be other shootings, I mean we have been talking about this for months and the reality is that what we are doing is trying to stem the violent retaliatory shootings as much as we can and that is the objective.”

Brandon Smith

Isani Cayetano

“My understanding that missing from that meeting was Brandon Smith. Can you share with us what may have happened that resulted in his absence?”

William Dawson

“Well, I don’t have much details, like yourself, but I heard that he’s not feeling well while he was in detention. Of course, you know when these flare ups happen, there is mandatory preventative detention of some of the group members and Brandon was in one of those groups and from what I understand, he wasn’t feeling well and had to be ferried to the hospital to receive treatment.  I am not sure what extent he, or what is his situation right now, we’ll have to wait to get some more reports on him later on.”