This year, the world learned about a Baltimore man named Freddie Gray, who died—too young—after running from police officers. Gray’s life has been poured over in the months since he died. But there are thousands of young Freddie Grays in the city—boys and young men who live in under-resourced communities, are not doing well in school and could be just one bad decision away from an unpleasant interaction with the police.
Van Brooks knows the potential these young men have. He understands them. And he wants to reach them.
A star football player at Loyola Blakefield High School, Van Brooks was just 16 when he broke his neck during a game and woke up at Shock Trauma, paralyzed from the neck down. Undeterred, he eventually founded Safe Alternatives Foundation for Education (SAFE).
SAFE works with youth from the Franklin Square neighborhood where Brooks grew up and still resides. The program helps to promote education and life skills, as well as the tools to become college graduates and future leaders. Brooks and volunteers also stress the importance of having “a backup plan for life.”
Brooks selects students who are struggling, or overlooked. He wants to reach them before their decisions have pushed them too far out of reach. One student he’s helped is Reggie Briscoe, 14, who was “failing in school and hanging with the wrong people,” before Brooks offered himself as a mentor.
“[Brooks] said when he was playing football, he had something to fall back on when he got hurt,” says Reggie, who is now a freshman at Chesapeake High School in Essex, but still comes back to Franklin Square to participate in SAFE. “And I realized I didn’t have anything to fall back on but football. So I moved my seat, started paying attention, doing homework. I still like football—I like to score—but Mr. Van helped me understand that there was more for me out there.”
One of the ways Brooks attracts students to the program is through football—the thing he still loves most in the world. SAFE runs a free flag football league called “Yards for Success” for 25 middle school children from Franklin Square/Poppleton. The students play 7-on-7 games against neighborhood police officers, firefighters and community leaders to build relationships with and instill a sense of trust in authority figures.
The football games have been particularly poignant in the wake of Freddie Gray’s death and subsequent uprisings. Many of Brooks’ participants have expressed to him an unsettling disconnect between what they now know to be true about police and authority figures and what society and the media seems to indicate.
“In the city and this community a lot of kids grow up being taught that you don’t associate yourselves with police officers. Police officers are bad,” Brooks says. “We want them to know they’re not all what they’re depicted to be.”
Franklin Square eighth-grader Brian Rice, 13, says he joined SAFE because he loves football, but also because “I don’t want to grow up and just be hanging out in a bad neighborhood, just being outside around all the drug dealers.” Brian—who said he now wants to be a police officer (or a gym teacher) one day—enjoys the camaraderie he’s established with the community’s first responders. “They get to know us, so if anything ever happened, they could help us out and not just mess with us. We have a better relationship [with police] than some of these people out here on the streets.”
Local police and fire officials appreciate Brooks’ work. It makes their job easier. “Something like this where our guys can just come out here and be one-on-one with kids, and they’re having fun—I think this is great,” says Deputy Chief Shift Commander Karl J. Zimmerman (not pictured). “So later on, when they see them on the street, they won’t treat them like someone who doesn’t belong.”
“Some kids never get out of this community,” says Brooks, shown here after taking some of his participants to an Orioles game. “I know because I’m from this community. I know what these kids are facing. But I also know their potential. Just for them to see me—someone who lives in their same community—what I’ve experienced, it gives them hope.”
