Crash tested in the name of security
Heppard, 32, was recognized as one of the block's children, back when Heppard, his mother and two siblings share a townhouse near the grandmother of the boy, the same block where Heppard was shot nine times as a teenager.
The guy was one of the many boys in her neighborhood who have caught up with the older drug traffickers.
Now he was there, always looking Except now, he was looking for something else, so it was of course Heppard car well Nice, a woman and a SEPTA cop now, too crazy.
Could he help him find a job, he asked Heppard He wanted to get off the streets.
Heppard phoned and asked a friend to openings of a Family Dollar store they had a little, but not for someone with the guy's file.
Heppard gave him her number and told her to stay in contact another name to add to a Heppard list Guard, including the brother of Heppard, boys who are caught with older and have paid guys a heavy price before reaching puberty.
A perfect example of a crash test dummy, he said later.
Indeed, Councilman Curtis Jones Jr asked the people gathered at a recent hearing on youth violence if we never heard of the term crash test dummy used to describe the boys who do the dirty work for older guys who want to be disconnected from activities that get younger or taken to jail Nobody had, not that way anyway Pennsylvania has an army of crash test dummies, with more people sentenced to life in prison as juveniles than any state in the country.
Heppard hadn t heard the term before we talk either, nor did many others I asked, but it's used a lot in social media is here just one of many tweets I found the use of dummy Bunch collision n - s here following one after the other, if they ain t in prison, they unseated.
The behavior and its consequences are not new The challenges just seem more At the hearing of youth violence, Joel Fein, director of the Violence Prevention Initiative at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, said that CHOP doctors in emergency room treated more than 400 victims of juvenile bullets in 2015.
In his book, Living the dramatic Community, Conflict and Culture between downtown boys, David Hardy, professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, he describes the socialization between cohorts and consequences, he said, will beyond the crime to education, work and relationships and contraception.
To pin on these guys over who are in a sense close to being younger, we are concerned seems to miss the point, he said the word he found too provocative.
Oh, there are other names, depending on the involvement and motivation - young bulls, soldiers, puppets, followers, you get the idea, but this term - crash dummy - and all that it implies has under my skin and stayed there.
What has he said about these children and their future if they were considered disposable What he told us that there are children that someone came undervalued with such offensive term to describe them.
No wonder we're still wringing our hands about how to stop the epidemic of youth violence No wonder boys and girls are, by choice or circumstance, their older counterparts - sometimes related, sometimes only a few years - in prison cells or the grave.
We spend a lot of time debating and discussing past and present generations, from baby boomers to Generation X to Millennials But a sub-generation under the radar and under siege.
Like many people I have spoken the word, brother Heppard agent 29 years old Derrick Heppard, a term exception, even though his older brother, he says fits the description When he was arrested for selling the drugs 11, he considered himself a prot g of older drug traffickers.
I thought I'd get two or three months, he said his first sentence that I arrived two years he's been out for two years for his last visit six years in prison.
I just wanted to take care of myself, he said that his mother, who has since died, was ill and could not work t his father was gunshot victim, as was the father of Kemba, which was killed in a drive-by in Camden in 1989 when Kemba was 6 years old.
It is a story that I hear over and over in Philadelphia outside Myers Recreation Center Southwest Philly, some 13 and 14 years told me about navigation in their mines southwest area where peers celebrate reaching 20 years as an important step often is.
I have friends who used to do well in school and their brethren begin to do things in the streets, and they follow their brothers and they meander just like them, Lateef said Haddad, 13.
For Rasheed Smith, 23, the influence was all around him, his house and his neighborhood when Smith was released from prison after six years in 2012, he participated in Philadelphia CeaseFire Cure Violence, an intervention program violence works with high risk years young now, it is one of their younger mediators of violence, trying to reach children.
All that we call if we do not do something, we will lose them, he said that if we do t step now and really help not only sell dreams because a lot of young guys, man they have sold dreams lifetime.
During the two years that Derrick Heppard was released from prison, he's seen very little change in the streets he used to run on, and struggling to stay away as he seeks a job to support his 5 year old daughter.
The city is littered with crash test dummies, he says you have to think about the guy who really makes big drug dealers - you do not see them catching shootings or small drugs they're not around where why they minions to do if they're locked up that's something big These kids, they just want to be down, a part of something.
I hear that all the time with children educations eighth year with one parent or no parents at home, they watch their front doors and down their blocks and form relationships scope of survival, sometimes as basic as eating a police officer recently told me about some children who are arrested for stealing food from a pizza delivery Their reason they were hungry to the corner store in the old quarter Heppard, 50 and Parrish, Marvin Nunez, who lost three relatives to the store in a triple slaying during a 2012 robbery, said children come regularly and magnetic chips shelves It didnt chase, I continue to tell them tell me if they are hungry they do not have to steal the men arrested for killing his parents were about 30, with both records that date back to when they were young.
At the hearing where Jones crash dummy long-term test, a bereaved mother has appealed to politicians In March, Felicia Pendleton 20 year old son Jayvon Mitchell Pendleton was shot by a 15 year old with the shadow of a mustache in his mug shot, and 20 years old, it was too late to save her son from one of these models supposedly accident, but maybe she could save her son's friends.
Do all of us in this room think that these guys want to be there, she asked if we think that if they had a choice, they would choose that life.
At the corner of 50th and Reno, Heppard officer where he was killed when he was 17, he wondered if the faded red stain on the concrete was his blood from when someone pumped nine bullets him, he could have been or could have been bloodshed countless other boys taken since.
As we were there talking, two women came by working at the plant in West Creek Recreation Center around the corner, another, Wanda Logan, is running for state representative of the 190th Legislative District .
They wanted to talk about a meeting of the association of parents in primary school James Rhoads was having to talk about violence gun almost every night performing in the area just as someone had week sprayed bullets near the school while students were inside was hurt, this time.
Ubiñas Generation Crash Test Dummy, generation, crash test.