Lakeview in need of a few good men

It’s time to act. This was the message Sherwyn Besson and Gary Preston delivered last Friday night at the first of what they hope to be many “Men of Lakeview” community meetings.

Sitting in a small room at the Harold A. Walker Memorial Park in Lakeview last week, the two men spoke about the spike in crime in their 1.2-square-mile community. They discussed the lack of mentorship for young black men in Lakeview, the inadequate education they receive in the Malverne school district and how, together, these problems create “homegrown” criminals and “mediocre” adults.

Besson and Preston called the meeting — with the help of NAACP Lakeview President Bea Bayley — to bring the matter to light and to develop a plan of action with community members. “We never had crime,” Bayley said at the start of meeting, “and all of a sudden we’re having an epidemic.”

She stood beside a poster board covered in newspaper clippings reporting crimes committed in Lakeview or by Lakeview men and boys. There were some 13 reports of crimes since January alone.

“[The problem is] growing,” Besson said, “and we want to head it off before it gets a whole lot worse and this becomes just another black impoverished community.”

The education situation
Besson, a 12-year resident of Lakeview, is a business teacher at Malverne High School. He said he has a firsthand view of the development of boys in the district, and it alarms him. “I am not confident,” he told meeting attendees. “I cannot sell you on the education our boys are receiving.”

In the school district, boys from Lakeview have the highest rates of suspension and expulsion and some of the lowest scores on standardized tests, Besson said. They are being pushed through each year, he added, and are not prepared for the grades they are in. Part of the problem, according to Besson, is that they have no role models in the district, no mentors, no one to whom they can relate — no one who looks like them.