Bill Shore’s Letters

Letter for Hector Robles

Originally published: July 2001

Dear Friend,

I'm inviting you to journey with us once again. Yesterday Chuck Scofield and I drove to Paterson, New Jersey, to meet with the Chief Assistant Prosecutor for Homicide Investigations, who we called after reading the following last week in the New York Times (June 29, 2001):

"One by one, the 11 boys sat down with police detectives to answer questions about their encounter with a homeless alcoholic who was nameless to them.... None used the word murder in explaining how a band of boys had beaten the man to death, ending a violent spree on the last day of school. Rampaging through a city neighborhood, the band had already bloodied a boy's face and knocked a deliveryman's teeth out by the time they came upon the slight Hispanic man drinking beer in the shadows of two tired factory buildings.... He was homeless but he had a name, Hector Robles, as well as several siblings who kept a protective eye on him. He was buried Tuesday, at the age 42. And the 11 boys, who range in age from 15-17, are being held in a juvenile detention center charged with killing the man they considered a bum."

As you may know, I'm trying to write my next book for Random House about acts of conscience. I've also been struck by those times and places stained by the glaring absence of conscience. The corner of Jasper and Totowa streets in Paterson seemed to be one of them. It was the most mindless form of brutality, not the quick and easy carnage of gunfire, but the harder work of battering someone to death with fists and kicks. Until a spleen was ruptured.

Equally stunning was the failure of Paterson's community institutions. This mob of 15-17 year-olds poured out of the large high school named after John F. Kennedy. We drove to the front door of the school. I can't tell you anything about its test scores, reading levels or teacher quality. I do know the school failed.

This particular form of year-end violence has a history in Paterson. Local businesses feared it. The school anticipated it. The police weren't surprised by it. But all failed to prevent it. I don't know a thing about the police force in Paterson, how the rookies are trained, whether they practice community policing. I do know the police force failed.

Hector Robles had been homeless and on the streets for nearly 15 years. A quiet man, he favored a tire as his stoop. His siblings frequently checked on him. Paterson has homeless shelters, alcoholism clinics, and mental health associations, many of which were established for people just like Hector. I don't know how overtaxed they are, or short-changed of public funds. I do know that at 10:45 on the morning of June 20 they all failed.

Parents and families failed too. The catastrophic failure of an O-ring on the space shuttle is easier to understand than an entire community and its institutions failing catastrophically like this at the same time.

On the way into town we stopped to talk with Dr. Richard Guild, who runs Straight and Narrow, a comprehensive health and social service agency which helps many of the homeless and addicted. They have been a frequent Share Our Strength grant recipient. They house 200 residents in therapy for drug or alcohol problems, and underlying issues. About half of whom have been victims of sexual abuse. They have one psychiatrist on site 5-6 hours a week. Dr. Guild has worked there 25 years. We asked him about what happened to Hector Robles. "This is the nuts and bolts of daily life in Paterson," he explained.

The NY Times ran a photo of the site where Robles was kicked and beaten. We drove around until we found it. One of those shrines with notes and flowers had sprung up to compensate for everyone's ability to ignore Robles while he was alive. It's situated near the corner of a busy street, between the two old red brick factory buildings where they say he enjoyed the quiet. The tire upon which Mr. Robles sat was filled with candles. Chuck and I stood there silently, alone, with nothing but the thoughts and prayers of all of those who are part of Share Our Strength.

Across the bricks, someone spray-painted in white letters: R.I.P. Hector Robles 1958-2001. Next to it there is a white sheet taped to the bricks with a photo of Robles in the middle and his name and date of death spray-painted in red. The sheet covers three-quarters of an American flag that someone hung on that spot first. That seems appropriate. The flag failed too.

The grainy black and white New York Times photo made it look like an alley where a man could have died. But standing there in the sunshine as neighbors went about their business, and shoppers walked in and out of stores, and children played, it didn't seem possible that a man could be murdered on this spot, on a summer afternoon, for being homeless in America in 2001.

That's what we drove 400 miles to Paterson and back to try to understand. That's what all of us with Share Our Strength must always do: we must go, bear witness, seek to understand, and eventually help to heal. If you can't go, we'll go for you. That's what your steady support of Share Our Strength makes possible. There's not a grimy street corner or forsaken desert where we won't attempt to bring the spirit of sharing strength, community, and love.

I'll write back soon to tell you about the rest of our day with Paterson's chief homicide investigator, Bill Purdy. He'll be prosecuting the 11 juvenile defendants. 15 years on the job gives him a unique perspective on violence, gangs, homeless men and women, how we raise and protect children, and where conscience fits. There were matters he could not discuss and others he could which I later wished he hadn't.

Thanks again for staying with us on the journey. More to follow soon...

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