Breaking the Cycle Speakers

Walking down a Brooklyn, New York, street with some older ‘friends’ (gangstas) one day, 15-year-old Hashim Garrett was shot six times by another boy with a semi-automatic rifle. Suffering a spinal cord injury, Hashim was paralyzed from the waist down, yet he has never let his paralysis hold him back from a life of remarkable change and achievements.

As an author, Mr. Arnold has written 11 books on subjects covering education, raising children, suffering, peace, dealing with violence, forgiveness. Mr. Arnold writes simply with young people in mind – he writes in the form of stories, real stories of real people, which children and young people love. Mr. Arnold has a natural rapport with young people. He has an amazing gift of relating to the everyday life issues that confront students and giving them good advice on dealing with them.

Born and raised on Long Island, Charles Williams started his police career in 1985 at the New York City Police Academy assigned to Housing. After a 3-year stint in the South Bronx he came to Cornwall in 1988. After being a patrolman and sergeant for the Town of Cornwall Police 1988-1991 he trans­ferred to the Village Police in 1991 as a patrolman, promoted to sergeant in 1995, and then Chief of Police in 2001. Charles Williams has been teaching "Introduction to Criminal Justice", a senior only elective, at New York Military Academy in Cornwall since 2003.

Kareem was born on May 21, 1982 and raised in Brooklyn, New York. He is the youngest of three brothers, raised by two Christian parents. He graduated from Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School in Brooklyn in June of 2000. After graduating from high school, he attended college in Orangeburg, South Carolina. At college he started in the fast lane: partying, women, drugs, alcohol. On the way home to a Christmas break, he shared a blunt with a fellow traveler; a questionable character. Several days later he came down with flu-like symptoms, which was diagnosed as Bacterial Meningitis.

As a young man, Sergio was an extremely active part of gang life. In one of his recent presentations he told the students: "I loved gangs – I simply love the life, the support, the caring, the protection. But I did NOT join gang violence; I thought I was part of a Brotherhood!" Then the reality – the violence that kills so many, one of them his brother and friend; the violence that put his best friend in prison for 12 years for following on decisions he, Sergio, had made.

A detective with the New York Police Department, Steven McDonald was questioning three youths in Central Park one hot summer day in 1986 when one of them shot him three times – a brutal attack that he narrowly survived, but which left him paralyzed from the neck down, and dependent on a tracheotomy. He had been married less than a year, and his wife was two months pregnant. Currently, McDonald is speaking to thousands of students in schools up and down the East Coast.