By Joshua Tapper and Cecile Dehesdin

A raucous brawl outside a Harlem elementary school last week left three teenagers injured–one shot, one stabbed, one slashed—and has driven community leaders to pledge to eradicate gun violence on their streets and keep Harlem’s children safe.

“I have tears in my eyes; I’m saddened,” said Community Board 10 Chairman Franc Perry at a protest the evening of the melee. “This is absurd, disgusting, humiliating. It’s been happening for far too long. When are we going to recognize that we need to take guns out of our children’s hands?”

The Rev. Vernon Williams, who has been in contact with the families, identified the injured boys as Jonathan and Joshua Bell, 17-year-old twin brothers, and a teenaged friend, whose name could not be ascertained. They were wounded in a gang-related fight outside Public School 123, at West 141st Street and Frederick Douglass Boulevard, at 8:15 a.m. on Oct. 5. Days earlier, the teens had been involved in another fight on West 141st Street, according to 32nd Precinct inspector Kevin Catalina. They were taken to Harlem Hospital, but have all been released, Rev. Williams said.

To prevent retaliation, police have installed a Sky Watch tower, an elevated booth that allows officers to scan the street, at the corner of West 140th Street and Frederick Douglass Boulevard, and will be stationed near the school mornings and afternoons.

Despite this latest incident, and exasperation from locals–”I’m to the point where I want to get out of the city,” said Lisa James, a mother of three boys–shootings in the 32nd Precinct have fallen dramatically, from 47 at this point last year to 25 this year. (See accompanying chart on gun violence in New York.)

Still, the violence has galvanized Harlem leaders and organizations. At an emergency meeting on Oct. 6 at a senior center on West 124th Street, more than 60 people crammed the room to join an impassioned dialogue on youth violence—including representatives from Community Board 10, the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, the Nation of Islam, and officials, among them likely district attorney Cy Vance.

Emotions flared as speaker after speaker called for neighborhood unity and compassion. “I’m pleading we don’t just have unity when bullets fly,” said Shaka Shakur, city chairman of the New Black Panther Party. “We are killing each other and we are tired of burying each other.”

Many exhibited frustration at the lack of community response to youth violence. Abdul Kareem Muhammad, vice-president of the Harlem Clergy and Community Leaders Coalition, which organized the meeting, deplored a chronic unwillingness to build sustained social programs like after-school activities. Unlocking playgrounds after school, like the one near his home on West 133rd Street and Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard, provides recreational space that can keep kids off the street, he said.

Grassroots activism is key to community peace, said Rev. Williams, who leads the Perfect Peace Ministry and is known as “Pastor on Deck” for his penchant for breaking up Harlem gang violence. “This is a challenge to all of us to be responsible for our community,” he said. Whereas the police, when called, are going to “suppress, this is about cultivation.”

A lack of paternal role models pushes teenagers to the street, Rev. Williams also said, stressing that “parents have to start being parents.” Without anyone to look up to, Williams said, teenagers begin to seek comfort in a gang. “We have to come out and captivate them,” he said. “They’re not animals, they’re human beings.”

Harlem has reached a critical juncture, said Tomasina Riddick, co-founder of the Black Law Enforcement Alliance, at a parents meeting the next night, sponsored by Harlem Children’s Zone at Public School 194. The community has to organize, she said. “We can hold our elected officials responsible, we can hold our police department responsible, our schools, our community organizations, our clergy, but it’s for us to do.” In a community that has seen a major reduction in crime since 2001—murders, for example, have fallen nearly 40 percent in the 32nd Precinct—a distrust of police remains.

A common perception is that young black men are accosted by police simply for hanging out in groups–51 percent of 531,159 people frisked in New York in 2008 were black, according to the New York Civil Liberties Union. “Handcuffs don’t solve our problems, we solve our problems,” said Shakur, promoting a Black Panthers program called “WUCUSU”—meaning “Wake Up, Clean Up, Stand Up”—that mentors black youth.

Catalina agreed that police presence in Harlem is not the sole answer. “This is really a community problem, not a police department problem,” he said at the parents meeting. “Gang violence is going to go away when the community gets together and says it’s not going to tolerate it anymore, and when the community starts talking to its sons and daughters and says, ‘Hey, I’m not having it.’”