Police Officer Honored For Saving Kids From Deadly Gang Life

RIVERHEAD, NY — One of Riverhead's finest was honored in New York City Thursday night for his tireless efforts to keep young people from becoming entangled in deadly gang life.

Riverhead Police Officer Richard Freeborn was honored at a Council For Unity event held at the Harmonie Club; he was presented with the "Police Officer of the Year Award" by Patti McDonald, widow of Officer Stephen McDonald, a NYPD patrolman shot and paralyzed in 1986.

The "Champions for Children" 2019 Awards Dinner celebrated Freeborn, as well as five others, for their contributions to the life-saving Council for Unity organization.

Founded by Robert DeSena, Council for Unity is an organization that aims to give youth searching for belonging and a sense of family new purpose so that they can escape the culture of gangs. Council for Unity, a not-for-profit organization, specializes in reducing violence in schools and communities by replacing a culture of despair with a culture of hope.

"The Council for Unity was born out of racial violence in 1975 at John Dewey High School in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn," DeSena said. "Its original members were racists and gang leaders. In the span of one year they transformed into a band of brothers and interrupted, maybe for the first time, America's centuries long struggle with race and hostility towards immigrants."

DeSena continued: "As a nation we attempted to solve these issues through a Civil War and through consequent legislation to secure the rights of all our people. The assumption was that these mandates would produce a desired outcome of tolerance and unity. That has not happened. But in a tiny dot on the American landscape in 1975 that problem ended not by mandate but by the intention of our original leaders who exclaimed that this scourge to our nation ends in this place and in this time. That was the beginning of a 45-year journey that has fostered tolerance and unity in schools, communities, police departments and prisons. Where Council for Unity plants its flag, a new ecology of hope and possibility emerges."

Nowhere has Council for Unity worked its miracles more visibly than in Riverhead, which has long been seen as a model for the program. CFU was embraced by the police department, in an adult/family partnership in the community and in the Suffolk County Correctional Facility — where dramatic changes take place in the lives of inmates who find new family, new hope, and new beginnings through Council for Unity. "In the jail, miracles are occurring every day," DeSena said.

At the Suffolk County Correctional Facility, former gang members are involved in the CFU program and are rebuilding shattered lives; a youth tier to the CFU program for younger gang members gives younger inmates the chance to begin again. A group meets every Friday and gang members discuss ways to slay their inner dragons and find new tools to face life and forge positive relationships.

"The Riverhead model is so significant because it's holistic," said DeSena. "We're in the schools, the community, the police department and the prison – all are integrated. Riverhead is a model for the country."

But it's by reaching kids before they become incarcerated, in the classroom, where dramatic changes are evidenced.

And that's where Freeborn comes in. Freeborn, who began his career as a police officer in 2001, first completed assignments for the joint Riverhead and Suffolk County Police gang task forces. Next, he was assigned to the Riverhead Police Department's COPE Unit, where he was first introduced to Council for Unity in 2006 and took the program into the high school.

Stepping up to the podium Thursday, Freeborn was visibly moved. "The award, he said, "is the best I have ever received."

Riverhead is a unique community, he said, with crime passed down among generations in many families; he has had to lock up fathers and sons. But through Council For Unity, he has had the chance to break the cycle of despair.

Today, as a member of the detective division, Freeborn still regularly attends the Council For Unity class at Riverhead High School when he's off-duty.

Over the past 12 years, the CFU program at the high school has seen an incredible transformation, Freeborn said.

"My first experience with the class was awkward and adversarial, as the relationship between the students, community and the police department was oftentimes, and historically, adversarial," he said. "Over time, the perceptions of both the police, students, and the community changed for the better and miracles happened."

Council for Unity, he said, in his humble opinion, is a "class about life; it is a culture in and of itself that is ever-evolving and ever-changing to bring about a culture of understanding, change, harmony and family between our students, police department, families and our community as a whole — because, after all, we are all in this thing called life together."

Freeborn has said he'd like to write about all the stories over the years, all the lives transformed, "all the miracles."

After 13 years of being involved with CFU in the Riverhead Central School District, Freeborn said that the adversarial relationship that once existed between students, police and the community has been "fully replaced by the students welcoming the police into their school and their communities wholeheartedly," he said.

In the past, when he walked into the high school, Freeborn said he got suspicious looks and an icy reception."The kids would be like, 'Why are the police in the school?'" After six or seven months, everything changed.

Now, if he misses a day, the students want to know where he's been. "They now question why the cops aren't at the school if they can't be there because they expect the police to be at the school, and they expect and welcome them to be in the class, not as just cops, but as equals as family — as part of the Council for Unity family. They went from hating us, to wanting to know why we are not there."

His voice filled with emotion, Freeborn describe a student who came into class a freshman, "tattooed from head to toe a full member of the Bloods gang. He was all into the gang. He hated us. We locked up his family, locked up his friends and other people he knew."

The teen, Freeborn said, took the class for four years, from grade 9 through 12. Students at Riverhead High School get credit for the class for the first two years; after that, it becomes an elective and they take it because they want to. "This kid took it because he wanted to," he said. "Not only did he take it for all four years but he got himself out of the Bloods, had his tattoos removed."

One day near Christmas, Freeborn and his partner were working, driving around the Tanger mall, when a person came running at their car full speed. "Usually when someone comes running at the police, that's a problem," he said. "I looked, I still couldn't see who it was, and then, all of a sudden, he came into view, and it was this kid. I asked him, 'Are you okay?' He said, 'I saw you driving around and I wanted to come over and say 'Merry Christmas.'"

His voice filled with emotion, Freeborn smiled. "And that's just one story. I could stand up here all night and tell you story after story about how Council has affected our one chapter in Riverhead. Imagine what it could do for the whole world."