Operation Set To Combat Youth Violence

State officials including Governor Paterson met with New York City police officials yesterday to discuss rising gun violence that one senator said is "making a mockery of our outrage over the Sean Bell shooting."

The officials said they would be launching a plan called Operation SNUG to combat rising violence — especially among young people — in the wake of several shootings involving teenagers as young as 13 in recent weeks. Just last week, a series of shootings in Harlem left six teenagers wounded and two dead during the course of a weekend.

The meeting marked a turn in relations between black leaders and police after more than a month of public frustration in the black community concerning the recent acquittal of three detectives in the 2006 shooting of Sean Bell, an unarmed black man, in Queens.

At least for the moment, anger at the police department was set aside as black leaders sat down with police officials to discuss how to curb the violence. Shootings and murders in general are up slightly in the city this year after hitting record lows last year.

The group had requested that Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly attend after he appeared at a similar meeting in Far Rockaway following a high-profile shooting of a 15-year-old girl there last month. Instead, commanding officers from northern Manhattan, southern Queens, and other high-crime areas joined the group yesterday to talk about the recent incidents.

State Senator Eric Adams, who has been a vocal critic of the police department, said the shootings "cripple our efforts to prevent a repetition of the terrible incident," referring to Bell's shooting.

After the meeting, the officials said they would be working on rolling out a four-pronged approach that would include support for police, funding for youth and job programs, and getting celebrities involved.

The meeting was called by the state Senate minority leader, Malcolm Smith.