When Jamaican-American filmmaker Selena Blake first met Cozart Ruffin, she had her doubts about him, but now, the 25-year-old Long Island City resident is one of her heroes.
Ruffin had traveled a path taken by too many young people in the city's Queensbridge Houses. He had several run-ins with the law and is on probation for a third-degree weapons possession charge. But for him that's in the past, before he learned of his mother's life-or-death need for a kidney.
"At first I thought he was a thug," Blake said, referring to Ruffin's typical inner-city attire. "When I got to know him, I thought he was a really cool kid," she said. Blake calls Ruffin a hero for donating a kidney to his mother in February, staying out of trouble and consistently looking for a job and finding work.
Ruffin - who is now employed and buoyant about getting into the film industry - is concerned about a recent arrest that seems unfair. He was arrested and charged with criminal trespass for entering another building in the housing project he lives in.
On May 5, Ruffin was coming from a Queensbridge building across Vernon Ave. when he was stopped, questioned and arrested by housing police officers.
Ruffin feels the arrest stems from the lingering bad rap the housing project has in the minds of authorities.
Reports of drug dealings, gangs, related crimes and arrests have dominated the news about Queensbridge in recent years. To keep the drug problem under control, police have kept up a visible and active presence in the project.
But sometimes, innocents get caught up in the enforcement initiative at the project, said Blake, who is creating a documentary about famous and exceptional people from the complex. She hopes to counter the negative image the houses have and show that most Queensbridge residents are law-abiding.
"That's the problem going on here," she said, noting the lack of activities for young people in the neighborhood.
"He [Ruffin] wants to be a filmmaker, but here's nothing here for teenagers and young people; there are no resources," said Blake, who wants to establish a youth center after completing her film.
Originally published on July 10, 2005
工具 
帮助
