Special Brooklyn screening for Flip the Script short film celebrates violence prevention efforts

Flip the Script is a city-funded apprenticeship for Brownsville residents ages 18–24 that culminated in a screening of an 11-minute film, "Click." The program combines filmmaking instruction with violence prevention, emphasizing "dropping a gun" alongside learning camera skills. Participants receive intensive six-to-one guidance from credible messengers—mentors who use former gang ties and neighborhood reputation—and a year of aftercare. The program pays participants $20 an hour and reports high attendance and graduation rates, job placements, college enrollment, cleared felony cases, and no cohort-involved gun violence since participation. The mayor allocated $500,000 to the program, comparable to Rikers' incarceration costs.

The screening culminates the current 12-person cohort's work from the city-funded apprenticeship for Brownsville youth, ages 18-24. But the program's curriculum centers as much around dropping a gun, as holding a camera. Participants stem from socially challenged backgrounds, some who joined with alleged ties to local rival crews. They receive "intensive" six to one guidance from credible messengers - mentors who leverage former gang ties and neighborhood reputation - followed by a year of aftercare.

Flip the Script, which operates out of the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice (MOCJ), pays each participant $20 an hour throughout the program. Almost everyone shows up and graduates, with many finding jobs and some enrolling in college after. More than 10 open felony cases were cleared and no one from the cohort has been involved in a gun violence incident since joining.

"This is the culmination," said MOCJ director Deanna Logan. "Because they think about it, you invite them for the internship [and] they are skeptical - they don't trust because there have been a lot of times where they've been disappointed, and then to see their face when they realize that this is different...we work with you at your pace where you want to be and then your vision is on the screen. It's amazing."

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