Shawn Lewis requests suggestions for addressing the murder and gang violence problem that is presently afflicting the Northside. Perhaps I can make a couple, but they are going to be long, and they are not new. I think I even pointed out that Minneapolis sometimes has as many Americans shot on a weekend, as there are Americans shot in Iraq over a weekend. For some families in "Impacted Neighborhoods" with the shooting and gang violence attracting them, their children might be safer if they were in Iraq. A rather sad commentary on our "Quality of Life".
First - Minneapolis needs to start taking the violence in impacted neighborhoods serious. They do not now seem to do so! For starters Minneapolis needs to bring the Minneapolis Police Department back to full force - NOT cut it while crime remains epidemic in impacted neighborhoods. There also needs to be some serious re-training of officers on the street to better and more efficiently do their jobs. But please, do not tell the folks in truly impacted neighborhoods that statistics for Minneapolis show it was much worse back in 1995. When you have just been threatened with a gun, or beaten and kicked by some gang trash, you just do not have time to listen to silly statistics. Those statistics are for people to gloat about in their good neighborhoods, NOT for the victims of the Minneapolis Containment Zone policy. It is worse in some neighborhoods tonight, that's right folks TONIGHT, than it has EVER been in the majority of Minneapolis neighborhoods for their entire history. Remember rape and murder in poor neighborhoods (let alone drug dealing) is NOT a social problem for most residents of Minneapolis. They believe it is where those sorts of thing are supposed to happen. Secondly - Minneapolis needs to realistically look at the root of gang violence. It is mainly the drug business and the attempts to get and maintain market share. Minneapolis needs to address drug dealing and gangs as if they are organized crime (which they are) and attack the organization that creates that violence. In the dictionary the word "hunt" is defined as "to eagerly seek". Minneapolis needs several police officers who are given the job of hunting drug dealers so that they are not allowed to do business anywhere in Minneapolis without a Cop jumping out and grabbing them. Minneapolis should recruit from its ranks forty or fifty of those who are most motivated and eager to "eagerly seek" drug dealers and street criminals. Prosecutors and the community organizations and residents should support this task force in an organized manner. Troubled neighborhoods should be given leeway to select, and be assigned, one or two officers part of each day who they know are "eager seekers", so that they can direct those officers to the targeted areas and toward targeted criminals who specifically cause the most problems. You do not need a garrison guard, you need a "hunter". Very often area residents have a much better handle on who, what, and when it comes to drug gangs. A handle and understanding that the police, or especially elected officials, may not. Minneapolis and its "better neighborhoods" need to start realizing that it is blatant institutional discrimination and racism to concentrate criminal behavior into a few impacted poor communities of color. Drug dealing on the street is just as important a problem if it is happening on 26th over North or Bloomington Avenue and Park and Franklin over South, just as important as it is at 50th and France or on Lake of the Isles. It is blatant discrimination to allow street felonies (drug dealing) to go on in the one neighborhood while providing the residents of "better" neighborhoods with a quality of life that the City brags about leading the nation in. I loved when RT Rybak said he had a dream of returning Minneapolis to the great city it once was. But hey, I have news for a lot of elected politicians and some of our civic leaders; those poor residents in poor neighborhoods of color have the same dreams. Their elders can remember when those were great neighborhoods and they thought Minneapolis was great quality place to live and raise families. Ninety percent of the people have not changed and still have the same dreams, but they need a little help to turn the nightmare they now live in back into that sweet dream. We also need to address the next generation of young gang members and potential "bangers". At present gang-members with their drug money and "cool" are a "good" example to poor kids of how to make money and be "bad" flaunting the law, instead of going to school and getting a real job. Minneapolis needs to make these gang-members a whole different kind of example of someone who is unrelentingly hunted, so that they cannot show their face on the street of a troubled neighborhood without a police officer being there to be his worst nightmare. We need to make it so that the least "cool" thing you could imagine would be doing something that the cop is going to be coming to get you for. So every young person knows that crime is not cool, and the only thing it pays for sure is time in a slammer or in a boot camp. Are there any of the old Marine Corps D.I.'s around from before they became supportive and politically correct? Just to adjust and fine-tune a few attitudes and minds? Finally those Northside neighborhoods need to start a little community based planning for a better neighborhood themselves. Get some professional help to realize your vision, but do the critical planning yourself. You already know not only your own problems, but also your own solutions better than any professional. Several years ago I told residents of my neighborhood that we did not get City support to address our crime epidemic because we were just at the bottom of the hill. The crap ran down hill, and we just could not get enough help to try to damn up the hillside from that crap running into our neighborhood. We had to raise our valley. So we started to fight to raise that valley, we started to look at raising it high enough so we were just to damn valuable to allow such things to go on. We started planning a better future for ourselves because we could never depend on elected leaders to lead us to anything but the ballot box. One of the reasons I appreciate CM Don Samuels is that he came from that fight himself. Don leads by walking down the street to the problem, not just to the ballot box. Hopefully, he can influence other CM's on addressing the crime problem; rather the other way around That community-planning process empowered my neighborhood as no Federal Empowerment Program has ever done for us. It seems to be working! Our small neighborhood has created about 130 million dollars in development. Something else also seems to be happening, people started to believe that they themselves and their neighborhood was too valuable to allow the criminals to stay. So many of them have been forming those relationships with police to address crime. Ask Officer Dan Wells if he has ever had the support and relationship with a neighborhood that he has with ours. Ask my neighborhood if they have ever had the same respect, support and service from ANY police officer. Both the neighborhood and the officer will say, "hell no"! By the way it was not Honeywell and Allina that cleaned up and addressed crime on Franklin Avenue. They stopped at about 24th Street. It was the residents willing to fight to get resources and fix their own problems. It was neighbors and businesses forming that relationship with OUR police officers. Funny how that "OUR" changes things. The police became OUR'S and we became THEIR'S. Makes for much more "Eagerly Seeking" when they think of us as "their's"! Sure some City fathers and mothers may have gotten egos and toes stomped on a little in the process, but hey that is what happens when you stand in the way of peoples' dreams. The Wednesday sermon is ended, go in peace. Jim Graham, Ventura Village, "the once troubled Phillips Community", Third Precinct, Sixth Ward of Minneapolis >"It is always an utter folly to underestimate the lure and attraction of a great evil. The whitened bones of their victims litter the highways and byways of mankind's history. Stopped only by the few willing to pay the ultimate price and make a stand." - Toe< REMINDERS: 1. Think a member has violated the rules? Email the list manager at [EMAIL PROTECTED] before continuing it on the list. 2. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. For state and national discussions see: http://e-democracy.org/discuss.html For external forums, see: http://e-democracy.org/mninteract ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Un-subscribe, etc. at: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
