On Friday the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel provided community leaders the opportunity to discuss crime and provide advice to the new police chief, Violent Crime: What impact does it have on Milwaukee? What must we do?
It is lengthy and worth reading.
Mayor Tom Barrett:...and we will continue to have a sense of urgency on this issue because it does affect families, it affects companies and businesses in this city, and it affects the quality of life for everyone who's in Milwaukee.
The Mayor is correct. No one escapes the scourge of crime. It impacts everyone from the resident of the safest to the least safe neighborhood. It affects the downtown based financial institutions and the manufacturing plant in the suburbs.
Capt. Michael Young: There is no acceptable level of violent crime to be had in any city, particularly Milwaukee...But to think that the police or MPS or the courts are by themselves going to impact violent crime - make it go away - that's not going to happen. We need families to start taking more active involvement with their children.
Right off the bat the Captain nails it. There must be a culture developed that no level of crime is acceptable - that violence is not tolerated from the youngest member of the community to the oldest. This message needs to be marketed and repeated from every community leader no matter how large their audience. Like others in the panel Captain Young notes the role of parents and families. The parents must take the lead. But so many of the households are dysfunctional. Waiting for some of the parents to better raise their children without community support is like waiting for the Braves to return from Atlanta.
Tom Schneider, executive director, COA Youth & Family Centers: One of the things that sticks out very clearly to me is that the community shouldn't be making a choice between tough enforcement and crime prevention, because all of the evidence establishes that only a combination of both enforcement and prevention working together actually reduces crime.
Not much to add here. Comprehensive, complete, accurate. Tom was always brighter than the average bear. How you doing, buddy?
Sheriff David Clarke: I'm not one of those that believe that poverty causes crime. I just don't believe that. I think that underclass values contribute toward a life of poverty...We've seen an emergence of the underclass and their twisted values, because with this exodus out of the city of middle class families, which contribute positively toward a sense of community, that void by their leaving has been filled by the underclass.
Oh my. Too bad Sheriff Clarke does not see a connection between his "underclass" and poverty. Half of what Clarke is saying is straight from the respected academic, William Julius Wilson. The problem is Clarke ignores the recommendations of Wilson while he borrows from the analysis. Wilson wrote in his excellent book, The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and the Public Policy that the flight of the middle class to the suburbs created a vacuum in the inner city that was filled by gang and drug culture. Wilson would be horrified to learn that Clarke does not see the economic connections.*
Rev. Harold Moore:I think that until we begin to deal with this whole issue of poverty and accept the fact that it is poverty and things connected to it that really drives the crime factor.
If Clarke does not want to heed Wilson, perhaps he will hear Reverend Moore. Reverend Moore gets it. he should, for this following observation is one of the most noteworthy contributions from the panelists: "Well, in order for parents to properly raise their children, they need jobs, jobs that are going to support and sustain a family."
Kit Murphy McNally: There's a really great study out now that you take a middle class child and put him in a really dysfunctional poor environment and he begins to show the behaviors of those around him and you take a child out of there . . . and that child can change dramatically.
The executive director of the Benedict Center knows and understands. Potential donors should ask her what agencies to fund and they will spend their money wisely.
Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm: For the first time, you're starting to see people coming together again at the neighborhood level and starting to share these resources and share the information that allows us to try to solve these problems.
Another thoughtful observation, and this from the prosecutor who is normally worried only about incarceration. Chisholm gets it. Everyone in the world can add resources to fighting crime and poverty, but sucess is built on the neighborhood and the community.
Father Jose Moreno: Getting to know the community. Getting to know the real problems of the community, the fears, the hopes, if there's any hopes, like really understanding who we are, how we live, what struggles and problems we have on the south side.
A fitting summation. Those providing resources form the outside need to know the community if they are going to assist in making change.
*Here is more on Wilson and Milwaukee - a post from last May, as part of an dialog with Rick Esenberg: Urban Poverty. A portion follows:
I believe that urban violence is driven by poverty and a culture of despair. Eliminating poverty will go along way to change that culture, which will in turn, motivates others to move beyond poverty. In Part 4, Esenberg writes:
- Gurda (echoing a common refrain of the Journal Sentinel editorial board) refers to the drop in "good" (commonly meant to refer to manufacturing) jobs. I think that the degree to which people were paid large amounts of money for low-skill labor in the past has been overstated but, in any event, the decline in manufacturing employment has been going on for 30 years.
There is not, as Gurda writes, a shortage of good jobs. There is a shortage of good jobs that require little education and nominal work skills. The problem for the "the able-bodied young men gathered on the street at midday" is not that they are ready for opportunities that society has failed to provide for them, but that the cultural milieu in which they have been raised has left them unprepared for the opportunities that exist.Rick: we must really look at The Truly Disadvantaged, especially the sections where Wilson argues precisely that point. There is the challenge: we must either raise the level of education and/or raise the level of all the qualities that fall under the category of 'job readiness.'