]]>The Tennessean: http://www.tennessean.com/article/20100425/OPINION03/4250357/1054
Tennessee Voices
On March 23 a young man was killed down the street from my house after a gunman or gunmen emerged from an alley shortly after sunset and shot into a crowd of youths playing football in the street.
The young man died 10 yards from the doorsteps of a church and a half a block from another church that was holding services. According to media reports, as well as several conversations I had with neighborhood residents, the young man may have been an innocent bystander.
One of those at the crime scene, according to some residents, was the victim's brother. If true, then he most likely saw his brother die. Several days later, the young man's family drove through the neighborhood and stopped at the site of the shooting for a make-shift memorial. I approached the victim's brother and expressed my sympathy as he knelt to pay his final respects at a bed of flowers at the crime scene. The killing was the beginning of a violent three weeks in North Nashville, which included a Saturday daytime shooting two blocks from where the young man died.
Distrust, Profiling Abound
Though the North Nashville neighborhood is often stigmatized as a troubled neighborhood, in reality, the good majority of people are law-abiding. However, most of them belong to Nashville's forgotten community. Few job opportunities are available to the hundreds of youth who have too much idle time in the spring and summer months.
As a social scientist, I have examined various crime reduction strategies. As a resident who has been afforded more opportunities than most of my neighbors, I have observed Nashville's approach to remedying violent crime. Suppression alone will not solve violent crime in inner-city neighborhoods already traumatized by violence and neglect. The police department's zero-tolerance approach, emblematic in its Operation Safer Street initiative, leads to over-policing, distrust and racial profiling.
An alternative to suppression that Nashville may want to consider replicating is the Measure Y initiative (www.measurey.org) in Oakland, Calif. The $20 million annual program offers a holistic approach to crime reduction. This includes the hiring of six dozen police officers, many of whom belong to specialized units dedicated to community policing and school safety instead of suppression. Additional money is allocated for fire safety, emergency service, school-based conflict resolution counselors and community interventionists (respected community activists with ties to gangs and at-risk youth) who canvass high-crime neighborhoods in order to prevent retaliation killings in the aftermath of violence.
Forty percent of Measure Y is appropriated to a diverse array of social service and violent prevention programs led by grass-roots groups, youth and homeless rights activists, faith-based leaders, mental health counselors and agencies assisting sexual assault and domestic abuse survivors. Further, work force development programs and employment — a neglected component of most crime reduction strategies — targeting people with barriers to employment have been incorporated into the Measure Y initiative. These programs are then synthesized into a comprehensive crime reduction strategy, and statistically based evaluations are used to examine daily outreach activities.
Nashville is in desperate need of a crime reduction strategy, such as Measure Y, that is an alternative to suppression. This could prevent more killings such as the one that occurred at 10th Avenue North and Coffee Street.
Sekou Franklin, Ph.D., is associate professor in the political science department at Middle Tennessee State University.
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