Straight Talk on Guns

One of Frank Jackson’s first acts as mayor was to institute a youth jobs program, reasoning that if underprivileged Cleveland kids had some way of making a few legal bucks it would help to keep them out of trouble. Problem was — and is — a few young people are too far gone; they’re too immersed in thug life for a jobs program (or virtually anything else) to get them back on track. It’s really not the majority of them that are acting out, but they do get all the headlines with their vicious behavior.

The mayor obviously has now come to the conclusion — based in part on the fact Cleveland’s 134 murders last year was the highest figure in 13 years — that the only way to stop these armed bad actors is to body slam them, and body slam them hard before they hurt someone. When the police catch thugs with guns... a judge should let the gavel of justice fall on them harshly. No stern lectures, no probation, send them straight to the age-appropriate prison, be it juvenile or adult. Enough really is enough.

The public has a right to safety, and statistics prove that young Black men between the ages of 15 and 25, who have already embraced thug life, are twice as likely to die in those streets as they are in prison. We’ll actually be doing them a favor, saving them from themselves (and other thugs, who won’t think twice about busting a cap in their ass). I truly believe that many of these young men actually feel safer in prison (where there are no guns, and there can only be fist and maybe knife fights) than they feel on the street. I further believe that’s part of the reason recidivism rates are so high. Even high school dropouts can come to the very logical conclusion that it’s better to be safely locked down than to wind up six feet under. This is just ghetto commonsense.

But a police crackdown is a stopgap measure at best ... and I think Jackson (and every law enforcement officer involved in it) knows this fact. They are very hard to sustain in the long run. True, a crackdown will get some guns off the street (which will lower the murder rate for a time), but since we live in a capitalist society the immutable law of supply and demand will eventually kick in. When there are fewer guns on the street, the price for them will go up ... and continue to go up until the demand is met. Period.

There is simply no way under the sun we’re going to “police” our way out of the street violence problem we’re in. It has never worked anywhere in the country (in the long term), and won’t work here. If it’s any solace, Cleveland is not alone; most urban areas in America are experiencing the exact type of increased violence.

But all a crackdown can do is to temporarily buy us a little time — a brief respite, maybe a year at the most — to come up with real solutions. Something else besides a crackdown has to be done. There has to be a real — and I do mean real — effort mounted to reach out to those younger teens that have yet to pick up a gun, but who (absent some kind of adult intervention) most certainly will. Someone has to step up and play “Dutch uncle” to these youth before we inevitably lose them to the thug and drug culture. But who?

To put a human face on the problem allow me to create an archetypical Black youth and call him Ray-Ray, a kid who, at age 14, is being raised by a single mom, living in the projects with his two siblings. He not dumb, but he’s not doing well in school either. The only thing Ray-Ray knows about his father is what his mother told him: He was shot to death on a street corner 13 years ago.

Now, I’ve attended meeting after meeting where the subject of how to help Ray-Ray was the main focus, and, after listening to a large number of very well-meaning — but largely clueless — people, I’m not the least bit surprised that we haven’t come up with a way to help Ray-Ray. Now, some will take exception at that “clueless” statement, but if they have solutions, then why do we still have the problem?

The reasons we haven’t been able to help Ray-Ray are three-fold: One, some — maybe even most — people don’t give a damn about Ray-Ray ... all they want is personal safety, peace and quiet. Ray-Ray could shrivel up and die for all they care, just as long as he doesn’t impact negatively on their lives; two, the community activists and so-called gang intervention experts in Cleveland are viciously at each others throats almost as badly as the rival gangs, so they’re not much help, and, three ... middleclass solutions have never worked very well on underclass problems.

Here’s an example of the kind of sheer stupidity we’re bringing to the table in our attempt to solve the problem of Ray-Ray: There is an urban legend floating about Cleveland that the reason there are so many guns in the streets is because — not get this — the ATF (the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms) was shipping a train load of guns somewhere to dispose of them (where, no one knows) and the railroad car they were in was derailed, spilling it’s deadly contents along the tracks near E. 55th and at I-90. Thugs supposedly just rushed in and helped themselves.

I wish I were kidding about this ghetto fantasy, but I’m not. People really believe this nonsense. This story is being told by some of the people who ostensibly want to assist kids, and here’s why they’re telling it: This kind of tall tale makes all of the killings of Black kids not the fault of the young Black thugs, but the fault of the ATF for being so careless with the guns in the first place. It’s “the man” who is at fault under this construct ...the almighty White man. I’ve even heard it said at one meeting that the train derailment wasn’t an accident at all ... just part of “the plan” to get guns on the streets so that Black kids could kill each other off. Well, if it were a diabolical “plan,” then it damn sure is working, and working very well. But, mark my words, we’ll never solve the problems of our children if we talk like children ourselves.

The other Blacks attempting to help Ray-Ray are perhaps saner, but just as ineffective. These are the middleclass Black males — often members of the same college fraternities and other organizations — who feel an obligation to do something about the problem of Black youths killing each other ... if for no other reason than the thugs are an embarrassment. But I have to admit that I’m sometimes embarrassed by Ray-Ray and his behavior too. But neither organizations comprised of Black professionals, nor well-intentioned Black clergy for that matter, can solve Ray-Ray’s problem. I’m about to explain why, but before doing so I need to warn my more genteel readers that my writing is about to get very real, so you might want to quit reading at this point. Here comes the title “Straight Talk” part.

Ray-Ray is not going to listen to the Black professionals because, in his mind, they are as White as the people whom he feels don’t give a damn about him, and he’s not going to listen to a Black preacher because he has never set foot inside a church ... except maybe to bury one of his young friends killed in a drive-by shooting. Religion only works on the religious.

But there are two programs that are working, that are showing promising signs with the Ray-Ray’s of the world; one is in Charlotte, and the other is in Chicago. In Charlotte black police officers step up to Ray-Ray and basically say, “Look, you ain’t done nothing yet for us to bust your ass, but the way your life is heading, it won’t be long ... now is there anything we can do to help you before we have to arrest you?” In Chicago a similar message is delivered, but by formerly incarcerated persons who have turned their lives around. Why do these program work? Because these are the people that Ray-Ray will best respond to and they will be there at all hours of the night if need be. Mentoring Ray-Ray isn’t 9-to-5, middleclass, white collar work ... not by a long shot.

Here’s a plan: Team a Black police officer with a young formerly incarcerated person and give them the 20 worst 9th graders in Cleveland for a pilot project ... I mean the absolute, rock bottom, worst of the worst. Then use some of the funds the state is making available to failing school districts to pay this group of kids for getting good grades, keeping their noses clean and doing some kind of community service work. I know, I know, this “paying” part is “philosophically troubling” to some people, but parents with the wherewithal do it all the time, so get over it. It’s working very well in New York City. And if there is a state law that precludes formerly incarcerated persons from working with these youth, then change the damn law.

But once the connection is made, once the peer mentoring process is started, the conversation can get real down and dirty when Ray-Ray screws up ... as he is bound to do on occasion, after all, he is still just a kid.

But here’s how the conversation might sound when the adult mentor or cop rolls up on Ray-Ray: “Bring you little punk ass over here, dude, we got to talk. You’re out here fuckin’ up, young man, and I an’t goin’ to keep accepting this kind of shit from you, you understand? My job is to keep you little silly ass straight, and you ain’t goin’ to make me look bad, you understand?” Now, as long as this is said with enough tough love, like that Dutch uncle, it’s probably the only language Ray-Ray will really understand and respond to — and has the best chance of working. It’s absolutely critical that the mentoring be done by someone with “street creds,” someone Ray-Ray will respect and listen to.

Would it really work? It has a far better chance of working than anything else we’ve come up with so far. Will it be given an opportunity to work? I doubt it. Why? Lack of political will, and a supposed lack of money.

We won’t be able to find the $5000 per year (or whatever it will take) to mentor Ray-Ray and keep him out of trouble, but I guarantee you that we’ll easily find ten times that amount two years later when he picks up that gun ... and we have to lock him up So the money really is there, it’s just a matter of how we’re going to use it.: For prevention now, or prison later.

The mother of one of the boys who beat that Shaker Heights man had tried; she’d taken her son to juvenile authorities and told them she could not control him. Did she get any help? What did they tell her? Most likely the answer was, they couldn’t do anything until he acted out violently. Well, now he has.

If Ray-Ray is allowed to fall through the cracks, if he’s allowed to become another thug with a gun, I just hope the person he shoots isn’t one of your loved ones... or you. Are we a stupid people ...or what?

From Cool Cleveland contributor Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com
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