Today the mayor of Chicago and its top cop addressed the violence issue again and to my surprise again the top cop knows what he is talking about. He said that the police are not the solution to gang violence that the people are the solution. I’m starting to think that he is either going to run for public office at some point or he really is in tune with what a police force should look like. I’ve written about this before and I’ll say it again, the police are spread too thin and we are asking too much from them. We should never look at the police force as the ultimate solution to each and every issue in our communities. Back in the mid 1990’s the CAPS program came into play in Chicago and basically it was going to bring in a new era of policing to Chicago. It brought a face to the officers that patrolled our communities and some accountability to an extent. Today it's more of a gathering of community people complaining to the police about issues out of the police's control and announcements of BBQ's being sponsored by the CAPS program.
Why are we as a society, a “free” society, so willing to give up our power to a police force? Every time something happens we scream for the police. We don’t realize that the problem we are so upset about has been a problem for a long time it just got out of control for that moment. So what is the obstacle for reducing the violence? Is it you? What is about the community that you live in that is stopping the progress? It can’t be that you or the community are afraid to talk to a bunch of children and youth on the street corner, is it? Where is that “POWER TO THE PEOPLE” movement that changed how White America looked at people of Color?! Where is it?!
We have found a place in our lives that doesn’t allow much escape anymore. Back in the 1980’s as an activist it could take several hours to hear about what happened in another part of the country and maybe a full day to hear about what happened around the world. Today it is within a matter of seconds that the whole world finds out what JUST happened so we expect a quick response to these issues. So with that said how is it that we cannot gather our heads to understand that simply the gang violence in our society has everything to do with poverty? Why is it so hard to JUST simply LOVE someone? I read an article today from Sojourners magazine written by Dr. Joel C. Hunter and he says “…our obligation as Christians is not just help, it’s love.” Whether you are Christian or not I think this statement applies to everyone based on the fact that we are human, so where is the love then?
There is a deep and dark side to all of this and it involves MONEY and it may not even be that deep but there’s money to be made on violence. In 2010 the Associate Press wrote an article breaking down some of the numbers in relation to the drug war (source of many acts of violence) and the budget, here are some of those numbers from that article.
Since Nixon started the war on drugs this is some of the money spent:
-$33 Billion was spent of marketing “just say no” types of messages.
-$121 Billion on the arrest of 37 million nonviolent drug offenders - that’s $3270.00 per offender what could you do with an extra $3270?
-$450 Billion to just lock up those people in federal prisons alone- that’s $12,162.00 per person! We are not even talking about what it cost to keep them in prison!
The article says that the US government has spent $1Trillion on this war on drugs and what is amazing to me is that when people think of criminals and “gangbangers” as dumb people I’m going to have to ask, who really is the dumb one here?
Peace/AMOR
Gerardo
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