When there is a street shooting
there is a retaliation planned which usually ends up with more dead bodies. It is a potent mixture of teens with anger and
pain and `lots of energy to put towards the drama. Richmond, California was
once one of the most deadly cities in America. The streets are just hunting
grounds where young men are running from the bullets that follow. Every night
the news report on another killing. It can be compared to a war zone in the
Middle East. The city came up with this solution to pay the men in 2007. The
better the behavior the better the pay check. The maximum per month is $1,300 to
not pull the trigger.
They must choose not to avenge
their friend’s death. There were about 18 men participating in the program. It
is a program mostly funded by taxpayers. DeVone Bogaan, is the Founder of the
Office of Neighborhood Safety pushing the program. Many people do not want to
fund teens that should be obeying the laws anyway. Progress for young men who
get arrested at age 12 for armed robbery is slow because they don’t know of any
other kind of life but a life of crime. The only people eligible for the
program are young men that already have long rap sheets for violent crimes. Their
jobs now is to intervene and to stop potential shootings. In a 5 year period
the number of homicides dropped 76% per cent across Richmond
It is important to expose them to
a world from not caring about much to caring enough to try to stop a bullet. The
next step in the reward program is to be able to travel with someone you want
to kill or who wants to kill you. The program will pay for a trip to New York
or Chicago as a vacation. Face to face meetings can turn deadly in an instant
so they prepare them with supervised meet and great meetings first. They get to
discuss how they have been disrespected. Talking with words and not bullets is
something new for both of the men. They
still carry their guns but don’t use them. So many armed men on the streets is
not a number that police are comfortable with. Even a traffic stop can end up
in an armed stand off.
Other cities also struggling with
armed street violence like Washington D.C., Baltimore and Oakland are looking
at this program carefully to be used in their cities. This is a coddling, coaching
and discipline approach to a problem rather than jail time alone. The men shoot
to matter and to be noticed. They need to be noticed for other things and not
this. They need to learn a new perspective of the world around them and a life
without violence. It is a lot harder to shoot someone you know, like or
respect. We can only hope that this change is for the better.
No comments:
Post a Comment