Thoughts on the Roundtable......

Needed:  Honest, courageous, and productive conversations at the roundtable on Tuesday....

Sheriff Chip Simmons has empaneled a group of community leaders to hold a round table discussion this Tuesday regarding a deadly double-shooting in District 1 two weeks back. I applaud his leadership in taking this bull by the horns.  The conversation will be about the levels of violence in the community as well--not just this particular shooting.  I am honored to have been invited to participate, and I look forward to Tuesday.

In the lead up to the event, I have given three media interviews on this topic, after having been asked my opinion on what, if anything, should be done to focus on the violence in our community that leads to these tragic events like the murder that happened in Bellview.  Two of the pieces have subsequently been published and I believe the third will be published this week in the lead up to the roundtable. 

The violence, the gun crimes, and the gangs+drugs issues we see growing in our community are symptoms of a bigger problem that few are willing to discuss: The loss of the family unit in growing pockets of our community.  This dissolution of the in-tact family unit leaves many young men with no strong role model and disciplinarian in the house to deal with issues that invariably arise in child rearing through formative years.

The single biggest predictor of whether or not a young man in America will become entangled in the criminal justice system is whether or not a father was/is in the home where such a young man is/was raised.  But to some, such discussions are verboten for political correctness' sake.

Imagine, as my friend Tom Danheisser posited in his hard-hitting, prescient op-ed on this topic last year, if we were trying to cure lung cancer but we could not talk about cigarette smoking?  He knows what I know and he has seen it in his courtroom as has my brother in his courtroom:  Fatherless families produce children who are at a much higher risk of committing crimes, being prosecuted, and ultimately ending up in prison.  (And lending creedence to the media's reticence to discuss root causes of the crimes, drugs, and gangs issues in Pensacola/Escambia County that produce the carnage we see locally--I'm told the Dannheisser op-ed was also sent to the PNJ last year in May of 2021--but their editorial team refused to print it.  Too much truth I suppose.....)

So this conversation Tuesday has to have a few guideposts if it is to be successful:

1.  We must realize the long term solution will take decades.

2.  We must realize the problem is not the police.

3.  We must have the courage to speak truth and use irreputable facts and figures to buffet our positions.

4.  We must realize no matter what we do we cannot and will not be able to save every young person from descending into a life of crime.

From my perspective, in order to actually accomplish a worthwhile outcome and trajectory toward

solutions to the root causes, we will need to take a holistic approach that will include short-term, mid-term, and long term strategies to succeed.  Obviously--this is not an exhausive list of each need in each stage--but these are big.

Short term:  Close coordination with schools, teachers, and administrators to identify at risk youth and provide additional coaching, counseling, and tutoring (happening currently with Title 1 Schools but much more is needed.)  Additionally:  a return to widespread firm, consistent, and color-blind school discipline policies that are fair but have meaningful consequences for anti-social, violent, and/or other dangerous student behaviors.  Students need structure--particularly those with no strong figures at home to foster good discipline.  Establishment of a Seed-style school concept locally to save/rescue the most at risk youth in our area-with funding jointly from the county, city, state, and Children's trust.  From the law enforcement side--more technology deployed in high crime areas, drones, cameras, and other high-tech solutions to assist with quick captures of suspects involved with violence in a community. We must end the days of the common criminal getting away with violating the law.  Recruitment of community figures of influence to speak unabashedly and firmly on the root causes of the violence in the community and more importantly to encourage witnesses to cooperate with investigations.  We need, as a community, to do a better job of securely storing legally purchased firearms so criminals and those with mental illness cannot access these weapons.  And finally we need condemnation, openly, and the rebuking of the mainstream media machine's war on faith-based programs, religion, and God. This must finally happen because there is and always has been a direct relationship between the abandonment of faith and the rise of cultural dysfunction.

Mid term:  More resources for law enforcement, crime prevention, technology, and for prisons, prosecutors and judges to allow for the  firm/swift prosecutions for those that commit violent crimes and other serious community-detroying infractions.  Tranisition of tax policy nationwide and statewide must occur--pivoting away from making fatherless homes remunerative to actually making them unattractive by reducing subsidies for fatherless families, making fathers pay for the children they father through more onerous child-support policy/law and enforcement, and the implementation of incentives to keep families together (yearly tax rebates for families that stay together coupled with an increase to the child tax credit for in-tact families).

Long term:  Continuous support for law enforcement and enhanced cutting-edge technology to keep communities safe, tax and entitlement policy refinements that promote and reward families staying together with year over year payments for in-tact, together family units--with such financial incentives growing significantly for each year a two-parent family stays together.

There are no panaceas, no quick and easy solutions to this community violence and societal problem that has festered for going on 6 decades in large part due to well intended legislation and policy at the national level that has served to disincentivize the family unit--leading to the devastating consequences we are living today.

At some point we have to move to something that is at the heart of the problem and that can work:   finding a way to make the family unit an important part of America again--as it should be.  Once we do that and fix that primary problem--we will see a concomitant reduction in violence and crime.  

But it won't be easy, fast or cheap.  We have to go long-game on this one.