Multiple Phased Approach Needed to Curb Gun Violence Locally....

 

Yesterday evening, 11 locally elected representatives and one local pastor as well as the Pensacola Police Chief met at the Brownsville Community Center for the second Sheriff’s Roundtable on Gun Violence.  The event had about 50 citizens from the area in attendance, as well as multiple media outlets and various office staffers.

About a dozen speakers addressed the panel.  Various ideas/topics were broached.  The overall theme from the citizens was that areas of poverty produce the violence—so anything that the local governments can provide to such areas will help stem the tide of the gun violence we have seen.  Jobs, infrastructure, more programs for youth, and more police patrols were some suggested solutions.  In a nutshell—more services and money invested is what most of the speakers wanted to see.

After public forum concluded--each of the panelists spoke and described recent actions their respective organizations have taken to assist with this problem.  The group ended the discussion after about an hour and forty minutes, settling in on the idea that the entire panel would descend on one neighborhood and bring all the available services from each represented entity to this one area in a “blitz” of the neighborhood --for lack of a better term.  I fully support this, although we will see if such an initiative carries over and has staying power long term to help curb gun violence.  It will take events like this combined with much more, to turn the tide.

For my part, I offered specific, tangible ideas I would fund, and ideas for which I would advocate, built from the comments I made at the initial meeting where I described the current violence (as well as other social ills we see) as a symptom of a much larger issue—the complete breakdown of the American Family, acute in areas where we see extreme levels of violence and crime.  No families, no fathers, no religion, cultural acceptance of dysfunctional conduct, and NO guidance for too many youths growing up in the cesspool of a cultural meltdown with such children being “raised” by the entertainment industry’s products promoting the glorification of violence and antisocial behavior. 

I believe the issue is massive and will take a holistic, wide ranging set of  short-term, medium term, and long range approaches to turn.  It will take decades.  It takes families, and it takes fathers.

In Pensacola, as in other cities, we see a significant amount of gun violence that manifests from areas of generational social dysfunction and poverty.

Sheriff Chip Simmons has sponsored  community roundtables to allow us (local leaders) to brainstorm practical solutions.  At the first such roundtable meeting heldlate last year—a large and diverse group of community leaders, pastors, law enforcement personnel, school district leaders, and other elected officials got together to discuss the problem with an eye toward solutions.

And the sheriff was direct in asking for ideas and tangible solutions that could be implemented by each participant within his/her individual sphere of influence.

Yesterday as we met again, we interacted with one another and the members of the community that came to the event to have their voices heard.  I left my suggestions, below, with the Sheriff,----- and I described a few to the panel.

No easy, fast solutions exist short of martial law in some crime-ridden areas and the construction of more jail space—but if we have the courage to identify the real root causes and begin to work on these big issues that drive the dysfunction—we will see improvement over time.

But it takes decades to fix what has taken decades to unravel and devolve.   My proposed, initial list of suggestions below: