SHOW SOME LOVE, PART II

On Thursday, when the rains came, some young men were in South Boston at a friend's house.  The woman who owned the apartment got upset with the father of her child and asked him to leave.  Not wanting to be stuck with no ride in the pouring rain, he was reluctant to grant her wish.  She called the police to have him removed.

Rightly, the police responded to remove him.  They came with two cruisers and a wagon transport unit. 

Upon entering the house and seeing the man they were called to remove and his friends, one of the officers remarked, "Wow, everyone is here.  Looks like you are all going to jail today."

They were then told that no one, in fact, had done anything wrong; she just wanted them out.  The police then ran their information in the system, which came up clean, and they asked everyone to leave.

One of the young men, as they were getting ready to leave, asked the officers, "Hey instead of coming up in here and talking about arresting us, do you think you can hook me up with a job hotline, so I can find some work?"

One of the officers sighed, put his head down and walked out.  Another of the officers, who the young man that asked the question thought would be sympathetic, hissed through his teeth and rolled his eyes.  The young man, worried the officer would think he was being a smart ass, continued,  "No, I'm serious.  Instead of all this on the streets, why can't we get a job hotline so we can work?"

The officer looked at him incredulously, clicked his teeth and replied, "Man, you better shut up before you piss me off and make me lock you up for trespassing," at which point the young man uttered "Wooooow" and walked off into the rain in disbelief.

When he told me the story, my initial reaction was, perhaps unfairly, "C'mon, like you weren't being a smart ass when you said it?"  "No, honestly I really wasn't," he replied.  "I really wanted to see if he would offer us something positive.  I was surprised, man.  He let me down. For real."

We really need police in Boston.  We need them to show up and help young women when they want someone removed from a residence.  We need them to perform a lot of important functions which they do daily.  And with valor.  I know some incredible officers that make me proud to live in Boston.    

But the young man in this case is right.  If we have the resources to send someone to lock him up very effectively when he does wrong, why don't we have the resources to send someone to help him equally effectively when he recognizes his mistakes and decides to get away from the streets and make a life for himself? 

GOING PUBLIC

There has been talk recently that the city and state should create a database of gang members and make it available to the public.  

What is interesting about this idea, is that if we had started this database 10-15 years ago for children under age 10 in isolated, economically depressed, crime-infested neighborhoods with poor schools, disseminated it to churches, colleges, non-profits, foundations, government agencies and private citizens, and poured attention and resources into the lives of our children then, the database being talked about would already exist.  

It would be of college students, not gang members. 

GET A WIGGLE ON

Three years ago, I wrote a column in the Boston Globe and sent it in an email to Mayor Menino and a letter to Governor Romney.  

I wrote about a law that requires our state's schools to offer anti-violence curricula as part of a k-12 mandate to educate for character development.  Yes, I know, the issue is a snooze. Bear with me here.

I requested a meeting with them individually or with a staff person.  Governor Romney sent me a boilerplate letter that dismissed me.  The mayor's office did not respond at all. 

Now, fast forward to today. Last month, Governor Deval Patrick's Anti-Crime Council produced a report with recommendations on how to stop violence.  One of them was, ahem, a recommendation to mandate k-12 anti-violence curricula in public schools. 

Putting aside the fact that we could have started on this three years ago, and helped prevent the number of shooting victims under the age of 17 from tripling, or saved a ton of money on incarcerations that cost four times as much as prevention (sorry, I am apparently still a little bitter here), I bring this up again because a recent study by the Josephson Institute shows that youth in America are cheating in school more, stealing from businesses more and lying about it and everything else more at baffling rates.  

More compelling is that ninety-three percent of those that admitted to all of the above and more said there was nothing wrong with these things and that they were better than most people they know.  So, once again, as all of these problems and more appear to be getting worse and not better, I find myself asking, what in the world are we waiting for?