Roy Exum
In the last seven days, there have been seven different people who have been shot in separate incidents in Chattanooga. On Tuesday, the City Council approved a total $223,656 in street cameras and accessories to take pictures of our gangstas when the cops already know them by first names. Late last month it was announced the Chattanooga Police Department would double our gang violence task force at an additional cost of one million plus. And wouldn’t you know the very week Chief Fred Fletcher held the January press conference, another seven were shot in just as many days in our city, two fatally.
Now comes an expert who says it will not work. “I don’t care how many police they bring in. It’s not going to stop, man,” Tracy Cannon, who used to run hard with the Vice Lords told a Fox News reporter in Chicago last week. And reporter Michael Tobin, who walked the bloodiest streets in all of America with Cannon, revealed why so far this year in Chicago there have been a record 449 shot with 87 dead (this at noon yesterday.)
What the rest of America can’t get through our heads is that inner-city Chicago has the same problems the poverty neighborhoods in Chattanooga do. If we aren’t willing to diagnose and treat the disease that causes these horrific black-on-black shootings, we are going to keep wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars and digging the same six-foot holes. Tossing $223,656 in taxpayer money at cameras ain’t gonna’ work because – it is very basic -- cameras don’t stop bullets.
Chattanooga is a microcosm of Chicago. Believe me, gang shootings are everywhere. Savannah, Ga. had 22 shootings in January. Tulsa’s gang force prosecuted 718 cases in 2016. In Memphis, they had 17 shot dead in the first three weeks of this year and Mayor Jim Strickland is so unnerved he has asked for federal help. “Memphis, like many big cities, has a significant gang problem. It is the number one driver of crime and it is the number one driver of homicides."
So, what is the root cause of this chaos? Fox reporter Tobin asked a Black Disciple who wouldn't give his name. “Half of these guys don’t got no mom, either they was crack heads, dope fiends, boosters or something,” the teenager said. “They moms or fathers was lost to the same gang that we getting ourselves into now.”
Kevin Gentry, a Vice Lords member, nodded his head. “We more like a family than a gang… brothers,” he said and, hours later, another told the reporter about being given his first gun – this before his 13th birthday. “I looked at it like that was love. I looked at it like this person loved me, for the simple fact that they wanted to see me protected. They gave me something that was going to protect my life,” he explained.
Tio Hardiman, a social worker whose group is called Violence Interrupters in Chicago, told how these kids get hooked. “The gangs have become family for a lot of young men here in Chicago and across the United States. They gravitate toward the guys with charisma. They gravitate toward the guys that might protect them,” he said, “But they really are not protected out there. Too many people are being killed, it’s a false sense of security.”
The way gangs have changed, especially in Chicago, is the reason for the huge uptick. “Back in the day we had structure. Older guys would make us go to school. Even though we was gang banging, we would still go to school,” said Cannon, but then law enforcement made a huge mistake.
“They locked up these gang chiefs and everything went haywire,” one gang member said. With no leadership, everything fell apart. It was so bad that different cliques in the same gangs got crossways with disputes, and divided, but now it is almost everyone for themself.
Every gang member wants respect and ‘ruthless’ is what gets you there. “Kids only care about nice clothes, fast money and how many kills they can get,” said a longtime member. “When they get a certain amount of kills or when they hurt a certain amount of people, they feared. They got the fear factor going on. The kids nowadays in Chicago, that’s what they want.”
That’s what kids want everywhere. One Black Disciple, promptly showing Tobin the gun he was carrying in his coat pocket, made no excuses for banging. “If I live by this gun and I live by these drugs, this product that I’m selling, and I’m pushing in this neighborhood. It’s putting food on my table and food in my kids’ mouths and a roof over they heads, then I’m not going to put it down,” he was honest.
I want someone from the City Council to ask a guy like the late Jumoke Johnson if a camera on a pole is going to cut his stride. It ain’t happening. I want someone to tell me if they see a police car every 20 minutes instead of every 45, how it will affect that day’s heroin sales if the baby needs new shoes. According to experts in Chicago, that ain’t gonna’ happen, either.
There has got to be a better solution.
royexum@aol.com