Dealing with violence

There has been a serious uptick of violent crime in urban cities throughout the country and people are clambering tor police to take immediate action to curb it.
The reality is that policing, by its very nature, is reactive. It responds to calls where the event is already complete or crimes in progress which are generally over by the time they arrive. Pro Active policing is viewed negatively as targeting law-abiding people and increasing the prison population without basis.
The presence of police does not preclude violence from occurring as evidenced by shootings in Cleveland and Cincinnati, Ohio where officers heard the gunfire and were on the scene within seconds.
The solution to this problem is multi-faceted. It begins with the neighborhood refusing to tolerate it. Announcing loudly that they will cooperate with police in identifying the perpetrators and making sure that those people serve long prison sentences. It begins with the home life making it clear that the “thug life” will not be tolerated. If young people decide to engage in this behavior, they will not be welcome in their parents’ home. It is followed by the entire criminal justice system working in tandem to arrest, prosecute and incarcerate people who commit violent crimes. This sends a clear message that actions have consequences.
Critics of the justice system point to the fact that the United States has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world, but that can be attributed to the fact that the US has the most freedoms of the civilized world. Those freedoms allow predators to prey on the citizens and there needs to be a price to pay for those actions.
The second criticism is that there is a major disparity in the number of people of color who are incarcerated and that is accurate. But they fail to match their numbers against the number of crimes committed by people of color. This is an imperfect world because it involves human beings, but doing nothing is not an option.