Back to web version
Trying to stop the cycle of urban violence
By MARY SANCHEZThe Kansas City Star
The Times May 4 Sunday magazine delivered just that with a treatise on urban violence, or let’s be honest — black/Latino violence. That is after all, who we are talking about when people use code words like “urban” and “inner city.”
The piece by Chicago-based writer Alex Kotlowitz discussed a theory about black/Latino violence that likened it to a virus. The idea was that such violence spreads in much the same way as diseases like tuberculosis and AIDS.
It makes sense, in that often one violent shooting will beget another. The street code of revenge functions this way, creating a never-ending cycle of death. The Times’ cover story reported the efforts of Gary Slutkin, a Chicago doctor and epidemiologist who is applying his background of limiting the spread of diseases in foreign countries to street violence.
Slutkin’s approach is more of a way of managing the violence, or rather of interrupting it. His program, CeaseFire, has workers called “violence interrupters,” in that they seek to dissuade people before they cause mayhem.
He developed the program based on how doctors would handle epidemics: go after the most seriously infected and stop them from infecting others.
Kansas City has also benefited from the same concept, having introduced a similar program last fall called Aim4Peace. And, for years leaders like Ron Hunt, Riccardo Lucas, Ron McMillan, Ossco Bolton, Alonzo Washington, and a host of African-American ministers have played the role of trying to convince Kansas City young men to think before they take revenge and shoot.
But CeaseFire and efforts here have not taken into account one other factor, that of the “why.” Why is it that violence seems to be the response?
I believe I heard the answer years ago in a conversation with some area funeral home directors. They surmised that some portions of the two Kansas Citys suffer from unresolved grief.
The idea is that grief, if not handled well, sticks with people. And that many black and Latino communities are so mired in violent incident after violent incident, that the collective unresolved grief is at least in part what is fueling the seemingly crazy behavior.
Load a person with low coping skills up with grief, stir in peer pressure that revenge is a good outlet, and additional violence is a likely result.
Consider what we are learning about post-traumatic stress now suffered by so many soldiers returning from Iraq. The violence they have seen and engaged in is not necessarily over after they return home. Psychiatrists have long recognized that trauma and grief have residual effects.
This thought-provoking sentence described Slutkin’s theory: “Slutkin wants to shift how we think about violence from a moral issue (good and bad people) to a public health one (healthful and unhealthful behavior).
I can hear the naysayers now — cracks about coddling the criminal by taking the time to understand their deprived childhoods. To a point, I agree.
If someone is callous enough to pick up a gun and shoot another person, then lock them up.
Personal choices and responsibilities aren’t negated by less than ideal backgrounds.
But preventive public policy should take into consideration how violent criminals are created. If unresolved grief is at play, there are measures that could affect it better, and maybe limit the bloodshed.
I used to do a bit of an experiment in visiting classrooms while reporting. Go into a city school and ask the children to raise their hands if they have ever had a close family member or friend shot.
Hands will fly upward. I’ve been in classrooms where more than half of the students raise their hands. It never seemed to matter if the class was in an elementary, middle or high school. The result was always the same.
What mattered was where the school was located. Try the same thing in a suburban school district. Hardly a hand will wave. Violence begets violence.
This is hardly rocket science. But it seems as a society we’ve got a long way to go before we ever do much productive work around this truth.
Mary Sanchez is a nationally syndicated columnist for Tribune Media Services. Read her Tribune column on Barack Obama’s attempts to distance himself from the Rev. Jeremiah Wright on KansasCity.com.