SOLUTION TO CRIME PROBLEM DEPENDS ON COMMUNITY

During The Holiday Season, The Wish Often Expressed Is For Peace On Earth.

We know that for too much of Jacksonville that's not the reality as
our city struggles with violent crime.

But the holidays bring hope, and there is hope.

There will be much conversation in the days ahead about violent crime
and murders.

Too often, the wrong questions are being asked: What is Mayor John
Peyton going to do? What is Sheriff John Rutherford going to do?

The better question is this: What is the community going to do?

And therein is the hope. Much already is being done by many people.

Churches are adopting schools and providing mentors for children.
Community activists are moving crime to the top of the agenda in
their neighborhoods. Specific programs, such as Operation New Hope's
Ready4Work, are helping ex-offenders to find jobs and stable lives.
And people who many would consider power brokers want to get involved.

Those are just some of the things being done by the good people of
Jacksonville.

It's those energies that need to be harnessed and, more importantly,
coordinated. From that can come long-term solutions.

Take jobs, for example.

A good job helps create a stable family life. A stable family life
makes it less likely that a person will turn to crime.

Imagine if the power brokers in town who have the ability to do so
set aside, say, 1,000 jobs for a group like Ready4Work to use its
proven process to fill with people in need of employment who have not
yet committed crimes.

And imagine if the bigger churches took a more active role in
improving neighborhoods and mentoring at-risk children.

And imagine if these various groups and people, some of whom aren't
comfortable with each other, got together and listened and learned.

From a community effort can come a plan. Then, instead of demanding
of Peyton and Rutherford what they are going to do, the community can
tell them what the community wants done.

Why is this important?

Because solutions that bubble up from the community can lessen the
political rancor that by nature revolves around a mayor and sheriff,
and because the effort to reduce violent crime will have to continue
long after Peyton and Rutherford are out of office.

Both can play a leadership role, but violent crime is a community
problem that requires the community as a whole to act.

We need no more studies. We need no more reports. We know what the
problems are: broken families, poverty, education, unemployment, guns, drugs.

A question for the community: What are you going to do?