FIND ANSWERS TO RISE IN CRIME AT HOME

The mother of Peoria's seventh homicide victim this year - a tally
now at 11 and counting - showed up at a City Council meeting
recently, making an emotional and articulate plea for local leaders
to do more about escalating crime.

It's hard not to respond with compassion to a grieving mother, as
Mayor Jim Ardis did to Juanita Powell, whose adult son, Travis, was
murdered on July 4. Ardis wants to host a community roundtable to
"look at this whole thing and see where we're deficient and what we
can do better."

"We don't have thousands of bad people in Peoria," the mayor said.
"We've got maybe a hundred people out there that are really making
life miserable."

We sincerely do not want to cause any more heartache for Powell than
she has already endured. She politely declined our request for an
interview. But here's the rub, and here's why Powell may be asking
the impossible: Police and court records suggest her son was one of
those bad people, a 29-year-old gang member with a long arrest record
going back to age 13. Perhaps he'd begun walking a different path,
but many would say he died in the environment he helped create.

It has become an all-too-common tale. We read about terrorists ruling
the Arab street. Well, gangs rule too many of America's and Peoria's
streets. If there is a more destructive influence on neighborhoods,
schools and cities, we'd like to know what it is.

The mayor isn't the only one waking up to that reality. Bill Spears,
a city councilman and candidate for the Legislature, is circulating
petitions that request state funding for an anti-violence program in
Peoria called CeaseFire. So far he's collected some 2,000 signatures
toward getting an advisory measure on the November ballot.

And on Monday a group of local pastors, headed by former City
Councilman James Polk, announced they would lead a faith-based effort
called "Stop the Killing and Start the Healing," aimed at combating
the hopelessness they say is fueling the killings and at getting more
young people into church and jobs. It's encouraging to see local
African-American leaders finally standing up publicly to the
violence, which has been disproportionately committed and suffered by
young black men.

While these initiatives are welcome, we're not sure they get to the
root of the problem. Prayer is a wonderful thing, and no one should
underestimate its value, but we're not sure anything can get Peoria
to the Promised Land as well or as fast as some basic parenting. When
children get in the face of adults in front of their homes on the
East Bluff and accost them with profanity, vandalism and worse,
that's a parenting failure.

Here's a case study for you: Peoria's sixth murder victim this year
was Gary Irby Jr. His obituary listed him at 23 years old at the time
of his death on May 22 and indicated that he was the father of eight
children. That's remarkable, especially when you consider that he was
out of circulation for a few years prior to that because he was in
prison. Police identified Irby as a gang member.

Parenting is a hard, humbling job. Children can make poor choices
coming from even the best of situations, and good kids can also arise
from some of the worst. But we have to believe the odds of becoming a
credit to your community, rather than a curse, are diminished
considerably coming out of the environment described above. This is a
multi-dimensional problem that too often has one common denominator:
Nature abhors a vacuum; where families fall short, gangs are all too
happy to fill the void. Peoria must find a way to interrupt that cycle.

We're not confident that all the brainstorming sessions and CeaseFire
chapters and prayers in the world can accomplish that until this
city's police and politicians and preachers get more help from the
home. Again, it's no guarantee. But when enough mothers and fathers
get so fed up with burying their boys that they're willing to move
heaven and earth to improve their odds, perhaps then we will see real change.