No TV cameras were present, no reporters were cornering anyone asking questions afterwards… in fact, the media completely ignored the meeting … nonetheless, a group of city officials, community leaders, parents and law enforcement agencies got together at Golden Ciphers on Broadway at 57th Street on Friday, March 26 to begin to spread a unified a proactive, preventative message. It was directed at the miniscule percentage of area youth who are hell-bent on perpetuating violence and criminal behavior: “It must stop, and it must stop now.”
Blaine Griffin, the director of Community Relations for the city, has named the able and tough-minded Shayrna Cloud (who formerly worked as a reentry specialist for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction) as manager of Operation Focus and this appears to be Cleveland’s strongest effort to date to rein in the few bad actors responsible for most of the chaos occurring in inner-city neighborhoods. Like the saying goes … “It’s a tough job, but someone has go to do it,” and if anyone can, it’s Shayrna Cloud.
A mother with teenaged sons of her own at that critical, acting-out age, Cloud is well aware of the challenges she’s face with. Indeed, this whole issue of youth in minority communities acting out in violent and inappropriate ways is complicated for blacks … not only in Cleveland, but across the country.
No African-American gains their majority in this country without coming to grips with the untrammeled racism that still permeates our society … racism that in too many cases keeps a portion of minorities locked out of the prosperity and progress other Americans enjoy. Indeed, it’s easy for us to identify with the rage our disenfranchised black youth feel; but what we know and they have yet to learn, is that violence is not the answer … it solves nothing, and in the end only makes bad situations worse.
Nonetheless we in the minority community have to summons the strength and courage to inform our young people that we are going to stop them from hurting and killing each other (and others who sometimes are caught in their senseless cross fires), as Malcolm said, “By any means necessary.” And in some cases those “means” have to be very tough.
The Operation Focus program is patterned after Boston’s successful Operation Ceasefire, which curtailed much of the violence that city was plagued with. Those youth that can be still be reached need to be counseled and mentored, those that are too far gone simply have be to incarcerated. It’s a fact that young black males who have dropped out and embraced thug life are twice as safe in prison than they are on the street. If, in the short run, we have to save them from themselves … then so be it. Citizens have a right to live in a pacific society.
The one drawback of such programs, however, is that once the violence decreases we begin to pat ourselves on the back, seemingly oblivious that such measures are stopgap at best, and not enough; they have to be replicated every three or four years as the next generation of our failures become old enough to do us harm. The fact is, unless we engage in programs that actually prevent young people from falling through the cracks and embracing street life in the first place, we’ll forever be left to deal with the fallout of our negligence.
The meeting started off with a depressing (but well-produced) short documentary that spelled out all of the shortcomings of Greater Cleveland — the poverty, crime, dropout rates and other measures of our myriad failures as a region — in glaring relief, but was, to a degree, misleading.
Case in point, one figure cited was that 3000 children are in foster care in Cuyahoga County … which sounds horrible unless you knew (as I did) that a scant few years ago there were 6000 in foster care. Two things we Clevelanders have to keep in mind when exploding figures is the old adage “there are lies, damn lies, and then there are statistics” … the other is, many of the problems we face are regional in nature and are beyond our ability to control or solve.
This is not a fatalistic attitude, nor do I suggest we simply whistle past the graveyard as if nothing is wrong, but the truth is, cities throughout the Rust Belt are suffering in most part due to a lack of vision at the federal level, where a conservative agenda set in motion close to a half-century ago is now bearing bitter fruit. What we have to do as a city and region is to focus on the positive, the things we can do … not the things we can’t.
With new leadership emanating from Washington now is the time to press forward with the progressive agenda, and yes, part of that is controlling rampant crime and violence in disadvantaged neighborhoods. But in doing so we need to go the extra mile and actually solve the problem. When we remove violent young men from our streets we have to vigorously attempt to cognitively restructure them or we are only creating super-predators; young men made stronger by a stint in prison where they get plenty of rest, adequate diet, and lots of weight-training so they are able to leap convenience store counters in one bound to rob clerks, and run faster in their getaways.
Certainly incapacitating young criminals via incarceration is necessary, but we’re not going to be able to afford to build enough prisons to solve our social problems in this manner; we have to insist that funds be made available for programming and education while they are in custody … and all that refuse to take advantage of the opportunity to learn a marketable skill in prison should remain behind bars until they get the message. What good does it do society to let young men leave prison as dumb and ill-prepared for life as when they went in? What the hell else are they going to do but commit more crimes?
Likewise we also have to insist that the “cradle-to-prison” pipeline be broken, dismantled, destroyed. And I don’t for one minute believe the urban myth that there is not enough money to solve the problem; the fact is, there just isn’t enough will. We have plenty of money in America to solve any problem we elect to … just imagine if all of those kids killing each other were white — we’d throw money at the solution … just like we are throwing money at rebuilding Iraq.
One of the most encouraging comments I heard at the meeting was during the question and answer portion when a woman from one of our region’s foundations said that nascent efforts were underway to implement a program similar to the Harlem Children’s Zone. This program, which had been up and running in New York is the only real solution — the only way to finally, once and for all, break the cycle of poverty, crime and dysfunctional behaviors that bedevil the underclass in America. I just pray that it’s undertaken in a manner that gives it the best chance for success here in Cleveland.
The Ugly Answers part of all of this is that all too often — and especially here in Cleveland — solutions to problems plaguing the underclass are formulated by well-intentioned (I have to believe) individuals, but individuals who are culturally tone-deaf and lack experience when it comes to minority populations.
Short-shrift is given to matters of racial sensitivities in far too many instances when decisions are made in regards to who will be put in charge of designing, implementing and operating programs that have the stated goal of solving underclass problems.
In plain-speak, the Harlem Children’s Zone is wildly successful because it is run by Geoffrey Canada, a black man who has the requisite cultural competency to get the job done. It will be interesting to see who runs the replication of his program here in Cleveland.
From Cool Cleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available again in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author by visiting http://www.frombehindthewall.com.
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One Response to “Mansfield Frazier: Operation Focus… and Ugly Answers”
Charles
Here’s pushing for the momentum that reduced the 6,000 to 3,000 to continue downward. You are right on target.