Residents must commit to cut city’s high homicide rate

The wide swath of nine homicides in the narrow span of six weeks in Youngstown painfully reinforces the reality of this city’s unacceptably high murder rate.

Just how high is it?

According to the most recent FBI Uniform Crime Report, it surpasses that of the much publicized war-zone streets of Chicago, where 24.1 people per each 100,000 of its residents died by homicide last year. In Youngstown, 28 people from a much shallower pool of 65,000 residents were murdered last year. Given the most recent series of killings in the city, that abhorrent rate and the fear and stigma it creates won’t be dropping anytime soon.

Those hollow numbers, however, too often mask the human toll the homicide epidemic extracts. Behind each and every one of those numbers lies a once-vibrant and potentially productive life so callously snuffed out.

There’s Hallie North, 63, and her son, Jamell, 40, found shot to death Oct. 25 in their Imperial Street home, the same home where Hallie’s other son, Darmetrus, had been gunned down seven months earlier. There’s Christopher Jackson, a 21-year-old Warren man found shot to death in a car on Bennington Avenue on Nov. 18. And there’s Edward Morris, 21; Valarica Blair, 19; and Tariq Morris, only 3 months old, all of whom were killed Nov. 7 in another drive-by shooting as they sat in a car in front of a home at Pasadena Avenue and Gibson Street.

In the names of these victims and more than 450 others like them this millennium in Youngstown, all available resources must be strategically targeted toward a reduction in the wanton carnage that has become synonymous with Youngstown.

To a great extent, that initiative must morph into a concerted effort to reduce the size of the city’s illicit drug trade, a prime breeding ground for violence, mayhem and murder. After all, of the past eight homicides in the city, police say at least seven of them share one common link: drugs. And in the bowels of the drug world, human life has little meaning.

Police Chief Robin Lees explains that in the drug culture, almost everything revolves around money. If dealers have a dispute over a quantity of drugs or drug money, Lees said, instead of trying to straighten it out, they just start shooting.

That also means the ongoing multi-front war on opiates cannot underestimate its crucial law-enforcement component. In addition to expanding the quantity and quality of educational campaigns and treatment options, organized initiatives among several policing agencies must continue to more tightly choke off the supply of these raw materials for anti-social behavior and crime.

SUDDEN UPSURGE IN KILLINGS

One is left, however, wondering why, after several months of relative calm, the streets of Youngstown took a dramatic and deadly turn over the past five weeks.

Clearly, one cannot pin the surge on the quality of crime fighting. In Youngstown, the force has been beefed up, and several initiatives credited with stemming gun violence – including the Community Initiative to Reduce Violence and vigilant community policing – have strengthened this year.

CIRV, a partnership of law enforcement, social-service agencies and the faith community, and other initiatives have succeeded in lessening the scope of violent crime other than murder.

But calming some violence-inducing scenarios proves perplexing for even the most savvy law-enforcement professionals. Some causes are deep seated. The fallout of unemployment and of structural poverty also are linked closely to crime. Like homicide, both of those trends still are running out of control in Youngstown.

As a result, Youngstown residents continue to live in fear. At a recent citywide “Youngstown Unite” meeting on the violent crime spree, 90 percent of attendees said they have purchased a gun for protection.

But part of the solution to making Youngstown safer rests in their hands and voices.

“Violence the last few weeks has been particularly bad. We must jump in and help,” said Guy Burney, leader of CIRV at the recent meeting.

Burney is absolutely correct. Some of that help must take the form of a willingness among residents to share critical crime-solving information with police, even at the risk of being labeled a snitch.

The future viability of this city and the lives of its residents could very well hang in the balance.