Curbing crime must involve community as well as police

Crime is increasing in our country and there appears to be no sense of urgency to find new ways to approach this trend. Violent crime is a headline daily across the country and it is very easy and the common theme to look to law enforcement as the solution.

From the local perspective during our last mayoral campaign one candidate's platform was "the chief of police should only focus on crime and not on police/fire public safety management issues." Nothing else regarding crime problems or how we can solve violent crime was mentioned. This lack of understanding of the conditions that lead to crime results in the misconception that law enforcement alone can solve crime. Law enforcement is part of the solution, not the solution.

Many believe law enforcement and the judicial system can arrest and incarcerate our way out of the nation's surge in violent crime. We have been approaching crime in this manner for decades, yet crime continues to escalate in our country. From a local standpoint, we have filled the county jail and now need to spend $100 million to build another one.

The North Charleston police force does a terrific job of arresting violent offenders. In fact, the national average for solving murders is around 60 percent and NCPD on average solves 80-plus percent of our murders. We have one of the most productive and hard-working police departments in the nation. We are following the most advanced and proven strategies our profession has to offer. Our officers take guns and drugs off the streets almost every day. Your police officers are doing everything they can to curb violent crime, yet it is still occurring here and across the nation. So where are these criminals coming from? They are coming from our homes.

Several local events helped bring this problem to light. First was the recent shooting death of a young man in North Charleston, which allegedly resulted from two very troubling accounts. The formula for disaster in this event was a 14-year-old armed with a gun out on the streets of our city at 2 a.m., and a 19-year-old who possessed a handgun he received from a parent.

Second, at the beginning of this school year, 3,000 of the 40,000 kids in the Charleston County public schools system did not show up for the first day of class.

Both events are parenting issues and beg the question: Where are the parents?

An analysis of the 2,913 violent assaults with handguns that occurred from 1992-2006 shows that the victims were 27 percent white and 73 percent black. The suspects in these crimes were 16 percent white and 79 percent black. For the 136 murders during this period, the victims were 19 percent white and 76 percent black. The suspects in the murders were 13 percent white and 87 percent black.

The age profile for these violent crimes has the vast majority of suspects and victims in their teens and 20s. What these statistics tell us is that our young black males are killing themselves off at an alarming rate. When I asked civic leaders in the black community to look at the crime issue from a societal standpoint, some were supportive, but one proclaimed: "Don't make your job my job." This myopic thinking will prevent us from achieving change.

We need inspired public, civic and private-sector leaders to take ownership in community health and safety and make crime our collective problem.

It is my belief that much of crime results from the erosion of the social values that made our country great — the values that come from family, school and church. It is time to turn this around with a call to action. Henry David Thoreau said it best many years ago: "There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to everyone who is striking at the root." The parallel to this is crime and how we approach it. We need to work together to emphasize the importance of family, school and church.

Great parenting must come first and be the focus of our future. Effective parenting results in a solid family unit. Family is the foundation of society, and it is in the home that our children should be learning the values, compassion and understanding that will help them grow into productive members of society. What is happening, however, is that our schools are expected to provide these lessons because the family structure is not in place. When children are truant from school, they often become engaged in poor behavior. Left unchecked, this poor behavior leads to criminal behavior. From the school's standpoint, when the truant child does show up, the teacher has to stop teaching the other children to help the child who is now behind catch up. This disrupts the learning environment, punishes the children who have been in school and can lead to isolation of the child who has missed school.

We also need to focus on education. Supporting public education, keeping kids in the classroom and increasing graduation rates will significantly reduce street crime. Many violent offenders did not graduate from high school. I often wonder what would result if the school district, the Chamber of Commerce and major employers in the private sector collaborated. Shouldn't we be looking into the future to determine what our labor market will look like and provide training and education to meet these needs?

Public education was formed to provide our children the knowledge they need to be productive members of society. We need to provide all of our children the tools they will need to be competitive in the labor market so that they can get jobs, and we need to keep in mind not all children go to college. I have been taught that as the unemployment rate increases so does crime. Job-skills training, job opportunities and parents who reinforce a strong work ethic are a must.

Finally, we need to restore the erosion of our social values. Our churches are the primary institutions to reinforce our social values. Some of the greatest and most influential people I have met in my time in the Charleston area have been ministers. The leaders of our churches need to share a common theme that advocates the importance of family, good parenting and education. A unified front and message from our ministers would be a very positive force.

I am not writing this message to create any expectations that I have all the answers. The truth is I don't. No individual does. I do know, however, that by working together, we can accomplish great things. Benjamin Franklin advised us that "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."

I stand ready to work with all in our community to advance these objectives. Through community-wide collaboration, we can prepare the next generation for a life of contribution to society, not a life of crime. Let's roll up our sleeves, put on our thinking caps, come together and get to work.

JON ZUMWALT is chief of police for the city of North Charleston.