Only community can stop violence killing our children

Crime, violent or otherwise, is hardly a new issue in towns and cities of our region — Reading, Norristown, Pottstown, Coatesville, Chester.

In these Philadelphia collar counties, violence and crime reach from the city into the suburbs, making issues of public safety front and center. A look at court cases on any given day in a suburban county show those charged with crimes and on trial are from Philadelphia, particularly in gun crimes.

These patterns of violence, often linked to drug trafficking, are not new, but they have taken on more urgency recently. There has been a steady stream of shootings and other acts of violence this year, many of them involving young men and women and even school-age children.

The situation is worrisome, but there’s an unfortunate tendency to look at these things as part of life in cities, especially when the violence involves drugs or gangs. But several recent events have garnered considerable attention. A large fight near Reading High School, involving young people and gunfire, and the fatal shooting of two Pottsgrove High School students on a Pottstown street brought the severity of gun violence into sharp focus in both places.

The Reading School District superintendent acknowledged that there’s been an uptick in fights and other incidents at Reading High. Meanwhile police say more and more arguments in the street are turning into gun violence.

The good news is that the events are sparking a community-wide response from officials, community groups and the general public.

Reading city and school district officials have resisted the temptation to gloss over these incidents to avoid bad publicity, instead firmly and publicly acknowledging the problem and the need to deal with it as a community.

In Pottstown, a community meeting was held the day after the October shooting. The meeting began by acknowledging that it takes a village to raise a child, “but the child not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth,” said Tiffany Thurman, the vice president for government and community affairs at the Greater Philadelphia YMCA.

Pottstown residents speaking in that meeting lamented the loss of their village, of neighborhood cohesion and a culture in which people looked out for each other. They talked of ways to get it back through mentoring programs and organized activities that try to combat the street culture.

A community brainstorming session at Reading High reached a similar conclusion, that it will take involvement on the part of the whole community to make this situation better.

With a perfect storm of pandemic-related mental health issues, staffing shortages in schools and a host of other issues contributing to this problem, solving these problems won’t be easy.

It demands commitment: That means not just police and educators but family members and neighbors getting involved in promoting community safety, starting in their own homes.

It means keeping an eye on kids and what they’re doing, and watching for suspicious activity in neighborhoods.

It means working with community organizations with a strong record of doing good work to address these sorts of problems.

It means recognizing first and foremost that violent crime isn’t somebody else’s problem. It is everyone’s. If there’s a perception that our communities are unsafe, the entire region suffers. And when there’s a reality that our streets are unsafe for children, all families are at risk.

“This is a man-made problem,” U.S. Rep. Madeleine

Dean said in yet another community discussion of gun violence. “And therefore, we have to do something about it.”

These efforts to face the problem are encouraging, but they are still new and just beginning. To be a solution, the effort must be ongoing. We must as a community keep talking and acting jointly and with urgency to stop this crippling violence. Adults working together is the best hope for our children. Their lives, literally, depend on it.