YOUNG LIVES LOST

Stopping The Killings Will Take Efforts From Small To Superheroic From
Everyone

All those impressive projects being packed into downtown Detroit represent
no real renaissance for the city if children are being slaughtered out in
the neighborhoods. And they are, 10 so far this year, a pace that is the
worst among the nation's major cities and horribly reminiscent of the bloody
1980s, when crack cocaine ravaged the streets.

This problem begs a superhero solution -- some mighty, mystical figure to
swoop through the streets, sucking up guns, rounding up bad guys and
cloaking the innocents in Kevlar. But that is not how it is going to happen.

No, it will take a lot of little superheroes, in police uniforms,
prosecutors' suits and civilian clothes, working together to save the
children so they might grow up to save the city. And it will take a lot of
little victories, a house at a time, a corner at a time, a block at a time,
reclaiming bits of turf from drug dealers and their customers who are the
clear and present danger. Until society figures out how to reduce the demand
for an illegal high, there will be a lot of money in drugs. Dealers and
their henchmen will fight over money and people will die, too often
children.

Disrupting drug traffic at the retail level has been dismissed in some
quarters as a labor-intensive, ineffective and short-term strategy. But
until Detroit makes headway on the long-term issues of poverty and endemic
violence, it is the best available course. The city has neighborhoods,
usually near the freeways, where street traffic in drugs is routine. Arrests
and vehicle seizures indicate a good share of the traffic originates in the
suburbs.

This drive-up shopping can be discouraged by an overt and undercover police
presence, by seizing houses and cars and penalizing the owners, and by
convincing citizens to help the police so the police can help them.

It is going to take time, money and concurrent campaigns to encourage people
to steer clear of using and selling drugs, and to publicize the arrests of
drug customers. Cities have produced dramatic declines in homicides by
attacking their drug problem at the street level, and sustaining that effort
even as they make cases against major suppliers. Prosecutors and police have
begun chipping away at this monumental problem.

They will need patience, fortitude and support to see it through to a day
when the children of every Detroit neighborhood can play outside all day and
sleep safely in their homes at night.