I decided to take my lunch hour today and attend the press conference called by the Washtenaw County Sheriff’s Department on the subject of gang violence in Ypsilanti. What follow are my rough notes. If, after reading through them, you find yourself wanting more, I’d suggest watching the video at the end of the post, which, if I’m not mistaken, was shot by the Ann Arbor News.
Things are slow to begin… Word is that we’re waiting for television news crews to arrive from Detroit. I find a spot on the edge of the room, next to a table full of high school kids. I ask them what their interest is in this press conference and they tell me that they’re part of a group called Dedicated to Make a Change. Several times over the coming hour, speakers will point in their direction, reminding folks that Ypsi has a lot more kids working toward positive change than it does kids who are attempting to murder one another. [A speaker later estimates that there are only about 20 to 30 kids involved in gang-like activities in Ypsilanti.] The kinds next to me seem cool, interesting and engaged. They’re wondering what they’ll say if they’re asked to speak. They don’t get asked to speak, though. I get the sense that they’re relieved. I ask them if they’d like to come on the Saturday Six Pack sometime, and they say yes, so I guess I may have a chance to ask them sometime soon.
State Rep David Rutledge steps up to the podium. After confirming “evidence of rival gang activity” in Ypsilanti, he references a letter he’d sent three days ago to Sheriff Jerry Claydon requesting that the County increase police patrols in the City of Ypsilanti and take on more of a role coordinating the activities of our various local law enforcement agencies, all of which have representatives standing behind him. [It occurs to me that I’ve never been in the presence of so many guns in my entire life.] Saying this collaborative effort would essentially follow the template of the Eastern Washtenaw Safety Alliance (EWSA), Representative Rutledge then begins the process of bringing spokespeople up from the Ypsilanti Police Department, Eastern Michigan University’s Public Safety Department, and the Sheriff’s Office, each of whom stressed how dedicated their organizations were to seeing these occurrences of violence come to an end.
The first law enforcement person to speak is Washtenaw County Sheriff Jerry Clayton. He paints a picture for the members of the media who are present… While the good citizens of Ypsilanti are participating in a “Stop the Violence” march last weekend, he says, bullets are flying across town between warring factions of young adults… He promises that the young men responsible will be found and arrested. While not referring to the two groups responsible for the recent bloodshed as “gangs,” he does say that they are “mimicking gang culture,” and “claiming territory” in a way that gangs would. He assures us that these groups will be stopped, and he names them. The two groups, he says, are called Rakk Life and Finesse Gang. Clayton goes on to say that there are people in the community ready and willing to support those young people who wanted to live in accordance with societal norms, but that, if people choose to engage in violent behavior, they well be dealt with. He then outlines how various agencies will be working together to increase their presence in the City of Ypsilanti.
By the end of the event, it should be noted, Clayton begins talking more broadly. His scope grows beyond just law enforcement. “You cannot enforce your way to a better community,” he says, noting that much of what we’re seeing today is due to factors well outside the scope of what he and other officers are able to handle. “This is a socioeconomic issue,” he says, before offering an example. “Summer jobs,’ he tells us, “would have helped.” He then adds that it had been summer jobs that had kept him occupied in his youth.
And that was one of the big things I’d come to the event hoping to hear… an acknowledgement of the fact that this wasn’t just about catching the young men responsible for these recent events and putting them behind bars, but ensuring that things like this don’t happen in the future by dealing with the root causes, like poverty, hopelessness and a lack of career prospects, in a substantive and meaningful way.
Walking into a room where a few dozen armed and uniformed law enforcement officers were lined up around the perimeter, I was concerned that little attention would be given to either societal causes, or potential solutions that didn’t involve heavily armed officers forcefully putting entire neighborhoods on lockdown. Thankfully, though, Clayton and others were quick to note that this wasn’t just about law enforcement. Clayton, in fact, ended his remarks by saying, “(Law enforcement) is just one small piece.”
Of course, we don’t know how things will play out on the street, and what might happen when our officers begin engaging with people, but I liked that Clayton and others alluded to the complexity of the situation, and at least attempted to frame the problem in such a way that enforcement was not presented as single solution.
Also easing my mind a bit, Clayton promised that local forces would neither “target” nor “profile.” Everything they would do in Ypsilanti, he said, would be evidence driven. Again, we’ll have to see how it works in action, but I appreciated that he was at least sensitive to the issue of civil rights, as were others who spoke.
I’m sure some will say that it was disingenuous, but I should add that I was also happy to hear at least two of the law enforcement representatives offer their condolences to the families of Keandre Duff, who was shot in the head and killed just after midnight on the morning of July 12, and Keon Washington, the 17 year old young man killed last summer. I wasn’t expecting to hear empathy for the families of these young men, who are both thought to have been involved in these warring factions, and I was pleased to hear it. [One of those to express condolences was Ypsilanti Police Chief Tony DeGiusti.]
County Commissioner Ronnie Peterson, who was clearly more comfortable speaking to this crowd than the members of the law enforcement community to proceed him, had a few big applause lines. The first was, “We own this town and no one is going to take it. It’s our joint.” The second came just after he said that we needed more resources, so that we could do more in the community, when he raised his voice and promised, “Our streets will be safe, and our neighborhoods peaceful.” Peterson, who was surrounded by half a dozen other elected officials, also made it a point to declare emphatically, “All lives matter,” urging people to come together as one community, across the lines that sometimes divide us, in order to address these issues.
After a number of other speakers, Jeannette Hadden was called to the mic. Hadden, who coordinated last weekend’s “Stop the Violence” march, talked from her experience as a mother living in the community. “Our children need to know more than death and prison,” she told the audience. She said our focus had to be on showing the young that they have opportunities… that they can graduate from high school and be something. She concluded by saying that we, as a community, would “claw our way back,” and get to a better place. [Hadden will be joining me and others on the next episode of the Saturday Six Pack to discuss the community response to these recent events.]
And, at this point Alex Easley, pastor of City of Hope Ministries, took the mic to call on parents to do more to make sure their kids stay on the right path. “The root cause is in our households,” he said. “We’re not raising our kids correctly.” Easley said that it wasn’t just a matter of state spending in the community. The responsibility, he said, lies with us as parents to raise our children well, with discipline. And he noted that this happened in the ’80s as well, when rival gangs were prevalent in Ypsilanti, and that he could have met the same fate, if not for the involvement of his parents. [Easley seems to be very much a “pull yourself up by your bootstraps kind of guy.” Case in point… He says our young people didn’t need to have jobs made for them, as they could create their own jobs. One suspects that his quote in today’s Ann Arbor News – ““Parents, I call you out today. Take care of your children and then you don’t need state funding to help you raise your kids.” – will earn him a lot of fans on the right.]
Easley also noted that he didn’t like the idea of law enforcement coming into our communities. “It hurts me,” I believe I heard him say, before urging the law enforcement officers in the room not to allow this to “become warfare.” “Let’s do this in a peaceful way,” he said. “We don’t need episodes like are happening in other cities.”
At that point, Marlene Radzik, police services commander at the Sheriff’s Department, attempted to assure people that there would be “no heavy hand” and that everyone would be treated “with dignity and respect.”
One just hopes that officers on the street are up to the task for balancing our civil rights with the immediate job at hand, which is getting these dangerous individuals off the street.
One also hopes that, once the bullets stop flying, the leaders who stood up in front of us today don’t forget their promise to get involved in a meaningful way and help our kids not only envision stable, happy, productive lives for themselves, but actually get there.
Broadcast live streaming video on Ustream
[While one hopes that our local officers conduct themselves in the manner outlined by their superiors this morning, it never hurts to be prepared. If you have the time, please consider downloading the ACLU’s Mobile Justice app, which not only provides an overview of your rights when dealing with police officers, but also allows for the fast and easy recording and submission of police interaction videos.]
