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A doctor standing in front of 150 attorneys, threatening to tell lawyer jokes, might not seem the best way to get an audience on your side, but Hamilton County Coroner Dr. O'dell Owens pulled it off when he discussed violent crime at a March 6 meeting of the Cincinnati Academy of Leadership for Lawyers.
With a plea for a personalistic approach to address crime now and into the future, Owens challenged everyone to try to save one child at a time.
Suggestions for making a difference also came from Dr. Jay Johannigman of University Hospital Trauma Center and Mayor Mark Mallory. Police Chief Thomas Streicher also spoke.
Mallory emphasized the need for prevention, including developing strong partnerships to leverage resources, and charged adults to serve as mentors through established programs or by creating opportunities in their workplaces. Citing students he's mentored who have gone into public service, Mallory said the key is "preventing people from becoming bad in the first place."
Repeat customers
Owens presented Mentoring 101.
"You can help me help these kids learn to read, and the world is theirs," he said. "A study out in California looked at 1,400 juveniles already in the system, arrested. They went back to see how many were reading at a fourth-grade level by the time they were in fourth grade — out of 1,400, zero.
Right here in Cincinnati, if you're in the fourth grade and you are failing the fourth grade, you're done. At 9 years old the system says, 'You're done.' "
Owens described children who get off the floor — not out of bed — to walk out of a dilapidated apartment in a dilapidated building, through a dilapidated neighborhood and into a dilapidated school only to hear, "Compete. Do as well as Wyoming, Madeira." The kind word and gift of time given once a week by a mentor are frequently the only kindness and individual attention many inner-city children receive.
It might be difficult for comfortable, middle-class professionals to grasp the idea that holding a child's hand for a few minutes and showing up once a week to read or talk can make a difference in whether a child picks up a gun. But Khalil Osiris, director of Strengthening Partnerships and Resources for Kids (visit www.cycyouth.org/main.php?pgID=63) made the connection.
He said before you can reach a child, you must establish a relationship. Building a trusting relationship provides kids with an alternative way to view the world. Osiris described the kids in his program as "the most at-risk of the at-risk" — children ages 4 to 14 whose parents are incarcerated — and invited those who want to make a difference to consider mentoring.
Hamilton County Municipal Judge John Burlew suggested looking at the problem one child at a time.
"Don't get intimidated," he said. "Get involved. We've got this great big problem. If you think, 'How am I going to stop crime?' you're just almost immobilized. But if you can help one kid take an alternative to violence, it's just wonderful. It's a way we can wrap our mind around it."
That great big problem came home to Johannigman when he recognized a patient who came into the trauma canter as the same person he'd operated on just three months earlier, also for a gunshot wound. The patient was back with a fourth gunshot wound in five years.
"That's not the kind of repeat business we want to build in this community," Johannigman said.
Recognizing that physicians are able to identify individuals who need more than just medical care, he wanted to find a way to utilize that knowledge, so he developed the Violence Intervention Program (VIP). It starts with a hospital-based administrator, possibly a social worker, serving as a linchpin between patients and programs that can help address the needs that might hinder recovery or result in a return visit. Citing a program in Baltimore, Johannigman also talked about mentoring as a key component.
"What I'm most excited about — the real key here is the mentorship program," he said. "They have members of a mentoring program who are mentors themselves but who have been victims of gunshot wounds."
The mentors assist gunshot wound victims with healing as well as addressing issues that put them into danger: developing coping skills, education and understanding conflict resolution. The Baltimore program proved successful at reducing recidivism rates and increasing employment. Stopping two or three gunshot wounds every year means the program can pay for itself while improving the community, according to Johannigman.
Noting that complaining without offering solutions is whining, he said he's excited to participate in a constructive way in the effort to reduce crime.
Streicher fires a blank
In stark contrast, Streicher — the panelist who would seem to have the most comprehensive and practical knowledge about reducing crime — complained the most and didn't offer any suggestions. While providing ample statistics and arguing that 90 percent of all violent crime is related to illegal drugs, he repeatedly said, "I don't know what the answer is."
Streicher said he thought the other speakers' ideas could help but focused on identifying a single villain for many of the real and perceived crime problems in the city: the news media. After asking if any media were present, he referenced the shooting death of pregnant teen Chanel Jordan in December 2005. Streicher said the officers have gotten "no cooperation" from more than 1,000 people who were in attendance.
"We do have a couple of people who have seen something, but they're so afraid," he said. "They're so terrified because of the images that are being presented, in my estimation, in the media that people are just worked into a frenzy and just scared to death to talk to us."
But even Streicher said mentoring is a good idea, citing the example of a 13-year-old shot and killed in an attempt to rob a man to whom he was selling drugs.
Owens summarized how hands-on involvement makes a difference.
"What we need is the hand touch," he said. "We can give money to help clothe them. We can give money to provide shelter. That's not enough. We must feed them encouragement, clothe them in empathy and compassion and shelter them against despair, which is the fertile ground of drug addiction, teen-age pregnancy and violence." ©
