225BatonRouge.com

Just as the summer heat was coming to an end, a wave of killings once again made Baton Rouge anxious, wary and even paranoid. Shootings in various parts of the city-parish sent pastors into righteous tirades at the pulpit, politicians barking into cameras, and callers to radio talk-shows blabbing on and on about senseless crime and what to do about it.

Some customers of restaurants in the Siegen Lane area said they would rather have restaurant food delivered to their cars rather than getting out of their cars. They said this to a TV reporter after college student and waiter Aaron Arnold was shot and killed while helping a co-worker with their car.

All of those are reactions, not solutions.

The police chief said his department needs more money in the new budget to hire 25 new cops. With frivolous requests like Metro Council members asking for tax money to pay for their snacks, it probably won’t be a tough sell.

But addressing violent crime in Baton Rouge is not a simple task reserved for the police chief, the mayor and your local pastor. It’s a problem that goes much deeper, and requires people within the city’s poorest, most crime-ridden neighborhoods to rise up and lead their neighbors up and out of despair.

The easiest excuse is to just blame the crime on the new residents from New Orleans. The fact is, many of the recent murders were by Baton Rouge residents, and we simply don’t know about others. No question, with a 10% increase in population, traffic won’t be the only thing to increase—crime will, too.

So, how do we prevent more killings?

When a minister promised a gathering he would help take back the neighborhood, it took a former gangster-turned rap artist, Silky Slim, to put things in perspective. “If you don’t have the stink of the ghetto on you, you aren’t going to go in there and change anything.”

Is he right? While arresting people may give some immediate relief, how do we get to the root cause of all the killings? Is education the answer? Jobs? A father figure or mentor in life? Religion?

Teenage boys carry guns in their waistbands because they believe they must protect their home, their block, their turf. Who do they respect? Maybe it requires people who grew up in a given neighborhood to change it. But will they? Or can they? If it takes a village to raise a child, what does it take to save one? As a community, it is critical we join together and figure out the right answers.

Baton Rouge’s title of Louisiana’s largest city is still fresh, but violent crime can quickly douse the flames of hope and prosperity that can come with it.

We mustn’t let that happen.