Police and government are not going to fix Chicago or any other major violent crime-ridden city. The people who live there must change. There must be families -- a mother and a father (not an often unknown sperm donor and egg) -- who should be involved with their children. The kids need parents to teach them right from wrong, a father to play with and teach his son, a mother to teach and nurture her daughter. Parents who read to their kids, who stress the importance of education and hard work to get ahead, not the gang life which leads to prison or the morgue. Parents who are always aware of what the kids are doing and the other kids they are associating with.
Every time one of these young men is killed, a parent or the parents are interviewed, and I always wonder, where were these parents when the kid was still alive? When Trayvon died, the parents were carrying on and I kept thinking, how much did they know about their kid's thug life? Here was Trayvon on the street on a Sunday night. Why wasn't he home with his parents? When I was a kid, Sunday was spent at church and then with family. Didn't matter how old I was. As long as I lived under my parents' roof, I obeyed their rules and followed their traditions. Seems to me these "families" don't have any rules or traditions. Most of the time the kids are out on the street and the parents have no idea where they are or who they are with. Seems like the only time they care about these kids is when they are killed. Then it's everyone else's fault, not theirs.
If the people don't change their ways -- if they don't start raising their kids right, instead of abdicating their responsibilities to the state or just letting the kids raise themselves -- then the violent crime will go on and the number of deaths will increase.
