Cooper: Pulling out the stops against violence

Chattanooga Police Chief Fred Fletcher says he's taken specific steps to look for specific people in specific places to stem the weekend's tide of violence.
Chattanooga Police Chief Fred Fletcher says he's taken specific steps to look for specific people in specific places to stem the weekend's tide of violence.

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At this point, it would be difficult to say that Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke's Violence Reduction Initiative (VRI) targeting gangs is either a success or a failure. It would be equally as difficult to say that previous efforts to curb gang violence - or other, untried efforts - would have worked better or worse.

But the public is anxious to point fingers and find somebody - or something - to blame since the violence seems not to have slowed, much less stopped.

Over the weekend, four more people were shot, and authorities believe at least two of the shootings were related to the slaying of a validated gang member on April 10.

The latest shooting came a block off heavily traveled Brainerd Road when a man doing yard work - yard work! - was robbed and then shot when what he produced for the thieves didn't satisfy them.

Chattanooga Police Chief Fred Fletcher said Saturday he has taken specific steps to look for specific people in specific places in some of the incidents. Elsewhere, the department got several people off the streets who either had guns they shouldn't have or were doing things with guns that were clearly illegal.

We believe the city's top cop is doing what he can at the moment to stem the tide of violence.

However, in so many incidents, especially those involving gangs, he and his men are stymied because no one will admit to seeing anything or, when they do, they change their minds and say they aren't clear about what they saw. They are afraid if they say what they know, someone will retaliate against them. Theirs are not idle worries, but the more people are silent the longer the violence will continue.

And if there is more to be gained by the police department and the Hamilton County District Attorney's office crossing T's and dotting I's together, we urge them to do so.

Hamilton County District Attorney Neal Pinkston has said police investigators are not building the right kind of cases against known gang members and that police aren't buying into the VRI, while Fletcher has said a full-time prosecutor to the gang issue is needed.

The silence on the streets and the perceived lag in cooperation among law enforcement agencies are only two parts of a much larger picture of gang violence. But until more of that picture comes into focus, families will continue to grieve the son on the deadly end of a gun, the child in the wrong place at the wrong time when the gunfire erupted and the mother whose sidelong glance at another man brewed a fatal jealousy.

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