Is it possible that community volunteers with a headquarters and a used cab could take a bite out of crime?
Maybe not, but at this point, practically anything would help. As long as the group works within the law and closely with local law enforcement, it ought to be able to give the plan a try.
Local Nation of Islam leader Kevin Muhammad is behind the movement that seeks to end violence in the streets of Alton Park. He hopes community volunteers of various beliefs, homeowners, youth and others can be a coalition that holds people to a higher standard in a neighborhood marked by gang-related violence.
Chattanooga already has seen 60 shootings and 15 homicides in 2016. Police have acknowledged some of the incidents are gang-related.
Gang-related shootings in the city have climbed from 53 in 2013 to 67 in 2014 to 70 in 2015. Gang-related homicides have risen by one a year from 12 in 2013 to 13 in 2014 to 14 in 2015.
"This is all about prevention," Muhammad said of his efforts. "If something gets to the point where you're actually shooting people, that's not us. That's the Chattanooga Police Department. We're all about prevention."
So how would things change?
Muhammad says members of the organization might intervene in verbal disputes to prevent shootings, assist the community in conflict resolution and transport elderly residents to buy groceries or medicine.
He said the group's headquarters, "The Community Haven" at 4025 Hughes Ave., could be a site for the conflict resolution classes, tutoring, mentoring, nutrition classes and for the distribution of free food and clothing.
Those types of services, all of which are offered elsewhere from time to time, are wonderful if people from the community attend. We hope they do when renovation on the headquarters in completed in July. We hope they become so popular that additional classes have to be offered.
Muhammad, on May 3, delivered a message to the Chattanooga City Council that he called "The People's State of the City." In it, he decried Mayor Andy Berke's proposal to spend $1 million on public safety cameras over a two-year period as a tool to combat gang violence. He also said "police in our communities are, to us, as the occupying armies of America are to the people of Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya."
The police comment was not helpful in persuading residents that police and community members have the same goal in mind - a peaceful neighborhood.
Berke, meanwhile, like Muhammad, only has a safer city as a goal. Unlike Muhammad, though, he is tasked in his position with helping police do their job, and part of that job is solving crime. He believes strategically placed cameras might offer a closer look at incidents - and reveal participants - where community members have been too fearful or unwilling to offer help in the past.
The Nation of Islam leader would rather the mayor devoted the money to impoverished residents. And if only the city put more money into jobs, internships and community centers, he intimated, the gang problem might go away.
That type of rhetoric ignores the federal, state and local money that is currently poured into the inner city and the drug trade that permeates the gang violence.
Nevertheless, city police are grateful for focused deterrence and community support efforts.
"The chief looks forward to hearing from Kevin Muhammad about his plan," police spokesman Kyle Miller said, "and hopes to work with him to ensure the process operates well with community safety and law enforcement."
The community volunteers, for instance, won't be able to apprehend anyone and wouldn't interfere with crimes in progress. But if they have a hand in preventing situations from escalating into a crime, they will be doing the community and the city a service.
If the effort is a success in Alton Park, Muhammad said, he wants to replicate it across the city, as Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan has suggested for municipalities across the country.
Like any effort worth its salt, though, it will need backing from volunteers and it will need to be sustained. If members of the community want a safer neighborhood, and we are sure they do, they will have to get involved. And the volunteers will have to stay involved. All that is harder than it sounds.
But if, as Muhammad suggested, the area is "tired of funerals," a community intervention for Alton Park might work.