Gang gunfire in Chattanooga is grabbing headlines again.
First, Chattanooga was shocked to note that our first homicide of 2016 didn't happen until Jan. 25. We thought we were on a roll. Then on Sunday, Jan. 31, our hearts were plucked when a frightened 5-year-old called police dispatchers to say "a dude" shot his parents dead and he was all alone in the family's home on East 13th Street. Three days later, on Wednesday, a shooter opened fire on an SUV on Brainerd Road, causing the SUV to run a red light and create an eight-vehicle crash. Police say they believe all three incidents are gang-related.
In the Brainerd Road drive-by, no one was seriously injured, but the brazen mid-morning shooting on one of Chattanooga's most-traveled roads - among cars carrying white folks - opened the floodgates.
Now at least two City Council members are up in arms, and they are challenging a 2-year-old city gang violence program that they say isn't working.
Councilman Yusuf Hakeem on Wednesday condemned the city's Violence Reduction Initiative in a letter he sent to both Mayor Andy Berke and council members. Councilman Larry Grohn piled on, saying his efforts to get detailed information about parts of the social service side of VRI have been unsuccessful.
Not so fast.
Shootings in Chattanooga are not new. In the 1990s, Chattanooga Times reporters spent a week - night and day - in one of Chattanooga's inner-city public housing complexes. Gunfire popped at all hours. If and when police were called, and if they found no bullet damage or no victims, no official reports were filed. That ensured that what was common place in a poor neighborhood was non-existent in the news and in white conversations.
Now, like then, it apparently takes bullets flying around white folks sitting in their cars and conducting business in the 5300 block of Brainerd Road in the clear light of day to get the real attention of Chattanooga's public and finally an outspoken comment from members of the City Council.
How sad. Certainly gunfire on Brainerd Road is frightening. But it was always frightening in Alton Park and on Glass Street, too.
It's also worth noting that the during the years of the early 1990s, this city routinely tallied yearly homicides in the 30s and 40s. In 1994, the death count was 50.
But in 2013, 2014 and 2015, Chattanooga had 16, 21 and 20 homicides, respectively.
If we measure only gang-related shootings (including those that resulted in homicides) there were 71 in 2013, 63 in 2014 and 80 in 2015. In part, at least, police attribute the fluctuation and overall rise to their own intelligence work and growing ability to recognize the local players in gang activity since Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke launched the Violence Reduction Initiative in March 2014.
The program combines targeted gang surveillance to catch and prosecute bad actors while offering social services to help lesser actors who want to get out of the gang life and are willing to help police and the community by not remaining silent about crime. Berke and police said at the VRI start-up that they believed the city would see fewer shootings and real results that year.
But the city has not seen a dramatic drop in gang-related gun violence, what VRI is specifically designed to combat. Instead the numbers of gang-shootings have stayed relatively flat.
Is it a perfect program? Certainly not - if for no other reason than that some of the partners the city needs, like the District Attorney's office, seem disinterested in really being partners. And, yes, it does take a village.
But before we throw the book at the only real organized effort Chattanooga leaders have taken in several decades to curb gang violence, just try to imagine what our gang violence numbers in 2014 and 2015 might have looked like without it?
It's good that our council members are now engaged. Perhaps rather than just complain, they will open a public conversation with alternative plans or suggested tweaks. Perhaps the full community will finally buy in. What a concept.