Mayors skirt the issue in public, school superintendents avoid it, philanthropic organizations won’t touch it, and law enforcement talks around it.
But candidate Coty Wamp and now District Attorney Coty Wamp — in an effort to curb it and to solicit help — has been courageous enough to call out crime in the Black community. But now she says she’s done.
“The constant whining from the clergy has become a distraction,” she told the Times Free Press last week, referring to comments by a group of Black clergy members about her “divisive rhetoric,” “and my commentary on their unwillingness to act will cease after today.”
That’s too bad, because now Black-on-Black crime will return to be the subject no one talks about, the unmentioned elephant in the room, the buried topic. And the government and the community will repeatedly fund studies, receive grants and have conferences to talk all around the subject in an effort to improve Chattanooga and Hamilton County.
To be sure, we have other problems in addition to Black-on-Black crime — opioid addiction, failing schools, lack of infrastructure, just to name a few.