The shootings Saturday night at Coolidge Park may have involved gangs, or maybe not. A police spokesperson suggested the possibility in the wake of the shootings because officers had seen the red and blue colors of gang insignia in the crowd, but Mayor Ron Littlefield said Monday that gangs were not involved.
In reality, the notion that gangs could be involved is metaphor enough for a central underlying concern: public fear of the subcultural reach of a segment of youth that the general public finds reckless, dangerous and doesn’t understand, and that the police generally don’t seem able to contain or defuse, at least with regard to a continuing spate of gang-related shootings over the past several years and this year through March.
Saturday’s shootings were different, and far more alarming to the general public, however, because of where and how they happened.
Preceding Saturday’s shootings, a crowd estimated at 200-to-250 mostly minority African-American youths were beckoned by chains of text messages to join a “flash mob” after dark in the city’s prized Northshore riverfront park, the outdoor centerpiece of the city’s renaissance.
Though many in the crowd were just having a good time, some may have displayed what seem to be the emblems of the gangsta’ rap culture — sagging pants, crooked hats, swagger and loud rap — that police associate with gang members, gang wannabes and reckless, sometimes deadly, gun violence.
Police said the shootings occurred as they were trying to disperse the crowd after some fights erupted. Some members of the crowd maintain the fights broke out because the police were dispersing them. Either way, the shooters apparently shot randomly into a wave of people as they left, wounding five people in the legs near Riverfront Street. Two adults and one juvenile were arrested and charged in the shootings that wounded three adults and two juveniles.
Casualties obviously could have been far more severe. People easily could have been killed. As it happened, the injuries were not critical, a fact that left police wondering about the motive and some crowd members saying the shooting seemed more random than gang-related.
Regardless, news of the shootings ricocheted and resonated around the city because so many residents have become attached to the riverfront. Most value it as the community’s gathering place, a place of safe recreation, family fun and quietude. No civic-minded resident would want that marred or taken away.
City officials, Chamber of Commerce and community leaders, business recruiters and downtown proprietors, moreover, are also keenly aware of the huge civic and business value of our revived downtown, and the sense of public safety that is necessary to secure downtown amenities and the community’s phenomenal investment in the city’s redevelopment.
If public safety evaporates after dark, all that would be put at risk.
City officials are not likely to allow the degradation of downtown. Heavier patrols and more police presence are already scheduled for the warm seasons when more residents are outdoors downtown and security is vital.
That’s important, but far more difficult are the underlying community issues of urban violence, the easy availability of guns, and the lure and presence of gangs. Urban violence advances in the absence of jobs, constructive activities for at-risk youths, and parental control and authority over the relatively small minority of youths involved in urban gangs and violence. The core issues are old fare, but they are spreading, and they demand greater attention by city, police and school leaders, and by parents and courts.
Mayor Littlefield declared Monday that “it’s time for this to stop.” True, but to make that happen, city hall, police, court and school officials will at last have to develop a more comprehensive plan than a smallish gang task force at the police department, and get serious about stopping it. The risk of not doing so is readily apparent.