It’s MLK Day, a service day
If you woke early, you still have time to plan on helping with Chattanooga’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service today.
This is Chattanooga’s fifth year to host “A Day On, Not a Day Off” in honor of Dr. King’s birthday.
City government, some local business and civic group partners and thousands of community volunteers are celebrating the civil rights giant by working on service projects throughout Chattanooga.
All you have to do is show up at 8 a.m at UTC’s Maclellan Gym and accept an assignment.
Make Dr. King and Chattanooga proud.
Chattanooga has safer streets
Speaking of proud, we also should celebrate some long-sought success in bringing down the number of gang shootings in our city.
The overall number of shootings fell from 158 in 2016 to 147 in 2017, helped along by a nearly 30 percent decline in shootings involving gang members, according to Chattanooga police officials. Officers say the portion of both homicides and non-fatal shootings involving gang members also declined by 15 percent and 31 percent, respectively.
Unfortunately, Chattanooga’s 34 homicides in 2017 was a record for recent years – but only half of those involved a known gang member. That statistic also marks a gang-related downturn from 2016, when a bloody gang war erupted into a weeks-long conflict.
The change didn’t come easily, naturally or cheaply. But it’s hard to argue with the result.
Sgt. Josh May, head of the police department’s anti-gang violence efforts, said information procured from community members, some of whom are working more closely with law enforcement than they have in years, helped put a number of gang offenders behind bars.
Additionally, a lot of the social services efforts, aimed at helping young people leave gang life, came together, May said.
Added help came from police officers and investigators using community policing and a 21st century real-time intelligence center to make “good-quality cases” for state and federal prosecutors, May said.
The Chattanooga City Council approved $750,000 at the beginning of 2016 for cameras, software and video networking tools for the center. A portion of that, $137,905, was for a contract for 15 pole-mounted cameras and networking software and a $250,000 agreement to install a video monitor wall at the police services center.
But credit is especially due to community members who put aside fear and began coming forward to help police make their neighborhoods safer.
“There [was] no shortage of people coming forward with information. You go from having no leads to having a lot of different leads for different reasons,” May said.
Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke and our police should take a victory lap.
The program they put together to fight gang violence was, from the outset, controversial and mistrusted.
They persevered. They tweaked the program, as necessary, and fought for it when necessary.
“We spent a couple of years really focused on improving the situation when it came to gangs in our community,” Berke said. “And the numbers are clear – we’ve reduced those incidents.”
Kudos, folks. Kudos.
Now let’s take on opioids
Perhaps the state now will take a cue on fighting opioids.
The Tennessee General Assembly is expected to tackle the state’s opioid crisis – one weighted with 6,000 deaths over the last five years attributed to legal and illegal painkillers.
It’s hard to see how lawmakers will fight this scourge without doing something about Medicaid expansion – the 800-pound gorilla in this GOP supermajority legislature.
“A lot of people are talking about battling the opiate epidemic, but if Medicaid expansion is not Step 1 of your plan, you need a new plan,” said Senate Minority Leader Jeff Yarbro, D-Nashville.
Both will be tough if our lawmakers continue to worry about their donors and lobbyists in the powerful pharmaceutical industry.
But it seems our not-to-strong-spined lawmakers, who returned to Nashville last week, may have help from three Tennessee county prosecutors and the guardian of a baby born dependent on drugs.
The prosecutors and the guardian have filed a lawsuit against the makers of several opioid drugs, accusing the companies of unleashing an epidemic by deceptive marketing practices that downplayed the addiction risks of their painkillers.
The suit was filed Tuesday by three conservative district attorneys who represent areas in the mountainous region of upper east Tennessee in Appalachia – the epicenter of the prescription drug epidemic.
The Associated Press reports that the lawsuit, among a growing number of lawsuits filed across the country, cites research showing Tennessee has the second highest statewide opioid prescription rate in the country outside West Virginia.
Clearly, we need a plan.