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| What's Possible For The Kids? | |||
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What happens is, as we so often do, we classify people. There are good young people and there are bad young people, you know? And maybe they're bad for social and economic reasons, but they're problems, they are difficult, they are not assets to the community. However, that line between what we call good and bad is very fluid and that it may not take a whole lot to bring a number of people who are caught up in bad or negative behavior into a different place. [ top ] |
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| The traditional statistical measurements are one measure of success. The homicide rate has dramatically gone down. That's a measure which criminologists will often look at because unlike other crimes, every homicide will get reported. So it's a constant. And you can take a look at the early '90s when there were over 150 homicides in Boston and then look at last year and there were 35 homicides in Boston -- dramatic drop, among the biggest drops of any major city in the country. So some of it is the statistical measure.
But one can take a lot of comfort in the non-statistical measurements -- the conversations with police officers who are out there every day. If you ask a police officer, "How's it going? Are things quiet?", the response is, "You're not going to believe how quiet it is. I used to be on patrol and there'd be shots fired almost every night, and now we don't hear it." Or go to a community meeting and hear people talk about the new stores that are opening in their community, or the economic development, or the fact that people feel comfortable being outside at night. Now, that's not all law enforcement's doing. There's a lot of reasons for that, which include economic opportunity, and a strong economy, and actions by the Mayor's office and the Mayor. But part of it is the law enforcement, together with community people, stabilizing those neighborhoods. And it gave people the confidence and the comfort for the other things to happen. |
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| What Do You Consider A Job Well Done? | |||
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When people say "Thank you for coming," as you're going out of their house, that's instant gratification. Or the kids who will go out of their way to shake your hand when you're leaving a classroom after giving a CeaseFire. Or the kids who hang around after CeaseFire meetings just to talk to you. That is a job well done.
One of the older people who used to be in the business said, "You're never going to get a lot of thanks. But if you get thanks from the people that you're working with, that means you've done all right." If you lock a kid up and they come back to talk to you because you were straight with them, then you've made an impression on them and you've got a good rep.
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| What Did It Take To Make Those Changes? | |||
| It's a little investment. You have to invest. The bottom line is you have to invest. If you're going to affect change in the neighborhood, you have to invest in that neighborhood. You're investing your time and your effort. And what you're going to get paid back with is kids not dying, people not dying, and people saying "hello" to you. That's your payback. You're not going to get rich, but you'll feel pretty good about yourself. [ top ] |
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| The secret to our success is the comprehensive approach. That we give equal emphasis to prevention, intervention, and enforcement. We do some cutting edge things in the area of intervention and enforcement, but our ability to do that is based on our commitment to prevention. For example, we might not have the community's support for police and probation officers going into people's homes in Operation Night Light if we weren't doing the alternative pieces like finding jobs for the kids. The message is, we're not in the business of locking you up, we're in the business of saving your lives.
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| What Is The Tenpoint Philosophy? | |||
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Members of the TenPoint talk about what we call the 'Three R's', as in the basics for kids when we say, academically, reading, writing, arithmetic. Well, the basis for redevelopment in some of our communities really is 'Renewal, Responsibility, and Reconnection.'
Renewal, from the vantage point that we have to believe that we really can make a difference. Our faith has to mean something substantive. Our optimism has to be something we really are willing to step out on and do something with. So the sense that however difficult it may be, that we can really make a difference and make a change, it's important. And that has to be shared so that we're not trying to mobilize the depressed and the despairing, but those who really think they can make a difference. This issue of Responsibility also becomes important, that we think less about who to blame and more about what our respective responsibilities are. And of course, that always includes accountability. But again, we don't waste a whole lot of time trying to point fingers and blame people, but rather figure out who's going to be responsible for changing what's going on. And that's especially, we think, with young people. So everybody–police officers, probation, public sector, private sector, the church community, the community organizations, the faith traditions in general–all of us have to be asking, "What are our respective responsibilities here?" And the last piece, Reconnection, is understanding that no one institution by itself, no one person, is going to make any difference in this program. Either we will come together, or as Ben Franklin said, "We'll either hang together or we'll hang separately." Now, if we hang together, we can get extraordinary things done. We can actually see miracles happen. So we keep working and those are the relationships that make it possible, straightening out the inevitable problems that arise, and always trying to keep our eyes on the real prize, which is a very positive and very exciting future for this city, and especially for its youth.
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| Download the entire FAQ |  FAQ 1-6 FAQ 7-11 |
FAQ 12-17 |
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