Pew: Gun deaths among U.S. children and teens rose 50% in two years

Many inner city police forces stood down in response to the massive protests/riots after the killing of George Floyd, and crime/murder rates are rising predictably, with young people paying a tragic, horrific price.

Those who care about and love inner city youth need to start asking "how's this working out for you?" I dare suggest we can have effective policing without people keeping their knees on peoples' necks.

(Maybe start by making sure a canister or two of Narcan is in each cruiser?)

The scarier part is suicide rate among our young children using a firearm.

Most urban police departments did not stand down because of the George Floyd protests/riots, but rather did their job. But there were a few that did stand down because they weren't given the adequate support they need to actually police. (i.e Minneapolis, Portland, Seattle). But these cities also have deep, dumpster-fire issues on many levels, ranging from patterns of police brutality that you speak of, as well as grass-roots socialists in political power who want to burn down the whole system including defunding the police and abolishing jails/prisons. What's interesting is that most (not all) police departments in urban communities across America received more money in their budget, not less after George Floyd.

The rise of murder rates/violent crime was more likely due to the pandemic and the pent-up aggression that followed. In my neighborhood, we had several murders and shootings within 6-8 blocks from my house during the latter part of 2020 and all the way through 2021 but then as the pandemic disappeared we saw shootings and murders tapering off in 2022. One of my former students was shot and killed in 2021 and in the same year a current student of ours was shot in the jaw, neck and shoulder but survived. Anyway, the restlessness and aggressiveness carried into our teen program, where we broke up several fights or interceded before the fights took place. In 2021 we had 5 of these. In 2022 we only had one. We even had more kids attending in 2022, yet we had more behavior issues in 2021 than 2022.

In the past 25 years, I've had somewhere between 35-40 of my (former or current) students that were shot and killed on the streets of Grand Rapids. So part of my job has been keeping up with the research and statistical data on violent crime/murders on GR as well as cities across America to see if it was correlating with the many anecdotal experiences we had with students from our ministry.

Most of our students that died from gun violence were not killed by assault rifles, but rather by handguns. Several of these hand guns that were stolen and then passed around to different young gang members and drug dealers or they were purchased across the state line in Indiana where there is no police background checks or purchase permits.

Also, as to Police departments, I believe in increasing budgets for police so that have enough police to enact community policing. In GR, we've seen glimpses of this, but not enough.On occasion though, GR police officers will stop their cars and shoot around or even play a little basketball at neighborhood parks or basketball goals/rims that are set up in driveways or on the street. The more relational contact with neighbors that happens before crime takes place, the more trusting urban communities are of the police and to more likely they work together with the police to help solve crimes.