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COLUMBUS, Ga. — “We have seen the movie before, where you put a bunch of resources in a place and then you decide your strategy. I don't think the output that we've seen in those decisions has all together been good.” — White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs, describing the U.S. strategy of ‘hearts and minds’ in Afghanistan, 2009.

 Just hours after city officials proudly announced a plan to expand offerings at local neighborhood recreation centers in hopes of ‘preventing crime,’ a widespread shootout at the Shirley Winston Rec Center proved on its face why the city’s approach to crime prevention is a losing one.

During the city council meeting held on May 30, city officials announced what they are calling the C3 Initiative: a city-sponsored collaboration of local non-profits to bring new offerings to local neighborhood recreation centers.

The main focus of the initiative, according to city officials, is to use recreation centers as a means to reduce violent crime in troubled areas by offering alternative activities for at-risk members of the city’s youth.

Ironically, just hours after the city announced its plans, a widespread shootout occurred at the Shirley Winston Recreation Center — one of the city’s largest and well-known.

The Tuesday night shootout left at least one teenage victim wounded and several surrounding vehicles with their windows shot out. Vehicles fled the scene in all directions as the volley of gunfire erupted throughout the complex.

THE COLD REALITY

Pumping resources into a criminally-damaged population only results in the criminal destruction of those resources. It will not — nor has it ever, anywhere on earth — ever result in a decrease of criminal activity.

Why?

Because shiny new resources are simply new things for criminals to seize control of and destroy for their own purposes. Period. You can cancel Christmas around that fact. Take it to the bank. Bet your life on it. Insert another idiom here. 

See: The past twenty-two years of counterinsurgency strategy around the world.

Until you physically remove a criminal element from their area of operation, nothing you do — nothing — will have any lasting or profound effect on decriminalizing that population; you will merely be giving the criminal element something new to destroy or seize control of for their own purposes as you continue to beat your head against the wall trying to combat them.

This is analogous to rewarding bad behavior: if the dysfunctional society keeps breaking its new toys, then stop giving them new toys until you first correct the bad behavior.

You correct that bad behavior by relentlessly raiding the criminal element and putting them in a cage.

Until that happens, you are merely depriving the innocent remainder of the society from enjoying the quality of life they deserve while simultaneously giving criminals exactly what they want.

THE BOTTOM LINE

We suppose the city missed the memo about how violent criminals do not care about whatever rec center programs you offer them — because they are violent criminals. They are not going to simply ‘put down their guns’ and suddenly find a newfound love for badminton because of city-sponsored programs.

They will, however, continue to ruin whatever you build until you physically remove them from society.

Criminals do not care about your kumbaya utopian virtue. They care about shooting you in the face and stealing your stuff. By failing to realize that, you are perpetuating the destruction of the city.

Perhaps our city officials should very seriously consider that.

Remove the criminals instead of appeasing them.

Put the boots on the ground.

Do the work.

Facts are stubborn things — and we’ll keep publishing them, whether city officials like them or not.

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