Another point of discussion at last night’s public safety meeting was how a $250,000 grant that the Metro Council will soon allocate to the police department for increased enforcement will be used. Several residents in attendance argued that local residents had approached the council to have this money granted in order to address recurring drug-related crime in the neighborhood near 28th Avenue and Clifton Avenue in West Nashville. These residents expressed frustration that the problems plaguing this neighborhood are longstanding and that despite hard work by the police to address the activity, nothing seems to be changing.

Councilwoman Ginger Hausser sympathized with this frustration but noted that the council had decided to host the public safety forum and three similar meetings across the city in order to hear from constituents about how the grant should be spent. “These problems didn’t start overnight,” she said. “and they won’t be solved overnight, either, but this is a start.”

Councilman Eric Crafton observed that criminal behavior by repeat offenders is not confined to West Nashville. He noted that he frequently visits East Nashville on business and sees similar patterns. “I’d like to see criminal penalties increased because, 24 hours later, I see these same guys right back on the street doing the same stuff,” he said.

A quick-witted audience member chimed in, “Well then, Eric, stop doing deals with them!”

To his credit, Crafton shrugged the comment off by laughing and replying, “Good idea.”

Regarding the 28th and Clifton area, which was mentioned repeatedly during the meeting, Commander Mickey Miller replied, “One thing that will help is for neighbors to start using their neighborhoods again and reporting crime when they see it. [With limited police resources,] the squeaky wheel gets all the oil.” He also noted that this area is one of many “hot spots” in West Nashville that police officers regularly target for enforcement. Those in attendance applauded the police and their efforts at the end of the meeting and complimented on their hard work to make the city a safer place to live.

Along with several members of the Metro Council, Commander Mickey Miller and Sergeant Connie Tripp hosted a community forum on public safety last night at the West Precinct headquarters on Charlotte Pike. Council members Ginger Hausser, Eric Crafton, Jim Schulman, Billy Joe Walls and Carolyn Baldwin Tucker attended the meeting along with 20 to 25 local residents.

Juvenile crime was a major topic of discussion throughout the evening. As mayoral candidate David Briley observed back in February, approximately 10,000 young adults ages 16 to 24 are responsible for 80 percent of the crime in Nashville. Miller, Tripp and others reiterated the point repeatedly yesterday evening that recidivism rates are very high and that a small percentage of local residents, many of them juveniles, are responsible for the large majority of criminal behavior in the area. Miller remarked that many drug dealers have resorted to having juveniles conduct their drug transactions because the dealers know that juveniles are less likely to be held in jail prior to convinction and likely to be released upon serving short sentences. Youth and adults alike who perpetrate crimes are frequently released from jail only to return to criminal activity within days if not hours, according to Miller and several others in attendance.

Councilman Crafton argued for increased penalties for crime, especially for repeat offenders, and asked why parents are not legally held responsible for  paying restitution or other expenses for the juveniles in their care. When it was pointed out that many parents of juvenile offenders have lost control of the adolescents in their care, Crafton replied, “If they start having to pay up, they’ll get control back.” He went on to say adamantly that increasing penalties and parental liability were high priorities for him, noting that he “would start working on that Monday.”

Councilwoman Tucker concurred that tougher sanctions were a good idea. “Offenders need to know: You do the crime, you do the time,” she said.

Sylvan Park Neighborhood Watch Captain Doug Eckert wondered whether increased penalties would ultimately result in long-term change. “What turns someone around is having someone care about them and giving them control over something positive in their lives,” he said, indicating that encouraging responsible adults to build relationships with troubled teenagers may help reduce overall crime and recidivism.

Already fired up about stiffening penalties, Crafton quickly replied, “With all due respect, these parents need to grab their kids by the neck and make them start paying attention!” He went on to point out that when he misbehaved as a child, his father responded with discipline, specifically “taking off his belt,” and that discipline is what made Crafton stay in line as a young adult.

Crafton clearly makes a fair point that parental involvement and discipline are essential in the development of responsible adults. I don’t necessarily object to increasing penalties for offenders and to making parents more responsible for crimes committed by juveniles in their care, but I agree with Eckert that more needs to be done than just piling on punishment. In my opinion, Crafton’s example of his own childhood doesn’t address the fact that many juvenile offenders have not had the same level of parental involvement in their lives. For those that have had strong parents in their lives, some of those parents have focused solely on harsh discipline and not on building and maintaining close relationships with their children, the kind of relationships that give young people incentive to care about and participate positively in their families and their communities.

Is it a terrible thing that some parents do not take appropriate responsibility for preparing their children to be contributing members of society? Yes. Will increasing penalties and parental legal responsibility alone help those children head back in the right direction for their lives? In my opinion, no.

Mayoral candidate Karl Dean reported via email this morning that his campaign has raised $165,000 since mid-January, the previous reporting deadline for fundraising. Dean has effectively doubled his campaign funds, but he still trails Bob Clement, who raised around $600,000 by the first reporting deadline. Here’s Dean’s take on where the campaign stands today:

This recent reporting period is the first opportunity for all of the candidates to raise money on an equal playing field. In the last report, we were able to raise the second largest amount of contributions among all the candidates, having only been in the race for two weeks of the six-month period. Now we’ve all had the same amount of time. 

While Dean is obviously looking at this from a point of view that is beneficial to his relatively late entry into the race, I tend to agree that the race is just getting started. Recent polling information shared a few weeks ago in the Scene indicated that even Clement, who is currently the best-known candidate in the large field, led the pack with the support of about a third of those polled. (Dean scarcely registered at around 3 percent, but I suspect that’s about to change.) I’m curious to see the other candidates’ tallies as we get closer to the April 15 disclosure deadline.

Fred Vogelstein at Wired shared his own thoughts on his blog about being the subject of an internal Microsoft memo:

As journalistic windfalls go this is about as good as it gets. There I was writing a story about how Microsoft is on the cutting edge of using the Internet to become more transparent, and there in front of me are the briefing documents they are using to manage the story. The timing was so fortuitous that I wondered whether it was intentional. When I told Microsoft about it, they convincingly told me it was not.

But after I was done reading all 5,500 words I no longer felt elated at the prospect of an interesting scoop. I felt downright peculiar. I’ve been a journalist for more than 20 years and always assumed that the people I interview do as much homework on me as I do on them. So the existence of a document like this didn’t surprise me. But that still didn’t make it any easier to read lines like, “It takes him a bit to get his point across so try to be patient.” I know my long-windedness drives my wife nuts occasionally. I didn’t know it had become an issue for Microsoft’s pr machine too…

Should I be flattered that they worked so hard, or should I be embarrassed at being co-opted by their spin machine? I’d like to think I would have written the same story no matter what. But now, through the miracle of transparency, you, the reader, get to decide that too.

Here’s the story Vogelstein wound up publishing, if you’re curious.

[Thanks to Todd Bishop at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer for Vogelstein's blog info.]

Transparency is a popular buzzword and a valuable concept in public relations and in the news these days. This New York Times story reminded me this week just how transparent all our technology and connectedness has made nearly all of us, virtually overnight:

In February, during the course of reporting on a video blogging initiative at Microsoft called Channel 9, Fred Vogelstein inadvertently received a 13-page, 5,500-word internal memo from Waggener Edstrom Worldwide, a firm that represents Microsoft. The document, which was meant to prepare Microsoft executives for interviews, contained frank details, including some less-than-flattering observations (“Fred’s stories tend to be a bit sensational, though he would consider them to be balanced and fair”), scripted responses to questions and a strong-arm list of the points the agency expected to see in the piece.

It only made matters worse that the original Wired story was intended to focus on Microsoft’s corporate transparency in allowing its employees to blog about their work.

Noting that the article Mr. Vogelstein wrote was about a Microsoft project that permits employees to blog about the company’s corporate doings — a concept called “radical transparency” — Mr. Shaw said, “In a lot of ways, it was irresistible to Wired to bring attention to it. To show it as the polar opposite of the transparency piece they were working on.”

Mr. Vogelstein said in a telephone interview that the memo, which made its way into an e-mail message about appointment scheduling, gave him a weird sense of voyeurism.

“We all want to know what everybody thinks about us, but I think most of us, if we found out, would be sorry,” he said. “Some of the stuff I was totally fine with, but I objected to being called ‘tricky’ and I thought, ‘Wow — they really think that?’ ”

I would argue that there is radical transparency in our culture now, but not the kind engendered by Microsoft’s blogging initiative (which sounds like an admirable idea, for what it’s worth). This reminds me of advice I’ve heard around the office from time to time, usually when writing a news release: “Don’t write it unless you’d be comfortable seeing it on the front page of the newspaper.” Or in the next issue of Wired magazine.

The thing is, I’d expect that most of us have emails or private documents we’d rather not arrive in the harsh light of public view. The challenge, I think, is to remember that the next time we’re sitting in front of the keyboard.

[Thanks to Bulldog Reporter for pointing out this news.]

Speaking of ivory towers, the Signature Tower planned for downtown Nashville is inching closer to becoming a reality. I walked past the proposed site at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Church Street–which is currently a parking lot–yesterday evening. Developer Tony Giarratana has posted advertising signage around the site that says, “Your Neighborhood, 2010″ and features a rendering of the tower as part of the current city skyline.

Standing at the corner, I couldn’t help but look straight up to try to picture the edge of the building rising toward the clouds. According to this recent City Paper article, buyers have reserved 146 of the tower’s planned 400 condominiums, more than half of the 250 Giarratana says he needs in order to break ground on the building this July.

This is not the first time someone has made bold plans for major changes downtown. (This isn’t even the first project Giarratana has proposed for this particular plot of land. Years ago, the developer called for an aesthetically pleasing parking garage complete with a large clock at the corner intersection.) As discussion continues on what to do with the east bank of the Cumberland and what should go where the former thermal transfer plant once stood on the downtown side of the river, it’s worthy of note that what would be the most significant addition, perhaps ever, to our city’s facade may begin to take shape sooner rather than later.

How do you shift good intentions from mere ideas to significant, tangible outcomes? If you’ve ever served on a committee that talked much and accomplished little, that question has probably crossed your mind. The Tennessean’s Gail Kerr includes an emphatic example of this problem in her column today about juvenile violence:

[I]t was Elizabeth Buckhanon who brought it home [speaking to attendees at a Nashville Nonviolence Coalition meeting]. She works for Nashville REACH, a health outreach program. “But I didn’t come [here today] with that hat,” she said, standing tall in her dressy black-and-white suit. “I came here as a mother of eight children. I live in north Nashville. I almost started crying, because I thought of my sons.” One of them is in Riverbend prison, serving time for assault. Another served a prison sentence and is now living clean. She told of marrying a man who turned out to be a drug dealer, of her addiction and recovery from crack, of putting her kids in protective custody. Divorced, straight and finding answers to prayer, she brought those children home 12 years ago.

Most churchgoers, she said, drive right past people like her. “You’re passing by the church to try and get to the building,” Buckhanon said. “Church is not just in a building.” [emphasis added]

Black, white and Hispanic, female and male, teachers, preachers, cops and probation officers — you could’ve heard a pin drop they were so quiet. Until the ivory tower burst into applause.

I’m not singling out the church here. I feel like this is an issue for most any organization, whether it be a nonprofit, a business or something else. Ideas are important and should not be ignored, but often the harder work is putting those ideas into action. We all frequently hear good ideas that many of us would agree make sense to make a reality, but then we move on to our next task or appointment and let those ideas remain thoughts and hopes.

What would it really take to reduce the number of juveniles arrested for violent crimes? It can’t be just throwing money at the problem. More resources may lead to a solution, but cash can’t change the problem on its own. I asked a similar question recently about changing the reality of criminal activity on Dickerson Road. I suspect that the answer is that both situations require a real commitment of time and presence by many individuals to jump in and do individual tasks to change things for the better.

I’m not suggesting we all head down to Dickerson Road this morning and start rooting out crime, though that might not be the worst way of addressing the concerns there. I’m not recommending that we all mentor at-risk kids, but that’s a perfectly worthwhile undertaking. Each of us has commitments to causes that we care about, and I think the question for me is this: What can I do, right where I am already plugged in, to provide legitimate support that can lead to solutions instead of (or on top of) mere conversation and conjecture about the problems we face?