An opportunity lost, and now we’re paying the cost
Statement from Alderman Joe Davis, Sr. April 17, 2015
Last year, I put forward a proposal to spend $300,000 to fund the One Summer Plus (OSP) program here in Milwaukee using city Community Development Block Grant funds. The program, a summer youth employment initiative that includes behavioral therapy programming, saw striking results in Chicago, where violent behavior by participants (mainly inner city youth) dropped significantly.
But my proposal was aggressively attacked by the Barrett Administration, and (in my opinion) one reporter went so far as to manufacture false information to discredit my effort.
But now we are seeing a deadly outbreak of violence, and the Mayor wants to spend $2 million in police overtime to combat it, and we’re seeing MPD literally chasing and rounding up some of the very young people who would have benefited from the OSP program.
I wish the administration and some of my colleagues would have had a little responsible foresight last year to invest $300,000 in CDBG funds to help our youth.
But it now appears that they let politics get in the way of doing what is right, and sadly, we’re seeing that failure being played out now on the streets of Milwaukee.
NOTE: This press release was submitted to Urban Milwaukee and was not written by an Urban Milwaukee writer. While it is believed to be reliable, Urban Milwaukee does not guarantee its accuracy or completeness.
Mentioned in This Press Release
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Davis really is running for Mayor, isn’t he, using this fantastic leap of logic to win points with voters. The fact is, there is no correlation between the lack of a youth summer jobs program (like the one he proposed) and the recent spike in crime. Take the man and a 15-year old boy that were shot to death after the man accidentally hit and killed the 15 year old’s little brother. The suspect in that incident was bi-polar and committed suicide. Clearly he had issues far beyond what a summer youth jobs program could have fixed.
Furthermore, not all of the recent crime incidents were committed by young people! Nor would a summer youth jobs program be able to reach each and every potential youth offender. How would such programs even know who potential offenders are? And in what universe could potential offenders even be compelled to participate in such a program?
As if none of these recent crime incidents would have happened, had we all listened to Davis. Come on!