Taking Lives- Detroit, Stand Up!

Violence is taking lives and no one seems pressed to do anything about it. Drug dealers stake claim on neighborhoods and conduct business as usual as citizens fearfully turn a blind eye, misguided youth terrorize and rob the elderly and the police continue to drop the ball when it comes to effectively responding to crime in the city.

The latest story about Ayana Jones, the 7-year-old girl who was shot and killed as a result of a raid gone wrong, is a blaring example of the testament that we have got to do better.



According to reports, the police went to the home that this young girl was shot in with a valid search warrant to arrest a suspect in connection with another murder that occurred only a few days prior, and due to the violent nature of the original crime they used a stun grenade to enter the home. During this course of action somehow one of the officers got into a "confrontation" with someone in the house and the gun "supposedly" went off thereby killing this innocent young girl.

Now granted, we don't yet know all of the circumstances surrounding this case and far be it for me to try to speculate. Obviously the circumstances that ultimately led the cops to this place of residence in the first place were very valid, but the fact still remains that another innocent life was lost.

Is it fair to place 100% of the blame on the police for doing their job by trying to find the suspect in another murder? Maybe the ending of the tragic story could have been different if the individuals involved in the first murder had the common sense not to look to violence as the only option for solving their problems. Maybe if someone in their live(s) would have taken the time to be interested in their achievement or paid closer attention to who they were hanging out with, perhaps this story would never have come to be.

But as fate would have it, the person responsible for killing a 17-year-old boy in front of a party store is now also responsible for the death of a 7-year-old girl, who was accidentally shot during a raid that was meant especially for him.

Now the city of Detroit cries out in outrage; and justifiably so. Yes, Detroit, we need to do better. We need fathers to step up and raise their boys to be men and not thugs. We need mothers to stop protecting their baby boys who have grown to be thugs and start holding them accountable for their actions instead of coddling them. We need authorities to provide viable options for parents who reach out to them for preventative measures before they get out of hand. We need to go back to the concept of it taking a village to raise a child, because now that child that has no village is growing up to become a holy terror.

Violence in our city is taking too many lives, and we can no longer sit idly by and accept this as just another day in the "D". We are not the bad city that everyone else perceives us to be and it's high time that we begin to become the change that we want to see.

Rep your city Detroit. The number of those who stand for right far outnumbers those who seek to bring us down. Much prayer is needed.

Peace and blessings to the family of young Ayana Jones.

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