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    Don't Shoot: One Man, a Street Fellowship, and the End of Violence in Inner-City America
    Don't Shoot: One Man, a Street Fellowship, and the End of Violence in Inner-City America
    Don't Shoot: One Man, a Street Fellowship, and the End of Violence in Inner-City America
    Ebook439 pages8 hours

    Don't Shoot: One Man, a Street Fellowship, and the End of Violence in Inner-City America

    By David M. Kennedy

    4/5

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    Gang- and drug-related inner-city violence, with its attendant epidemic of incarceration, is the defining crime problem in our country. In some neighborhoods in America, one out of every two hundred young black men is shot to death every year, and few initiatives of government and law enforcement have made much difference. But when David Kennedy, a self-taught and then-unknown criminologist, engineered the "Boston Miracle" in the mid-1990s, he pointed the way toward what few had imagined: a solution.


    Don't Shoot tells the story of Kennedy's long journey. Riding with beat cops, hanging with gang members, and stoop-sitting with grandmothers, Kennedy found that all parties misunderstood each other, caught in a spiral of racialized anger and distrust. He envisioned an approach in which everyone-gang members, cops, and community members-comes together in what is essentially a huge intervention. Offenders are told that the violence must stop, that even the cops want them to stay alive and out of prison, and that even their families support swift law enforcement if the violence continues. In city after city, the same miracle has followed: violence plummets, drug markets dry up, and the relationship between the police and the community is reset.


    This is a landmark book, chronicling a paradigm shift in how we address one of America's most shameful social problems. A riveting, page-turning read, it combines the street vérité of The Wire, the social science of Gang Leader for a Day, and the moral urgency and personal journey of Fist Stick Knife Gun. But unlike anybody else, Kennedy shows that there could be an end in sight.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloomsbury USA
    Release dateOct 4, 2011
    ISBN9781608194131
    Don't Shoot: One Man, a Street Fellowship, and the End of Violence in Inner-City America
    Author

    David M. Kennedy

    David M. Kennedy is the Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History at Stanford University. He is the author of several books, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945.

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    Reviews for Don't Shoot

    4/5

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    • 5/5
      More than anything else, this book is about the struggle to recover communities previously considered lost--to violence, drugs, guns, etc. Kennedy's work to help unite these communities WITH law enforcement, and against violence, instead of against members of their own communities, is a revelation. Bringing together lawyers, community activists, police, churches, gang members and their families, and community members who have been affected by or frightened by the violence around them, Kennedy's task forces have cut violence in cities across the country even as individuals from across these groups have underestimated the simple logic behind the group's approaches. Leading eventually to the National Network for Safe Communities, and to bettered communities around the country, the work detailed here (in arguments, in fights, in community actions, in violence, in confrontation, and in untold discussions and political maneuvers) lays groundwork for understanding what is wrong in our communities, and working to fix it now instead of continuing to implement plans that don't work or will take decades for any improvement.The title sounds specific, but realistically, this is one of those rare books which, in all honesty, everyone should read. Simply, it is about understanding the fragmented world we've managed to create, and about working to fix it. The accounts here are specific because that's what's necessary, at this point, before any further step can be taken. And yet, the people behind the events in this book are, without any doubt, changing the world around us--the statistics back that up. Detailing that fight can only lead to smarter decisions, and reading this book can only speed that fight, and speed the fixes yet to come.Absolutely recommended.
    • 2/5
      This book cried out for a good, tough editor. While Kennedy's book was fully of interesting and intriguing tidbits, they were never tied together in a way that made for truly engaging reading. It seemed that the author couldn't decide if he was writing an autobiography of his time with the project, or if he was writing about the project itself. Settling on either option would've made this a better read. Instead, the sentence structure, full of commas and fragments, was difficult to follow. The material repeated itself. And it often seemed that Kennedy was pointing fingers and shouting "it's not my fault," when the text focused on some of the program's failures. I would've liked to read more about the cops and gang members out on the street and a lot less about a bunch of guys sitting in a room having a meeting. All in all, this book was a big disappointment and a real stuggle to finish.
    • 5/5
      *Many of these reviews seem to be associated with the structure and style of Kennedy's writing. Yes, this book needed a good editor. I do not deny this and, at times, it was somewhat frustrating. However, I maintain that the quality of the work supersedes any deductions on the basis of a lack of editing. Please see the bottom of the review for more on this.David Kennedy is nuts. You would have to be, right? That is, to try and solve violence in inner-city America; where young black men were (and still are to this day) killing themselves off and turning once-good neighbourhoods into literal war zones. Where men realize the supposed American dream more clearly and quickly on a corner than in a classroom.It's bleak. From the outset, I didn't know what to think of the work or where it would lead me. A friend asked me to describe Kennedy's approach to crime and 100 pages in, my only answer was "he's still kind of figuring that out." And so he does. Now, why would you want to read a narrative of criminology in which the author spends his book describing the process of discovery, of experimentation, of taking a step in a direction - any direction - to try and save these neighbourhoods?Because the truth is that we really have no idea how to solve this and it's best to start from the beginning: the so-called Boston Miracle in the mid-1990s, in which Kennedy was key to the team that drastically lowered violence in the city. We join Kennedy from his time in Boston, to trying to create a model that will work in other cities, and then successful attempts to not only expand that model but improve upon it with the knowledge from experience. By the end, we have something that works.There will be some controversy for those who approach the book with a full cup; it may be hard for you to understand that gangsters are rational and scared kids who are often forced into their lifestyle not out of desire but necessity, or harder for others to understand that some people are just plain bad seeds who have to go behind bars. That's the fine line that Kennedy walks, a line that connects law enforcement with social services and therefore goes beyond the typical definition of 'prevention' and justly so. Many have to recognize that it's not black and white, good and evil, coddling vs. tyranny.This book is about a strategy of communication, of reconnecting law enforcement with the communities they have given up on, and of second chances. It's a book that reminds the reader of what being human requires of him or her; to reconnect with their communities or to create that community. It also reminds us of what it takes to be a great leader, to have accomplished the things that Kennedy describes. The world requires change and the great leaders to lead that change.This book is essentially what you would get if you took an innocent human heart, yearning for the best of mankind, seeped it into a history of academia and then forced it to endure some of the worst tragedies that mankind can deliver unto itself in the aim of ending such tragedy. The surprise is that this solitary bloody, battered, beaten and bruised heart that remains not only beats on, but rather that it beats stronger still by the book's close and no longer alone.He's not nuts. He's exactly what we need.*In regards to the need for a good editor:There are various points at which not only the sheer volume of individuals that Kennedy names cause confusion (and a lack of refresher sentences on who those individuals are) but also the detail of those names as well. Example is pages 116-7; "Mary Helen Collien, fifty-six. Her daughter, Mary McNeil Matthews, thirty-nine. Her granddaughter, Makisha Jenkins, eighteen" and then, later: "They were buried in Whitesville, North Carolina, where Mary Alice McNeil, Mary Helen Collien's mother, had raised her." All of these individuals are only referred to in these two or three paragraphs, yet we are given the full four generation history of their family. It was extremely confusing at the time (and I have only just now understood the relation of Mary Alice McNeil) to the point that I was convinced Mary Alice McNeil was a factual error or typo and was meant to be one of the three previously named individuals.While I applaud Kennedy's move away from the typical statistical graphs and charts of academia, where the statistics are used could be formalized somewhat. Admittedly, I'm not sure how - especially as I would not be keen on breaking from Kennedy's particular inner-city style, reminiscent of a gangland stream-of-consciousness narrative if it had been reflected upon, and rewritten with scholarly roots - but in my view, it required some sort of structuring. Example is page 194: "Lockwood, after a year: calls for police service down 58 percent, drug crime down 70 percent, drug calls down 81 percent."
    • 4/5
      While David M. Kennedy presents a logical, tractable, and effective method for curbing violence and open drug markets in dangerous communities, the conversational writing style does nothing to recommend his book. Chapters become frustratingly circular, secondary characters easy to lose track off, and, at times, it's almost impossible to follow where Kennedy is and what exactly he's doing. The first half of the book reads more like notes scribbled on the back of a napkin for an informal presentation than an important treatise on violence in the United States of America. The second half, either by a slight tweaking of the style or maybe just because I'd gotten used to the tone, I found better written.The ideas in this book are important; sadly they're going to be lost because this book is written is such a juvenile style. Perhaps this was an attempt by Kennedy to step outside the realm of academic writing and have his ideas, which I cannot stress enough are extraordinarily important with positive, long-lasting consequences, be approachable to the general public. It doesn't work. These ideas need to be presented in a more formal and structured way. I want to take this book down to a good editor and have her/him do a thorough overall of the book's content so that this book becomes the extraordinary story that is lurking underneath the ridiculous prose.I give this book a high ranking because of the ideas espoused within. A+ for substance, but F- for structure and style.
    • 4/5
      The introduction of this book was amazing, I thought I was in for a five-star read. Still a great book, but a bit bogged down by name-dropping and heavy in stats. Regardless, the message is clearly made. Rather than having law enforcement and youth groups focus on all the the things that *might* lower the crime rate (more education, job programs, stricter laws, etc), simply enforce a "no shooting" policy, which will decrease injury, death and the crime rate.
    • 5/5
      David Kennedy has found a viable solution to reducing gun violence and major crime in some of America's worst neighborhoods - unfortunately, it has taken him two decades to get people to believe him. This book chronicles the genesis of CeaseFire and its implementation in major cities spanning from the 1990s to the present. It is remarkable how effective his method of combining law enforcement, social services and community support with a zero-tolerance policy towards gun violence is in creating lasting reductions in violent crime. This book should be in the hands of every police chief and mayor of any city with gun violence issues.
    • 2/5
      When I first received this book, I was excited to start reading it as David M. Kennedy's proposal for ending violence was a fascinating one. However, after a good 30 pages I could tell that his method of delivering his story was not quite up to par. Kennedy writes in a rambling sort of fashion that might be better suited for public speaking than it is for a 320 page book. I found the chapters unstructured and filled with far too much fluff. There are a few good stories and examples of his work, but they get lost amongst the pages and pages of rhetoric and pleas for people to just give his methods a try. This is particularly sad as his stories can be quite touching or downright amazing, and I doggedly kept plodding through the book to try find more of these gems. If you want to see an example of another book in this genre done well, check out Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage, and you'll see the disparity in writing immediately. For these reasons, I'm giving the book a low rating, but I do applaud Kennedy's efforts on the streets.
    • 1/5
      My initial response to the book, Don't Shoot: One Man, A Street Fellowship, and the End of Violence in Inner-City America by David M. Kennedy, based on the introduction to the book, was that this is written by a WASP. A self-centered WASP at that. Perhaps a racist WASP, I would hold my opinion on that but my expectations were not high. This pseudo-scholarly polemic is not impressing. Some things are required in scholarly books. I looked for an index, since he stated dates, places, people, statistics, and studies. No index. It does have a section called notes, where further research can be done on selected issues. Not enough, but something. I looked in the notes for the sources of all his high sounding statistics. No go. So it's not scholarly, It's for the general reader? Then why add all the numbers and names as if anyone who was interested in them would already know them?Having been a child during the 1960s race riots and watching neighborhoods ebb and flow with violence and peace plans my whole life, I have done some reading on plans like this, that make brief, showy affects on the community it was directly planned for, do not translate beyond the planner's community, uses manpower that we cannot afford forever, or does not solve the underlying problems. This looks like just another one. Bury the magic under things we can figure out ourselves and we are all supposed to go, see, I knew that point, so the whole plan must work. p. 15-21 “The core of the problem lies in communities.” No shit sherlock. The law enforcement community, who are doing their best… “It's wrong”; The people in the community, who think that the people in power want it to stay like that and are therefore fighting the cops who shoot their innocent kids. … “They're wrong”; and the community on the streets, the 'gangs' who believe that if they don't stand up for themselves, nobody will and they will all die. Which, of course, “It's wrong”.... “We know how to do this.”We, the white think tank at a university in Cambridge, MA & NYC can solve it all. On a plan they started researching in 1994. Maybe it's his attitude that is putting me off his “system”, but I don't see much more to his “system” than get out and talk to a bunch of kids and community members, and throw more people at the problem. We can't afford that kind of program. All the people we have are busy enough. We have one person doing the work of three. Where does the city get the money to implement this, even if it turned out, by some twist of fate, to be correct. It would be a twist in my opinion, since he has gone out for his answers incorrectly. He has “revelations”, is either totally correct or “exactly wrong.”(p. 35 is one example). He is “astounded,” “possessed,” “in Beirut”. No room for shades of meaning. p. 80 admits that academia is split about the effectiveness of the program, and his reply is that they just don't get it. Other cities took part of his plan, not all, and they, of course, failed. In his opinion, you need to do things just as he has done them in order to work. As if communities were all alike at core. He believes his solution is rational, anyone who disagrees gets trashed.In my experience, part of the problem in the conflicts on the street, as elsewhere, is the attitude “I'm right and you're wrong.” or “You're either for me or against me.” “Us and them.” Black and white thinking in philosophy as well as racism. This attitude, which enrages me when put into a pseudo-scholarly rant, is all that this book is about.p.283 the final paragraphs of the book. “That's it. Everybody agrees. Those who don't, there are a few, there are more of us than there are of them, they lose. We win.“We sit down, we talk to each other, we say how it's going to be, and we do the work. It's not a miracle. It's work.“Time to go to work.”That attitude? Yes, David M. Kennedy has it in spades.

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    Don't Shoot - David M. Kennedy

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