I just read this Blade article concerning an initiative that was taken by the city to curb violence. http://www.toledoblade.com/local/2012/04/28/Violence-across-city-must-end-gangs-told-1.html
My first impression is very favorable. I do wish they would have this type of dialogue with all younger students who are not yet in trouble. Many moons ago we had an undercover narcotics detective come to our school before I was a teenager who told horrific stories about what occurs to people on PCP. He also told stories about junkies as well. I still remember them to this day. I ran into more than my fair share of problems as a young man but as bad as I got I mostly steered clear of the more harmful narcotics, much in part to this officers frank discussions.
Of note from the article - When Dr. Barry Knotts, a trauma surgeon at Mercy St. Vincent Medical Center, showed a man whose head was blown away from a gunshot wound, men looked away.
"I know, and you know, if you're in a violent group, you're also a target," the doctor said. "That puts you at risk [of] meeting me in not a good way."
Also from the article - When Nicole Ross-Byrd spoke, the men stopped fidgeting, stopped yawning, and leaned forward.
"I'm a surviving mother of a murdered son named Christopher," she said.
Ms. Ross-Byrd was at home on March 3, 2008, deciding what to make for dinner, when she got a phone call that her 17-year-old son, Christopher Ross, was shot.
On her way to the hospital, she thought she would have to take some time off from college to care for her son.
She had no idea that, more than an hour before she arrived at the hospital, her boy — with whom she was in labor for 56˝ hours — was dead.