But the PUP went deeper than just proposals, the Deputy party leader Cordel Hyde gave his assessment of what is behind all the city crime. Hyde is the four term representative of Lake Independence where many of these recent murders have happened. He says the violence is driven by poverty and social and degradation of the family unit.
Hon. Cordel Hyde
"Crime is not a genetic problem, and I have said this before, it is not an issue of ethnicity, it is an economical problem. It is an economical morass people are living in and if you don't get the resources to address the economic problems not much will change."
"The truth of the matter is we don't talk about it enough, but hunger is a real issue on the southside. People are not getting 3 square meals a day. People are not eating right. When you get all the people together who are in these affected zones, then you will understand who really need pantry and who need an augmented pantry and who really need the support, but we hadn't had that. We haven't gotten people together, so what we have is they spend a ton load of money on various initiatives, but it's issued by political patronage. It's based on meet the ministers or who the ministers feel comfortable with, as opposed to targeting the resources and ensuring that the people who need the parental support gets it; the people who need the scholarships gets it; the people who need pantry gets it."
"The truth of the matter is it's about high time we get all the parents together - all the mothers, all the grandmothers, all the fathers who are around, the gang members and the prospective gang members - we need to get all those persons together and get them to interact with each other. A lot of problems can be averted if the mothers are interacting; lots of times these mothers are related to each other, its cousins killing cousins at times but there is no interaction, too many people just doing their own thing. I think if you have that level of interaction, you can get those parents to reinforce the mediation efforts; the mediation efforts alone will not be sustained over a long period of time. When the kids go home, that focus on peace has to be reinforced by the parents, by the grandparents, by the family."
"Oftentimes parents look the other way when they see their kids doing stuff that they are not supposed to do, when they bring home stuff that they can't really account for. We have to check that. We have to - once we get the mothers together we will understand where the challenges are. We will understand who are the mothers who are not equip to be mothers, who are the parents who are not equip and need parental support, need parental training, need guidance."
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