From the Desk of Corsicana Police Chief Robert Johnson
While Corsicana has experienced a decline in overall crime during 7 of the last 8 years, incidents involving teens with firearms have increased.
No, the gun itself isn’t the problem.
I’ve yet to see a firearm unlock itself, walk out of a house, and commit a crime on its own. What we are seeing is this: people leaving loaded, unsecured weapons in unlocked vehicles overnight and those firearms ending up in the hands of teenagers who make the choice to use the weapons in a variety of offenses.
There’s no such thing as total crime prevention. But there is crime reduction, and it starts with the community. It starts with locking your vehicle, securing your firearms, and yes, parenting your children.
In the last year, several homes in our city have been targeted in drive-by shootings. In nearly every case, those involved were teenagers or young adults caught in an escalating cycle of petty feuds, that began in high school and are still going on years later.
These are often over drugs, social media drama, or someone being “disrespected.” Ironically, the individuals involved seem to have no real understanding of what respect even means. Although these incidents have been isolated to those individuals directly involved in these subgroups, many innocent people have been placed in harms way.
Every single person arrested in connection with these incidents has had prior juvenile and adult arrests, some in double digits. Over the past several months, we have arrested many of those involved and they are now awaiting trial. We currently have a great deal of evidence awaiting forensic testing at DPS laboratories. This includes ballistic as well as DNA analysis, and we do expect more arrests.
In every case, we eventually find that the young suspects are bragging about their exploits. Many will cuss the arresting officers as we place handcuffs on them and the parents will even join in. However, their reality changes when they find out that they are facing 50 plus years in the penitentiary. When someone fires a weapon at an occupied structure, each shot fired is a separate felony case with a potential sentence of 2 – 10 years.
With each incident, we gather additional evidence that can be linked to other similar crimes in the past. It may be months down the line before the evidence is returned from the lab, but I can assure you that when it does, there will be a knock at someone’s door. We do this on a regular basis and this process resulted in yet another arrest a few days ago on a crime that occurred months ago.
This same issue is taking place in almost every community, and it is not a problem that we can jail our way out of. This is a parenting problem. To be clear, 95% of the parents in our community do a wonderful job raising their children. But a few parents have no idea where their teenagers are in the middle of the night, and when their children are caught participating in burglaries or shootings, they refuse to cooperate. When police respond to these serious crimes, we consistently get the same responses:
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“I didn’t see anything.”
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“I didn’t hear anything.”
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“No idea why anyone would do this. My kid doesn’t have problems with anyone.”
The silence is routine and deafening. The lack of cooperation is expected, until it is them or their kid that is eventually struck by a bullet. They are quick to blame the police, the school district, the justice system, society, and the classic, “there’s nothing for kids to do in this town.” The police, the school district, and the justice system are very poor substitutes for parents. If parents don’t parent and provide positive influence and guidance for their children, eventually the fate of those children will be determined by the other people who are on the streets in the middle of the night and don’t care if your child comes home alive or, if they are lucky, the police and the justice system, which will eventually send them to prison.
Please forgive me if I am sounding preachy that is not my intent by any means. It’s just that every young man we arrest for a violent offense was once an innocent child with a smile and a blank slate. The turning point is usually an absentee or unengaged parent. Being a parent is more than providing a house to stay in. It’s about setting boundaries, enforcing rules, knowing where your child is, who they’re with, and what they’re doing.
We can’t wait until a child turns 15 and decide to “crack” down on them. At that point, it is most likely too late. His belief system has already been established and influenced by those who stepped in to fill the parental void.
Every single person in this community should be outraged, not just at the teens who committed the violence, but at the adults who have enabled the behavior since they were children. Not only have they put their own child at risk; they are endangering the entire community through their reckless behavior.
There is not a city in America that can arrest their way out of these issues. The police can be the arms of the law, but if we are going to continue to reduce crime, the citizens are going to have to be the eyes and ears. If you see something say something. You may think that the information that you possess is not important, but when we combine it with additional information from other sources, it helps to paint a complete picture.
I’m tired of seeing young people arrested for these types of crimes. Over and over, we will hear sad stories about how they deserve another chance due to their age or how they were raised. My answer to that is absolutely not. The age of the person pulling the trigger makes no difference to the person struck by the bullet.
As a society lets lift each other up and teach the next generation the value of human life before they make a choice that cannot be undone.
Robert Johnson, Chief of Police
