The recent arrest of 12 young African-American kids for the killing of 15-year-old Aliyah Smith in Sacramento has left many stunned, wondering what is going wrong with our youth and our society.

Working as a cop on the rough streets of Sacramento, I saw the problem of rampant violence up close. Now assigned to work the court system, I see an endless stream of minorities being driven into prisons. I ran for Sacramento City Council earlier this year because our community and our country are slipping. We are moving in the wrong direction, and minority neighborhoods remain in deep trouble.

A 2007 Bureau of Justice report reveals that “While blacks accounted for 13 percent of the U.S. population in 2005, they were victims in 15 percent of all nonfatal violent crimes and nearly half of all homicides.” Moreover, disproportionate numbers of black youths are committing crimes. What many view as a black community problem is, in reality, an American crisis.

I saw a Sacramento just like many other American cities: too much crime, too many imprisoned, too many locked out of mainstream opportunities and too many dropping out of school. For example, a California Department of Education report, prepared in 2008, notes that the Sacramento City Unified School District’s dropout rate was 34.9 percent and 32.3 percent for blacks and Hispanics, respectively.

After much prodding by blacks, the Sacramento District Attorney’s office reviewed two years of statistics regarding juvenile offenders and found that black youth comprised a staggering 67 percent of the kids the agency referred to adult court. And despite reports of drops in national crime figures, a Northeastern University study revealed violent crime is still rising for young black males.

In some Sacramento neighborhoods, general fear of crime and a condition of witness intimidation are very real problems. Now, Sacramento is trying to initiate a version of an anti-crime effort known as “Cease-Fire,” and officials are acknowledging much of the city’s serious crime is concentrated in the heavily minority areas of Oak Park, Meadowview and Del Paso Heights.

In my view, children raised in these areas are more likely to experience and mimic violent behavior.

Across America, forgotten neighborhoods of color are struggling. The social progress made since the turbulent 1960s is in jeopardy. Americans can learn valuable lessons from the 2005 riots in France, which greatly disrupted that society.

A November 2005 Time Magazine article on those riots reports that, “French leaders tried to strike a balance between condemning the violence and seeking to understand it, but they seemed powerless to impose order on the streets. Above all, the rage expressed by alienated youths dealt a crushing blow to France's self-image as a model of tolerance and social equality.”

I have a sense our country is fracturing into quarrelsome groups.

Americans should be concerned with internal strife and ought to ask this question: How can we fight wars on terrorism and adequately staff military forces if we continue to alienate and leave behind scores of minority children, just like the French?

I campaigned and called attention to crime, disorder and death in minority communities, as it represents crime and death in all of America (that is, if you see us as one people and one country).

Our campaign video detailed the impact of crime in Sacramento and highlighted violent crime among our youth, including the tragic slaying of Aliyah Smith.

Some camps ideologically point at minorities as the sole cause of the violence and turmoil we experience, but they are dangerously mistaken. Public policy decisions have left many neighborhoods trapped in poverty and crime, and practices of underfunding and inequitable deployment of law enforcement continue to exacerbate problems.

We gave the wealthy trillion-dollar tax cuts under the pretext it would trickle down and create more jobs in our inner cities.

The ruse worked!

In fact, we have been losing jobs since the early 2000s (long before Obama’ s election). We let corporations move jobs overseas and continued encouraging white flight from inner cities, then ask what is wrong with our cities.

After inner cities decay from white flight and outsourcing of jobs, they suffer another devastating blow in the form of displacement through gentrification. We simply cannot win!

We must come to grips with epidemic violence and crime. Meeting this challenge will require the best display of the rugged character and strength we believe we have as Americans.

Often, and I also experienced this on the campaign trail, meaningful dialogue on deep-rooted crime problems are cleverly avoided by indirect yet promising visions of better education, better jobs and better programs to engage inner-city youth, but history tells us this is essentially rhetoric.

Three months after June’s elections, Sacramento is still rocked by crime. On Sept. 2 Tania Gurskiy was shot during a robbery of a Sacramento pharmacy. She reportedly lived in fear she would be harmed at the crime-plagued location where she worked.

No American should live with that level of fear. On Sept. 5, Danielle Benefield, a 27-year-old mother, was shot on Florin Road, another victim of rampant violence.

On Sept. 12, Victor Hugo Perez Zavala and three others were shot in downtown Sacramento after the Second Saturday Art Walk.

And back on July 10, 14-year-old Lanajah Dupree was shot at a teen gathering by a 19-year-old assailant.

It is time for a course correction on our approach to addressing crime, and we have to stop blaming “those people” and reach across ideological barriers, skin color and neighborhoods to help our city and our country.

Sacramento’s serious crime problem has been contained in minority neighborhoods. As a result, inadequate conversations about crime have been accepted by the larger society. Since policymakers and large numbers of voters do not see crime and violence as immediate threats to their families, they lack a sense of urgency to hold government officials accountable to curb crime. Consequently, crime remains problematic in poor neighborhoods and ghettos.

Much of the crime and disorder in minority communities is driven by a rage that is embodied by those living in decades of poverty. Real conversations about crime and how to address it require people and entities across the spectrum to admit some wrongs, missteps and the impact of racism.

In many instances, the ghettos America created years ago are still functioning the way ghettos are doomed to operate. Put simply, these conditions cause people to become violent.

People anywhere on the planet who have been managed into and kept in poverty will display anger and violence (again, just look at the French riots). Frustrated with racism, poverty, social abandonment and lack of opportunities, inner city youths, like many of their parents, develop a nothing-to-lose mindset.

When government is absent in the fight against crime in some neighborhoods, the bad guys rule the streets, and parts of communities revert to a Wild West era. In this environment, a very real savagery takes root – grotesque acts of violence become all too common.

Against unchecked criminals, everyday citizens have few choices when government will not protect the people. They can hide and accept victimization or they can adapt to the violence in their surroundings.

Many minority kids grow up having to accept their role to act violent in a violent environment. They harden themselves to survive a harsh landscape. The lack of economic opportunity and a desire not to be victims make crime and gang membership the most immediate and practical way for many youths to acquire food, money, property and, most importantly, a sense of belonging.

Critics, some self-righteous and far-removed from the problem, (many harboring distain for minorities and the poor) offer condemnation for immoral behavior in some of our neighborhoods, yet many of these critics may in fact be beneficiaries of America’s racism.

From a distance, and having the right skin color, many offer a lot of ideologically based criticism but make little effort or commitment to eliminate poverty, stop gentrification, close the education gap and deal with housing and health care disparities.

The challenge before us is great, but I believe all is not lost. We can reduce crime, change neighborhoods and inspire people to take personal responsibility for their destinies and their kids.

We don’t have to suffer incidents of eight kids being shot in one event or 12 being shot in another, and we don’t have to accept blocks of neighborhoods being controlled by thugs, with all of the chaos and fear culminating in mass incarceration of minority kids and the sinister fueling of the prison industry.

I have seen “turnarounds” take place and been on the ground as part of the process. I authored and helped implement an anti-crime plan that led to successful efforts to lower crime. I know these efforts can be replicated when there is conviction on the part of our leaders.

The true trick for achieving success in making our neighborhoods safer is to incorporate a component of sustainability in our intervention efforts (be they law enforcement or social endeavors), and we must develop community-wide involvement that allows local citizens to guide law enforcement action plans and responses.

We must let the community take the lead and then have government assist in the mission. We don’t need police and officials to prescribe yet another internally conceived plan – and then try to garner citizen support – and then seek to control every ounce of grant funding coming down the stream.

Working 18 years in law enforcement, my experience tells me Sacramento needs to create a commission on crime and law enforcement. Under this commission, we can have real conversations about crime the same way we did when the City Council created the Charter Review Committee and televised the meetings.

This commission can look at the wide causes of crime, ways to fight witness intimidation, all aspects of police operations and where we are going in the future fight against crime.

Alternatively, we can go another decade with our kids killing each other, and a bystander being struck from time to time. My sense is that if the numbers stay constant and it is still minorities killing each other and the violence remains contained in minority neighborhoods, little will change.

As long as policymakers and chunks of voters are unaffected and shielded from the horror of crime taking place in our forgotten neighborhoods, they will remain dispassionate about protecting “those kids,” and the crime and the rage will continue.

Until then, how long will it be before an American city explodes like France? How long until the next Aliyah Smith, Tania Gurskiy, Danielle Benefield, Victor Perez-Zavala or Lanajah Dupree fall victim to violence? How long before the next family cries? How long before the next young person in a forgotten neighborhood succumbs to their environment and joins in the violence around them?