THE NEW PERSPECTIVE

This week we went out into the community and surveyed people on what they thought about our neighborhood park, Davis Park. A lot of the interviews resulted in the same answer and concerns. Three out of the four people we surveyed believed that the park needed better equipment, someone to clean up the litter, and someone to cut the grass and maintain the park in general. When it came to the neighborhood, again three out of the four thought that the neighborhood was at its worst now because of younger people moving into the neighborhood and becoming bad influences. One person thought that the neighborhood was at its Best now and that the park was perfect besides the grass needing to be cut.

Another thing that we did this week was go to a BLUE C.R.U.S.H meeting. The Blue Crush (Criminal Reduction Utilizing Statistical History) is a Memphis Police Department driven initiative which utilizes new technology to create multi-layer, interactive maps of crime hot-spots based on data from the previous week's arrests and incidents. The meeting showed us the main things that these certain police officers were tackling, ranging from copper thefts to burglaries of stores and houses. It personally amazed me that copper thefts alone have the city of Memphis in a 1,000,000 dollar debt. We left that meeting with a new perspective on our neighborhood.

Later on in the day we went to Peabody Park surveyed how beautiful it was how much it offered and maybe what could be added, but it passed with flying colors. The other park we surveyed for the day was Brentwood we believed that it offered a lot but could put in more like a shelter of some kind. Sadly this park still looked better than Davis Park and the Peabody park beat Davis a 100%. Today (Friday) we will continue to visit different parks and survey them on what they need and what potential they already have.

This week i have learned that our neighborhood has so much to offer but we don't take advantage of the opportunities to make it better. Many people look at the neighborhood by the obvious crimes that are happening when i see now that it is the smaller crimes that are also taking over the community but we pay these issues no mind. We can't expect for the city to give us better when we don't deserve it. When we show the city that we appreciate what is given to us instead of destroying it then we will receive more.

WE CAN'T WAIT FOR THE FIRST STEP TO BE TAKEN. WE HAVE TO
BECOME LEADERS AND TAKE IT OURSELVES