One must ask themselves what endangers a community? What threatens the essence of life and well being in the community? Crime! Crime endangers the community, crime kills the future and handicaps the present. One must ask themselves, what major factor produces crime? If one truly wishes to reach and understand the answer, they only have to walk to the corner of their blocks.On that corner, like so many other corners within Brooklyn, there is a person, age ranging from twelve years to adult hood, trying to make a living. What this person does is sell a product, a product that few people enjoy, and is responsible for lives that are destroyed. The product, which this person vents, produces a chain of crime that begins with the selling of the person's merchindise and ends with the purchase of their product.One must not look at it as a flat line, one point, being the consumer and the final point being the producer. One must look at it as a cipher, a cirlce consisting of three hundred sixty degrees, a cipher that will never end. What commences this cipher, is the selling of the product, that can range from marijuana to crack cocaine. The consumer buys the product, eventually becoming addicted. In their addiction, they begin to view life, their life and their world in a whole different manner. Their morals start to evaporate from their conscience with their first pull of that crack pipe, or their first injection of heroine. Their understanding of right and wrong blur into one fact, one meaning, whatever is nesesary to get that one fix.The cipher continues to establish itself when that one addict, decides that the only way he could gain the money to support their addiction is stealing. It may start small, a dollar from a loved one, two from a stranger. A gold ring from their sister, a CD player from their brother. Before they realize it, they are breaking into an apartment and stealing what ever they could, they'll hit the street and try to sell what they have stolen. They'll walk on the street, see a stranger, pull out a weapon, and rob the person, they'll end up taking their life, all just for thier next fix.It continues, they might even go to the person that provides them the product, ask for one on credit, then leave. In their haste to get their fix, they don't realize or choose to ignore the consequence if they don't produce the money when asked for it. Which can range from assault to murder.The addict will go to an area that seems that the police don't patrol often, and start to use their drugs. While they're injecting, or smoking that pipe, little children walk by, falling witness to this patholegy. In many sad casses, the children don't have to walk the street to see durg use, their very own parents can fall victims to this sickenss of addiction. As they grow, their mind will begin to desensitized, understanding that drug using is a norm, and in turn continue the cipher of crime.But it does not end, the merchant that vents the product, must also protect, what many call their turf, but I personaly call their battle field. An opposing, merchant will take up arms in order to annihilate their opposition. This annihilation well end in murder, murder of the opposing merchant, murder of his soldiers, and murder of the innocent child that, while plyaing on their block, on this battle field, where mortaly wounded by a stray bullet.All suffer when the community of one person is endangered. All suffer when this plauge, this ipedemic threatens the well being and every day life of the community. After reaching the understading of the very first question one must ask themselves, a second question, they must ask what can they do to stop it. It is a sickness that threatens to snuff out life, a sickness that threatens to block out the light of hope. But to every deasese there is always a cure, even if the cure is un-precievable it is always there, one must simply open their mind, the eye that sees all, and hope wont just be light that glares, it will be a sun that shines.
