Kenton Buckner, the police chief of Little Rock, doesn't just have the right idea, he's putting it into practice--in Spanish yet.
"It's not an accident," says Chief Buckner, "that we have five Spanish speakers sitting in our recruit class . . . they are our neighbors and it is important that when they call the police they can understand the language and they understand what's going on in the community." So more than three dozen people showed up at a combination meeting, kumsitz and gabfest the chief convened last Monday night to discuss crime in the city and how best to combat it.
More cities throughout the state should follow his shining example, as Arkansas, California, Colorado, and state after state become bilingual, reducing outnumbered and outdated monoligual Americans to dinosaurs, holdovers from a period of our history when Henry Clay and Stephen F. Austin were big names in the country's news rather than its history.
Want to know the key to the American future and even its present? Chief Buckner has already discovered it, and not just discovered it but put it into practice: ¡Estudia español!
For the second straight year, Little Rock's crime rates have dropped. Even as the number of violent crimes across the city increased. But note the ages of the accused: young and ever younger. Youth will be served--if necessary with prison terms.
Do not expect the police to save your community, Chief Buckner warns. For only We the People can do that. If we only bring up the rear instead of being an example to the rest of the city and state(s), our future will grow darker and darker, instead of serving as a beacon of light to the rest of the state. And states.
Editorial on 05/09/2016