I don't want to make too big a deal out of a single quotation in the paper.  It is easy to slip up under the pressure of an interview, but for Newark High School Principal, Jesse Truett, to call Friday's knifing at Newark High School a "little altercation" is the height of understatement.  One of the individuals involved in the fight was lifeflighted to Columbus for care, after all.

I won't spend time beating Truett up -- he is, by all a accounts a good Principal.  But one reaction that people commonly display in the face of deteriorating conditions is to minimize increasingly "non-minimizeable" events.  If you want to boil a frog you don't throw him in hot water because he'll jump out.  Instead, you place frog in a cold pot of water and slowly bring the water to boil so by the time he notices how hot the water is, it will be too late.  I'm not sure why anyone would want to boil a frog, but am concerned that Newark is in a pot of trouble that is heating up.

Crime is a symptom of a deteriorating socio-economic infrastructure in the city.  I've written about other indicators here and here (I'll work to update the crime statistics soon). 

I don't claim  to have all the answers but it starts with facing the "brutal facts" about what is going on rather than minimizing them.  It is followed by discipline and appropriate punishment for the crime, but that is on the back end.  On the front end is working to change the direction of the community.  Developing. . .