I am  a 16 year old African-American who lives in a technical suburb In Carson, CA. Specifically I live in  the East Del Amo ae of north Carson, populated mostly by African Americans of low to middle class socio-economic conditions. The area I live in isn’t the worst but could improve  in certain areas. Many factors that have plagued our living over the years have been violence, gangs, drugs, crime, and poverty. These are symptoms of an urban environment, yet in a suburb such as mine these conditions exist so in order to solve the problems I see in my community I would also have to find the missing variable that differ our suburb from that of a regular quiet suburb. Therefore, if I were mayor of my city I would focus on my area of the city first.

All the issues follow a chain of rigid cause and effect in  which if one cause at the beginning of the chain were solved it would solve or alleviate the other problems to some degree. Therefore the leading cause of the situations I’ve listed is, in my opinion, the gangs. Gangs use and sell drugs, often are victims or aggressors of shootings and fights and break into  houses and cars to take what they want. The spread of drugs is a cause of poverty which often causes crimes to be committed, and in turn causes violence in some situations. The way I would dissolve gangs  as mayor would probably be to negotiate a peace agreement between rival gangs to stop immediate crimes and slowly pick off gang members who participate in illegal activity. The way I would do this would be position police officers at certain parks where gang members are known to solicit. After noting the position of the gangs I would send in undercover agents to provoke rival gangs. Illegal activity is sure to be abundant with gang fights erupting everywhere and with their location to be known at all times many would be arrested. With the gangs constantly being monitored and detained immediately after illegal activity is reported many problems would be cut down into sizes that can be handled by an administration.

The next issue I would address would be drug control. I say control because it is almost impossible to completely eliminate drug use but if the sources are known then hard drug users can be detained which eliminates the market of dealers. The next step is to eliminate dealers to keep from turning people into junkies.  Most users would never give their dealer up easily but in this situation especially it is not necessary. Since hard drugs are eliminated the only drug users are recreational users(consisting of marijuana users, “pill-poppers”, and chemical over-users)  which is most everyone. Instead of using the same method I would have officers pretend to buy drugs but instead of just arresting the dealer I would have the dealer monitored until I find the supplier which is most likely a friend of some sorts. The point of this is to find dealers who sell multiple drugs because they would most likely have ties to dealers who sell hard drugs and would then lead to their arrest. With interrogation they might lead to the supplier as well but that would be a federal problem and out of my jurisdiction.

With drugs and gangs off the street the obvious choice to eliminate would be crime. However because crime is a universal thing I would try to focus on increasing the police force on the outskirts of the city and develop routes that lead back to the city so instead of monitoring one area a day I’m increasing the field of influence to the whole city. I would also fluctuate routes at different routes but at random high rates. With the prevalence of the police force crime fighting would be wider spread throughout the city. I would also see about disguising police cars as civilian cars because no one is dumb enough to do illegal activity when they know a police car is around. There isn’t many ways to easily solve this topic because all cities suffer from crime but this is the best way to combat crime although most likely it will never be solved, however that’s the point of a police force.

Another topic I would address as mayor would be violence. The way I would do this is by establishing a force that supersedes any ability that a citizen would have. The point of this is to monopolize violence in a way. If a force exists where no one can beat them no one would try to combat it in fear of that same force. The only problem is establishing the force with such strength. I think the highest amount of force the police are allowed to have should be exhibited often but only when residential calls come in. Through fear of that force no one would try to challenge anyone to resort to violence.

The last topic I would address in my community would be poverty. I would do this by promoting community enrichment, fundraisers, and job growth. The more we endorse our marginalized and subverse communities the more likely to increase our wellbeing as a community as well as in turn decreasing poverty in our neighborhood.
In conclusion, the methods I would use are often overlooked as in a paradigm to dictatorship and may or may not be legal/ pertaining to our constitution but I stress that this is the best way to decrease, stunt, and possibly end violence, poverty, crime, gangs, and drugs. Whether these policies would eventually be instituted is unknown even though these would most definitely solve our problems and the only reason we don’t do these is because of an outdated piece of paper binding us to conventionalism, but I digress. Hopefully these policies are instituted but this is what I would do if I were mayor.