This project tries to help people ground their decisions in the truth starting with discerning one’s own truth.  Good decisions rely on truth.  A fact alone is not a truth and sadly lies often contain facts.  In some ways, the truth is the sum of the facts plus truth’s discernment, but truth is never separate from the facts themselves.  Lies, particularly  in politics,  are the strategic, deliberate, misconstruing of the living context of facts and misusing those hijacked facts to serve the liars  own interests.  Many people in this age have magnified this problem of lies by too many folks giving up on understanding the real life context thereby making suddenly disconnected facts slaves of every renegade passion.  This is a bad situation running us to chaos.   When it comes to crime the key context to improving on this serious problem is the whole community.  

I once spent a week in Memphis training with their police department on safely deescalating people in mental health crisis.   I learned In Memphis and later in Montana training that the truth of the policing profession is far more complex than the ‘factual’ media stories of “bad apples” and “heroes”.  Mostly I saw a profession that is centered around individual professionals trying to walk a dangerous line between compassion and safety.    I saw in this experience  mostly brave people who cared about the community and also coming home alive at the end of the shift. In crime and law enforcement, the truth is a great deal more complicated than the manipulated, highly processed facts we are being presented with in this election season.

As reported by CNN cities like Detroit, San Antonio, and  Baltimore are seeing actual drops in homicide rates as they implement crime reduction programs that are community centered and at least adequately funded.  The police forces in these cities’s  programs are partners and participants in connecting up citizens with their own pockets of safety and mutual support.  The truth of crime is it is a public health crisis, very complex, and will take a lot of long term work to resolve.  The phony machismo of this election season on some candidates parts  relies on a blend of disconnected facts and fabrications that yield invalid conclusions and can only make problems worse.  The FBI’s annual crime report shows significant drops in murder, property crime, and violent crime, nationally.  That is thanks to connected communities, thoughtful policing in the peace officer tradition, and public funds in support.  

Good Decisions rely on discernment of truth, and truth walks on facts.  Let’s replicate the good work  in violence prevention and make ourselves and our context of community safe and connected again.