by Kyle SCHERMBECK
Intern Graphic Designer

Toledo, Ohio. My hometown. It was the place that made me who I am.

It was a city booming with industries from its birth right after the Civil War, to the early 21st Century. Its streets were lined with world-renowned art museums; it was home to the top window-producing company in the world, and the JEEP factory planted its headquarters in the middle of Toledo.

Its 700,000 citizens at the city’s peak lived normal middle class lifestyles. Families had two-income households. Jobs came from the factories, the art museums, small businesses and the nationally recognized Toledo Zoo. Families were comfortable, and safe.

The crime rate in 2000 was 10.8 violent crimes per 1,000 people—it was an average industrialized city in the United States. Toledo’s unemployment rate was 4.8 percent.

Yet now, nine years later, with the economic crisis, the streets of Toledo are ravished with foreclosure signs, dotted with few surviving small businesses, long lines are overwhelming the unemployment office and crime has soared through the roof.

The unemployment rate is at 9.8 percent— now ranked by Forbes magazine as the worst middle-sized city in the United States to find a job. The factories have shut down. JEEP has had severe cutbacks. A city once with one of the lowest unemployment rates, now is a job wasteland.

The effect of this unemployment is a drastic increase in crime. Toledo was recently ranked the ninth most dangerous city to live in all of America.

It has a safety index of 4 out of 100. Toledo has filled the national news with bar fights and riots in the streets—something unheard of for the city during its peak years. The crime rate is now 440.8 violent crimes per 1,000 people. I’ve witnessed families become more cautious as to what they let their kids do and do not do.

Some of the friends I grew up with are now in jail for hate crimes and other various incidents.

So why turn to crime when in the need for money?

Toledo is just one example of many cities experiencing drastic spikes in crime rates, and it’s unreasonable.

This country was founded on the idea of working hard, and working together to get what is needed or desired—not stealing it, murdering for it or raping an innocent person for the $20 they may or may not have in their purse.

The indescribable grief of losing a job is being followed by senseless acts of violence.

It’s time we take responsibility for our actions, and the actions that have happened. Yes, times are hard, but life is a learning experience. It’s times like these where we need to come together to help each other rather than each diverge into a separate path.

Separating and spewing violence will not rebuild the schools and businesses that have been thrashed by the poor economy. It’s not going to fix the broken families that have been caused by poor decision making resulting in a child without a home.

Let’s not cause more problems than we have. Have faith in your government, and more importantly, the people around you.

Ride out the storm. It will get better.

Schermbeck, a freshman technical photography major from Holly Springs, is an intern graphic designer.

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