In a city roiled this weekend by destruction, chaos, and civil unrest, one father stepped up to a news reporter’s microphone — and took personal responsibility for his son’s death at the hands of a police officer.
It wasn’t the officer’s fault, it wasn’t the neighborhood’s fault, it wasn’t society’s fault, it wasn’t the government’s fault — it was his fault his son was killed, he said.
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He let the whole world know that as a father, he had let his son down.
Sylville Smith, 23, the young black man who had a rap sheet including felony charges that were ultimately dismissed by prosecutors, was shot and killed Saturday afternoon after fleeing from a police officer with a loaded weapon. He had ignored the officer’s command to halt.
The young police officer, 24, is also a black man — and has six years of service with the Milwaukee Police Department. Three of those are as an officer. Since the shooting, there have been concerns for his safety, CNN reported.
Sylville Smith died at the scene.
Wearing a black, woven pork pie hat, a black T-shirt, and dark sunglasses, his distraught father, Patrick Smith, wept and leaned on a female next to him as he pleaded with the public for change — change that begins at home.
“What are we gonna do now? Everyone playing their part in this city, blaming the white guy or whatever,” Smith said to Milwaukee’s Fox6 channel. “These young kids gotta realize this is all a game with them. Like they’re playing Monopoly. You young kids falling into their world, what they want you to do? Everything you do is programmed. I had to blame myself for a lot of things too, because your hero is your dad and I played a very big part in my family’s role model for them.”
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While noting the ready availability of guns on the city streets of Wisconsin, Smith continued to share his own illegal activities that no doubt influenced his son’s path in life.
“Being on the street, doing things of the street life — entertaining, drug dealing, and pimping, and they’re looking at their dad like, ‘He’s doing all these things,'” Smith said. “I got out of jail two months ago, but I’ve been going back and forth in jail and they see those things. So I’d like to apologize to my kids because this is the role model they look up to. When they see the wrong role model, this is what you get.”
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His voice anguished, Smith continued, “I don’t know when we’re gonna start moving … I’ve gotta start with my kids and we gotta change our ways, to be better role models. And we gotta change ourselves. We’ve gotta talk to them, put some sense into them.”
The chaos in the streets of Milwaukee began when two police officers stopped Smith and another person in a car at 3:30 p.m. on Saturday, according to police. The officers pursued the individuals after they fled from the car. The police eventually shot Smith in the arm and chest when he failed to put down his gun, according to multiple reports.
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The handgun, along with 500 rounds of ammunition, was stolen during a burglary in nearby Waukesha this past March, police said.
After the shooting death of Sylville Smith, protesters burned several stores and gas stations and threw rocks at the police who were trying to contain the unrest. Flames filled the skies over Milwaukee as protesters started six separate fires overnight. They also damaged seven squad cars and fired eight rounds of gunfire at a Bearcat vehicle being used by law enforcement.
Four officers were hurt — three were struck by concrete and one was hit by flying glass. Police made 17 arrests overnight, and all of those arrested have prior criminal records, CNN reported.
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In his honest, pained remarks, the elder Smith acknowledged what the National Fatherhood Initiative knows. “Many people believe that family structure doesn’t really matter, as long as children are cared for and loved by someone, anyone,” the group states on its website. “However, new research on father absence shows that old adage, ‘correlation does not imply causation,’ does not apply to the effects of father absence on children. In other words, for many of our most intractable social ills affecting children, father absence is to blame.”
Wisconsin District 7 Alderman Khalif J. Rainey, a Democrat, seemed instead to blame social ills, including vague “inequities,” unemployment, and under-education for the violence of the weekend — and not personal responsibility.
A heartbroken father is accepting his part in his son’s downward spiral, albeit too late for his own child.
“This community of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, has become the worst place to live for African-Americans in the entire country. Something has to be done to address these issues,” he said in televised remarks. “The black people of Milwaukee are tired. They are tired of living under this oppression. This is their life.”
It is crucial for those who routinely pass the buck when things go wrong to start practicing personal responsibility. An inept and coddling welfare state has replaced work ethic, accountability, and the characteristics of strength and perseverance that foster upward mobility within families all across the racial and socioeconomic spectrum.
In an article this June on Townhall.com entitled “Is Personal Responsibility Obsolete?” social theorist and columnist Thomas Sowell wrote, “All these [teenage pregnancies, venereal diseases, dependency on government, and murder rates] reversed and shot up as the welfare state, and the social vision behind the welfare state, took over in the 1960s. That vision featured non-judgmental rewards and non-judgmental leniency toward counterproductive behavior, whether crime or irresponsible sex and its consequences.”
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“But relieving people from the responsibilities and challenges of life is doing them no favor,” Sowell, a black man himself, asserted. “Nor is it a favor to society at large.”
One young black man on the path of law and order had to shoot another black man — just a year younger than he — on a totally different path in life. A heartbroken father is accepting his part in his son’s downward spiral — albeit too late for his own child.
And that son leaves a son and a daughter of his own behind as well — who will grow up without their father.
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