Last week, the Lac Courte Oreilles Tribal Governing Board invited a leading authority on gang and juvenile violence to visit Sawyer County to assess our situation and create a plan for gang/juvenile violence and prevention and intervention.

Needless-to-say, Steve Nawojczyk came with a powerful message. Yet, it was a message that was quite simple: Invest in your children. Invest in prevention programs. But more importantly don’t give up on your communities, because gang wannabes will be gang gonnabes.

Many of us have known for several years that crime is growing, not decreasing in our county. Just look at the incidents reported in the crime scene and the circuit court convictions. They give us a small idea of what’s happening here.

No community or county is immune from crime or youth violence. However, we can take measures to prevent crime from happening and protect our future leaders — our children. Get involved in your children’s lives. Know their friends. Know their friends’ parents. Know what they’re doing and what type of books and music they’re reading or listening to. Talk to them. You’d be surprised what you might learn if you started to talk to your child about what he or she knows about gangs, drugs, and violence in our community.

If you think that gangs don’t exist in Sawyer County — think again. One of the reasons our annual Fall Sports Journal was late getting to press is that we had to re-take some photographs. Why? We had youth “flashing gang signs” in the pictures. It’s not something we ever thought we’d incur in the world of community journalism. But it happened and now it’s something we look for before we snap the picture.

Our county commissioners are requesting voters to vote in favor of a referendum to build a new jail. Yes, it’s something we need — but it’s also our penance.

A jail is needed because we failed to invest in our children. It’s that plain and simple. Law enforcement and our children need our help so we won’t have to build a bigger jail 20, 30 or 50 years from now. Community-oriented police, after-school programs, parenting classes, in-school programs, one-on-one activities and neighborhood action groups should become necessary and essential parts of our lives.

Hayward and Sawyer County are not the same town nor county they were a decade or several decades ago.

Change is not bad — it’s an opportunity. An opportunity to say we don’t want our kids dying in the streets or back county roads as a result of gang violence. It’s an opportunity to say: Let’s get involved and help save our children.

We can’t give up — even though there are those who would sooner laugh at us than help us.

Kudos to the Lac Courte Oreilles Tribal Governing Board for bringing Mr. Nawojczyk to our communities. It was a good investment and money well-spent. At right is a guest editorial, written by Mr. Nawojczyk last month in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. We believe his opinion is an insightful look into what’s happening in our society today.