County Commissioner Warren Mackey said Wednesday of 10 shootings in recent days in Chattanooga, "Who's going to come to Hamilton County and duck bullets?"
Commissioner Greg Beck said he can foresee "the level of fear getting higher and higher until all of us will be scared to go anywhere?"
Commissioner Mackey chided local leaders for not speaking out on the rash of shootings - most of which are gang related.
Saying that "a crisis is taking place in our city," he said, "Nobody wants to say anything about it. We have to recognize the problem and begin to do something about it."
Commissioner Mackey said of the poorer parts of the city that "we can't abandon them. We can't just say we are providing jails to put you in and Erlanger Hospital to take you to when you get shot."
He said millions are spent building new schools, while other schools have excess space. He said education money should be focused on "the student."
Commissioner Beck said leaders are needed "who will do something extraordinary" to get the crime situation into place and improve the schools.
He said, "We keep doing the same things and getting the same bad results. That's the definition of insanity."
Commissioner Beck said school superintendents and police chiefs are brought in from outside without achieving improvements.
He said the main problem is that "our homes, our schools and our churches are collapsing. Children are seeing violence everywhere they look - in cartoons, in games."
He stated, "Somebody is feeding our kids guns and drugs. We need a way to instill principles and values and good decision making."
County Mayor Jim Coppinger took offense at the Mackey remarks and said that officials are constantly working behind the scenes to deal with gang violence and other issues.