As a young girl laid in her bed, butterflies swarmed in her belly with anticipation of the first day of school that awaits when she opens her eyes. A freshman no more, young Shaneick Golden would be starting her sophomore year at the V.

But her dreams of walking the halls of Vashon were violently interrupted when a loud noise and a sharp pain opened the 15-year-old’s eyes. A bullet pierced her back as she slept on her living room couch. By nothing less than the grace of God, the hot metal stopped short of her heart and lodged tight in her ribs — too close, the doctors say, to safely remove. So when young Golden does finally make it to school for her first day, she will carry with her, inside her, a bullet and a reminder that in her neighborhood there is no safe place from the terror of the gunmen that run the streets of north St. Louis.

My story today is not about the violence that is all too common in our city, and which has unfortunately defined St. Louis for many, many people. My story today is about the response to that senseless violence, a response that is too common, and which has unfortunately defined St. Louis for many, many people.

“They don’t care. Point blank,” says a neighbor of mine, not specifically about Golden’s shooting, but whenever we discuss the city’s response to the violence that plagues our neighborhood.

“They don’t give a fuck unless it happens to them, in their neighborhoods,” he says.

If you believe the responses to the story of Golden’s shooting on the daily newspaper’s website, you’d have to agree with my neighbor’s pessimistic assessment.

“This is a cultural problem wherein thug behavior is lauded and cooperation with the authorities is frowned upon,” writes “CrabbyAbby” at STLToday.com. “Until the residents of these neighborhoods rise up united against thugs, gangs, druggies, etc. and let them know they will report the criminal, no longer be intimitated or paid off with dirty money, and take back their neighborhoods, these daily shootings will continue.”

“Rise up against the thugs”? CrabbyAbby is expressing a point of view that is common among people who do not live in these areas. It is a view that is often expressed in the comments section of this website too when I write about city violence. It is the view that northside violence is northsiders’ problem and exists because northsiders don’t take control of (and responsibility for) their neighborhoods and their violent neighbors.

This view is both ignorant and offensive. In hearing it, I can imagine how the average Iraqi feels when he hears American leaders on television saying that Iraqis need to get their act together and get a functioning Democracy in place ASAP, that they need to hurry up and get their infrastructure rebuilt so the country has 24-hour electricity, that they need to hurry up and end the government corruption so aid money directly benefits the poor and not corrupt politicians.

The hypocrisy is laughable. In demanding these people take full and rapid responsibility, the American pundits take none. The same is true here.

The security situation in the Hyde Park, O’Fallon Park, and Fairground Park neighborhoods (and many others), is more a result of City government and police department policies than it is the fault of the Golden family or families like theirs.

FACT: The City of St. Louis is the owner of more drug houses than any drug dealer in St. Louis. When it comes to slumlords, Paul McKee doesn’t hold a candle to the City’s Land Reutilization Authority. In the 3rd Ward, where Hyde Park is located and where Shaneick was shot, the city is holding onto entire blocks of vacant, unsafe buildings. Land banking, they call it. And what is happening inside these buildings between when city employees come to cut the grass every four to six weeks? The drug trade.

FACT: The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department has surrendered parts of this city to drug dealers and thugs. What would happen if I drove my 2009 Cadillac Escalade over the curb and onto a grassy hill in Forest Park? What would happen if I blasted the newest Young Jeezy track as the summer sun reflected off my 30-inch rims and a steady stream of people made their way to and from my passenger side window? You know what would happen.

Not since the worst days in this city’s history have drug dealers behaved that brazenly in the Central West End, since before there was a “Central West End”. But there are parts of the city that are reminiscent of “Hamsterdam” from HBO’s “The Wire”, where drug activity is so open that the lack of police activity sends a clear message to the good residents that live in these neighborhoods: “You’re on your own.”

You’re on your own. That’s the underlying message relayed from the comments of “CrabbyAbby” on the Post’s website, and also in comments from Mayor Francis Slay and former Police Chief Joe Mokwa when they voiced outrage over St. Louis being labeled as “most dangerous” in national surveys. That’s just “some neighborhoods”, they say. Surely not the neighborhoods of their constituents.

But what about the good people who do live in these neighborhoods? They are, by the way, the majority of people living in these neighborhoods. For them — for us — St. Louis is most dangerous. Many of them vote. Many of them pay taxes. Many of them don’t want their kids to live their whole lives in these neighborhoods. And none of them want to see their kids die.

What responsibility does a government take in defending its people against domestic terrorists like the young, armed men that control some of our northern streets?

What responsibility does a government take for a girl like 15 year-old Shaneick Golden, who couldn’t even make it to attend her first day at her underperforming high school because she lives in a war zone just 3 miles from City Hall?

What responsibility? Ideally, a lot.

As most of my readers know, I was elected a couple of weeks ago as the new Democratic Committeeman of the 21st Ward. One of the issues I raised in the campaign was the state of one of our ward’s beautiful parks, O’Fallon Park.

Located on West Florissant Ave, near Interstate 70, the park is one of the city’s largest and, having grown up just a block away from it, it is home to many of my childhood memories. In fact, my grandmother taught me to fish in O’Fallon Lake when I was a boy. And so it especially pains me to see the current state of the park. Mostly unused by children and families, with the exception of some regular fishermen and men drinking beers in the afternoon, the people in the neighborhood have largely surrendered the park.

Until recently, the most activity O’Fallon regularly saw was the cruising activities of young people on Sunday afternoons. Hundreds of cars would slowly make their way down West Florissant, through the streets of O’Fallon and back again. Occasionally fights would break out, or even gun shots. Responding to the violence and neighborhood complaints, the police shut down the Sunday cruising. Now police are posted at the entrance of the park on Sundays, demanding to see valid drivers licenses and proof of insurance before drivers can enter the park. This moved the cruising over to our other park, Fairground Park, making Natural Bridge Rd. the site of the cruising and occasional violence. But after a 4-year-old girl caught a stray bullet in her leg while sitting in the backseat of a car on Natural Bridge, the cruising teens were pushed elsewhere again.

But back to O’Fallon.

So last week, newly-elected State Representative Chris Carter (in whose district the park is located) and I paid a visit to the maintenance facility in O’Fallon Park. The facility, housed in the old Groundskeeper’s Home, is the base of operations for a small crew of full-time and summer workers charged with maintaining ten parks in north St. Louis.

When Carter and I arrived, we asked to speak to the person in charge. “He’s around back,” we were told. So around back we walked.

We came upon two older men, beers in hand, engaged in a game of horse shoes.

As we approached, we announced ourselves and asked to speak to the supervisor. One of the men, dressed in a white wife-beater shirt, took a swig of his Bud Light and looked Carter and I up and down. “Who wants to know?”

“I’m Chris Carter and I’m the new state representative for this area and this is Antonio French, the new committeeman,” said Carter. “We were just coming to talk to you about the park and to see if there’s anything we can do to help you all.”

The man stepped forward. His buddy, with one eye kind of cocked to the side, stayed quiet and looked to his friend. “That’s fine, but me and my friend are in the middle of a game. It’s 17 all. So why don’t you two just give us a minute while we finish this up,” the man said as he picked up his horse shoes and turned back toward his goal.

“We’re only going to 21,” he looked back and said.

I looked at my watch. 3:30. “Unbelievable,” I said to Chris.

This is city government.

We talked to a group of Parks Department employees while we were there. We learned a few things — some that will be helpful to solving the problem of the park, and others that just demonstrated how difficult it’s going to be to solve the problems of city government and civic apathy.

They showed us a fountain that has been broken and flooding a section of the park for eight months. It has been reported, they said, but nothing has been done.

We walked on our own and saw trash and broken glass throughout the sand of the children’s swing and slide area.

The famed boat house, which is the symbol of the park, sits abandoned, unused for years. Chained up and boarded up, we were shown a door covered in plywood. How long had it been boarded up, I asked. Since the Harmon Administration.

There are different philosophies at play in St. Louis on how strong cities are built and rebuilt. Some think stadiums, casinos, and upscale residential are the key. They think investing our public dollars in major entertainment projects is the smart thing to do. They gamble our money on new residents moving to the city and reshaping the face of our town.

They are wrong. And history has proven them wrong over and over again.

I think strong cities remain strong and cities long in decline, like our own, become stronger by investing in our neighborhoods. Because no one is coming to save us. It is just going to be us for a long time. And unless we invest in our neighborhoods, where we live and where we are dying, then more of us will continue to leave.

Parks are anchors. Especially 126-acre parks like O’Fallon. When we surrender them, we are surrendering entire neighborhoods of families.

Schools are anchors. Public, private, charter, or Catholic, it doesn’t matter. Schools are anchors and when they close, we are surrendering those corners where there was once activity, and voices, and young people to the silence, and blight, and vandalism, and crime that will fill the vacuum.

If I spend the next month fighting to get that water fountain fixed in O’Fallon Park, I’ll do so knowing that it is not just the flooding of a section of one park that I’m trying to stop, but also the flood of apathy that leads to the white flags going up when good people have given up on trying to build a better neighborhood.