Reece to Palm Beach: "Denial is our worst enemy."

Councilman David Pepper often talks about his visits to other cities to learn how they're addressing problems of crime and violence.

Others think Vice Mayor Alicia Reece may have already found the part of the solution.

Palm Beach Post columnist Emily J. Minor writes up Cincinnati's three-year-old Black on Black Crime Initiative in a column headlined, "Amid killing of our youth, do something, do anything."

Reece admitted to the Palm Beach columnist that progress was "slow going:"

"I wish I could say we no longer have this problem," said Reece, 34, who is black and grew up -- and still lives -- in one of the city's targeted neighborhoods.

"We had a 13-year-old," she said.

But this is what they're doing: They have a homicide task force, working with police, NAACP, FBI, the Urban League, and others. They have a witness protection program.

"You tell, then you have to return to the neighborhood where it happened," said Reece, who said they work with the housing authority to relocate witnesses.

They also have a street program for black youth who "want to get involved because they want to stop the violence."

Cincinnati has long had two schools of thought: one holding that Cincinnati is too skeptical of ideas not born here, and the other holding that it's not skeptical enough.

Who's right in this case? Until there's some significant movement in the homicide rate, it's hard to tell.