What ever happened to the Nashville where I grew up?

Video: Word On The Street (10/12/07)

Those days seem to be gone forever. It's scary.

And if it’s bad now, and that's an understatement, what about the next generation?

We can forget some of the trouble-making adults, they're too far gone. But it’s the children who are playing in the fast lane.

"It didn't get here overnight, and there's no easy fix," said Metro Juvenile Court Judge Betty Adams Green.

Where youngsters would use their fists to settle an argument years and years ago, today it’s guns.

"These kids have no conscience," a juvenile court referee told a friend.

Some years ago, Nashville's juvenile court dealt mostly with truancy and curfew violation cases. But now it’s murders, armed robberies, drugs, shootings and more.

Can you believe a 14-year-old shot and killed a shop owner because she wouldn't sell him a package of cigarettes?

"They just don't seem to care," a court referee said.

So, is there an answer to the mess we are in? No one has the slightest idea.

Once it was school teachers and principals who could get the attention of students; Churches and Boy's Clubs played a role.

But now, arrests, convictions and being placed behind bars don't seem to make the slightest impression on these hardened young criminals.

It may be too late for this generation. Just give me the good ole days.