The patterns are alarming us.

“You’ve got kids killing kids,” says Sgt. Paul Parizek of the Des Moines Police Department.

But among the tragic, lies one that might shine a ray of light.

Monday’s shooting saw an arrest just twenty minutes after it occurred. Last March there were six arrested just hours after the East High shooting.

Both times, cooperation from the public made good police work better.

“They were willing to help us and tell us what they knew and what they saw” Parizek says. “In a lot of other cases it’s radio silence and that doesn’t help us at all.”

One pattern that might help break another.

“The culture right now is ‘I’m not going to say anything to the police because I don’t want the rest of the block to think of me as a snitch’” says Tim McCoy of Creative Visions, a community aid and educational center in Des Moines.

McCoy admits a solution isn’t clear, but the first step might be addressing a word — one thrown about in pop culture — one with too much power today.

“There’s a need for a redefining of the word ‘snitch,’” McCoy says. “For people to be educated on what that word really means. It means ‘telling on someone so you can benefit from it.’”

What it isn’t is blowing the whistle on a child molester, a drug dealer, or a murderer.

“I would call (people who blow the whistle) ‘helpful citizens.’ People who look at death and shootings as an abnormal occurrence.”

If that pattern can be broken, perhaps it could take out another — one where youth live only for today.

“This climate of violence is being portrayed in the media and the rap videos as normal,” says Ivette Muhammad, the Chief Operating Officer at Creative Visions. “And it’s ‘cool.’ And they’re getting ‘clout’ in their minds until they get the harsh reality that there are consequences for your actions.”

Actions that only hurt communities, which cannot heal until more patterns are broken.