Disbanding/Defunding the Police

[Jovialis]

What is going to happen in these cities, where there is no police to enforce the law? Are we going to see the rise of private-police, and mercenaries to fill the void? I recall the stores in NYC hired private security to protect their property, since the police did not.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/9-...rtan-ntp-feeds

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jun/7/bill-de-blasio-vows-defund-new-york-police/

I assure you, where ever we buy our house, there will be a publicly-funded, police force. We're going to get as far away from the big city as possible.

[Palermo Trapani]

Jovialis: What will happen when Big City Mayors (Liberals) defund the police. the same thing that happens with every other policy they pass. They will not feel the consequences of their decisions. The Politicians who want to do this, the journalist and media that will cover it favorably, the entertainment industry that will push it never feel the impact of their policies. All of those groups have their own private guards living behind their gated community. If School discipline and behavior is a problem in big city public schools, and families that want better accountability on all dimensions in public schools, doesn't impact the politicians in those cities, their kids are in elite secular private schools.

[Jovialis]

The whole thing is completely idiotic, imo

I can't wait to see what Biden will have to say about it, which should be entertaining.

[bigsnake49]

They are not abolishing the police but are rethinking the policing functions. There is a small 4 sq city near us that has 26 policemen. Crime is minuscule. Why do they need so many policemen? Time to rethink how many police you need and whatever savings are realized should be channeled towards mental health and maybe training for the remaining policemen to handle mentally ill people. There was an incident here couple of years ago where the sheriff's office wanted to arrest a known prostitute. No big deal, right? Instead of having one of their members pose as a john and then arresting her when they were in the hotel room or pulling her over for a traffic violation and then arresting her, they brought 4 heavily armed policemen with bulletproof vests and dark clothes, crept up to the place kicked the door down and engaged in a gun battle with her uncle. In the end the appeals court decided that this was a case of stand your ground on the homeowner's part since they did not clearly identified themselves as police. One of the sheriff's deputies was injured severely and is now on 90% disability. All of that for arresting a prostitute. It's these military style, guns blazing, shoot first and ask questions second raids that we don't like. It's these, "oh I thought he had a gun so I shot him center of mass" situations. Look here officer, your duty is not to shoot the suspect, your duty is to arrest him and keep him alive. You job is not to protect yourself at all costs to the exclusion of everybody else's life. If you want to protect yourself, duck behind the car and learn how to deescalate the situation. Why does Buffalo need 57 SWAT team members? Is Buffalo wracked by truly horrific gang crime? I don't think so. You could invade a small country with 57 SWAT members. I bet you Buffalo has couple of those light tanks that they got from military surplus. I know our sheriff's office does. Instead of using bolt cutters to cut the chain to a gate, they decided to bring the tank to knock the gate down. I mean since you have a tank you have to use it for something, right?

[Palermo Trapani]

Well while Chicago police were dealing with looting and arson, Chicago had the worst weekend in its modern history in terms of murder and violence. Of course the people who suffer are exactly the ones who need Police. I mean some leftist got on TV today and said being able to call 911 and getting good 911 service is get this "privilege". But ok, White liberals want to defund the police and you know who will feel the impact, the same people who have felt the impact of every stupid marxist left wing decision made by Big City Mayors in the USA over pretty much my lifetime, which is now 50 plus years. Reforming the police is one thing, requring body cams, ok, yes, any shooting of an unarmed person by Police, automatic Federal Review, no problem. Defunding or in the case of Minneapolis MN, disbanding the Police.

https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2...e-police-crime

Does anyone actually know how many interactions there are between Police and Citizens in the USA. It is about 30 million a year. According to the Washington Post database, about 10 Million people were arrested last year. There were I think about 1,000 incidents of lethal force by police of which 41 were unarmed citizens. Now that is 41 too many, but lets put this in the context of 10 million arrests. Now of the 41, I think 9 or 10 were Black which is 20-25%, which yes I know is higher than the % of population that is Black in the USA (about 13%). Now of the 41 unarmed people shot, I have been trying to find out how many were charged with a crime. Some of them were, so what we are now talking about is < 41 were there was an unarmed person shot without criminal charges.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/...olice-by-race/

The notion that there are rogue police officers going around killing unarmed people is a product of a media narrative that has political leanings or ideology rooted in typical Marxist Bull Sh.....

[bigsnake49]

Well while Chicago police were dealing with looting and arson, Chicago had the worst weekend in its modern history in terms of murder and violence. Of course the people who suffer are exactly the ones who need Police. I mean some leftist got on TV today and said being able to call 911 and getting good 911 service is get this "privilege". But ok, White liberals want to defund the police and you know who will feel the impact, the same people who have felt the impact of every stupid marxist left wing decision made by Big City Mayors in the USA over pretty much my lifetime, which is now 50 plus years. Reforming the police is one thing, requring body cams, ok, yes, any shooting of an unarmed person by Police, automatic Federal Review, no problem. Defunding or in the case of Minneapolis MN, disbanding the Police.

https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2...e-police-crime

Does anyone actually know how many interactions there are between Police and Citizens in the USA. It is about 30 million a year. According to the Washington Post database, about 10 Million people were arrested last year. There were I think about 1,000 incidents of lethal force by police of which 41 were unarmed citizens. Now that is 41 too many, but lets put this in the context of 10 million arrests. Now of the 41, I think 9 or 10 were Black which is 20-25%, which yes I know is higher than the % of population that is Black in the USA (about 13%). Now of the 41 unarmed people shot, I have been trying to find out how many were charged with a crime. Some of them were, so what we are now talking about is < 41 were there was an unarmed person shot without criminal charges.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/...olice-by-race/

The notion that there are rogue police officers going around killing unarmed people is a product of a media narrative that has political leanings or ideology rooted in typical Marxist Bull Sh.....

Statistics are great when it's not your brother or sister that was shot by the police.

Out of the 1000 people that were killed by the police how many people might have been armed but were not shooting at the police? Remember that in this country people are allowed to have guns.

[Palermo Trapani]

Bigsnake49: that is precisely why I provided the other stats on unarmed people being shot. There is data on how many unarmed people were shot.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-myt...sm-11591119883

This liberal writer took issue with Larry Elders stats, but Larry Elder was correct, he was siting the data before it was updated, but even with the new data of 15 unarmed Blacks and 25 Unarmed Whites, we are still talking about 4% of the Police Shootings. You made my point, there are very few incidents were the Police are shooting unarmed people. Those are the cases the Justice System needs to focus on and if the Police officer in question committed a crime, charge that individual officer. Villanizing all Police officers and wanting to defund the police or "disband" the Police, which is what this Kumbaya Space cadet from MN suggested, that is only going to hurt the most at risk communities.

https://www.politifact.com/factcheck...l-shootings-p/

Here is another article, dated 26 May, citing the Washington Post police database which had data up to that date. The article above has updated data, but again, notice the amount of Police killings of "unarmed people"

https://thesocietypages.org/toolbox/...ing-of-blacks/

Notice these data which provide a time series of data going back to 1990 documenting how many people in the USA are arrested each year. Most recent data shows 10.3 Million in 2018, which is down from 15.2 million in 1997, in the heart of the President Bill Clinton era.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/...us-since-1990/

So again, why is it the media is pushing the narrative that Trump is causing Police officers to go rogue, and that rogue Police are the biggest crime threat to American society. It is media BS.

[Maciamo]

I think that the protests are being stirred on purpose by the Trump administration for election purposes. The Economist explains that violent protests generally help Republicans get more votes.

[Palermo Trapani]

I think that the protests are being stirred on purpose by the Trump administration for election purposes. The Economist explains that violent protests generally help Republicans get more votes.

I don't think the Trump administration has any control over the groups that protested, those are all left-wing organizations. However, I do agree Trump will use the protest and try the Nixon 1968 strategy of "Law and Order" following the 1968 Democratic Chicago Convention which was literally like War on the streets. So in that context I think the Economist is correct. Trumps strategy will be 1) Law and Order, just as the Economist noted, and 2) Continue to hammer Biden as part of the USA Politicians going back to Bush 1, Clinton, Bush 2 and Obama that set up Trade Deals that were not really Free and Fair with China that put the USA into a situation where the entire supply chain of key goods is now controlled by Communist China.

[Angela]

I don't know why anyone is actually surprised. This has been coming for a long time, and is just a repeat of the late sixties. There's almost no difference between AOC and Ilhan Omar, and and the Black Panthers and Stokely Carmichael and the SNCC, including the idiot celebrities and left wing politicians a la Jane Fonda and who supported them, people, as was said, safe behind their gated communities who never pay the price for stupid public policies. Have people really forgotten all about Huey Newton and Bobby Seale and their takeover of Oakland. It was before my time but they loomed large in our consciousness nevertheless.

What's going on is all about playing by Marcuse's handbook. Really, anyone who hasn't read him should get a second hand copy and read it; it's highly enlightening.

In the latest iteration you could see it coming first in the universities with the redefinition of language, with the re-writing of history, with wanting to throw out all the works of the "old white men", the old white men who created the knowledge base upon which modern society rests. Then it was the closing down of free speech, the firing of scientists who publish things that don't fit the ultra-leftist radical ideology.

That's how Mao's cultural revolution started and now it's coming to the west. I'm expecting to see our version of Robespierres and Marats setting up "Committees of Public Safety" at any moment, that or the soviets set up by Leninites too. That worked out really well, didn't it? MILLIONS died, or were sent to "re-education" camps, an idea of which the 60s and 70s radicals were very fond.

The whole "All Women Should Be Believed" mantra was part of it too. That's complete and utter b.s. Ask any prosecutor how many times women file false charges against men for sexual assault. Is it most of the cases? Of course not, it's definitely a small minority, but it happens. You could ask divorce lawyers the same question. There are women who even claim their husbands sexually abused their children, either because they're crazy or because they want a better settlement or custody. They put their children through the horrors of rigorous questioning, where they usually admit their mothers put them up to it. Think of the damage that does. Anyone who thinks that craziness or disgusting behavior is limited to men doesn't live in the real world. Or how about the changes instituted in the law which took due process away from young men on U.S. college campuses who were accused of sexual assault. That happened under Obama and was a travesty. We're now supposed to expel and permanently ruin the reputation of young men without giving them an opportunity to have the "victim" questioned, and cross-examined? If people want to personalize it, what if it were your son?

Plus, and this is the most important thing: we have a system of justice which gets to examine the evidence and punish the wrongdoers. The police and that judicial system are the only thing standing between a civilized society and a dystopian nightmare of Hobbesian proportions.

Everyone has forgotten that the facts behind the whole Black Lives Matter incident were a lie perpetrated by the media and leftists activities. That man was not kneeling with his hands up, or alternately, running away. The forensics and the autopsy were clear as day; he was charging the police officer.

Are there bad apples in the police force? Of course there are. You tell me an organization which has no bad people in it and I'll tell you you're living in a dream world. The point is to do better psychological screening, and weed them out because these men and women have power in their hands, sometimes lethal power. If you miss some, you investigate and IF they're guilty you prosecute the hell out of them, WHICH IS WHAT IS DONE. In that way, this is not the 1960s.

The point is that these crowds are in effect lynch mobs, out for vigilante justice, and that's the case in every situation, whether there is clear video of the occurrence or not. It doesn't matter to them or to the people they're egging on.

Btw, where are the crowds protesting in the street against all the gangs in the inner-city, the Bloods and the Cripps? Where are the crowds marching because too many black people are dying in the inner cities, and demanding that maybe a state of emergency be declared and all their gang houses, crack dens etc. be searched for illegal weapons? How about a march to get the crack dens out of their neighborhoods? Here's a novel one for you. How about a march demanding that men use condoms and stop producing child after child they can't support and who will just go into the system to perpetuate the whole scenario all over again?

I am so sick of all the hypocrisy and ideological clap track that it literally makes me sick to my stomach. There's a reason I left this world.

As for this let's close down the police departments, have people gone utterly mad? Anyone who actually knows anything about the inner cities in this country knows that community leaders are constantly asking for meetings with police department officials to ask for MORE, and MORE police on their streets, because guess what black people are killed every day by other black people on those streets, and in huge numbers. It's like a war zone in there already, and they're the ones getting killed. They're the people who break my heart: the children, the single mothers trying to do the best they can, the grandmothers left to raise the children of children who are in jail or addicted to one drug or another, the teenagers who just want to get out.

Are the white supporters of these demands actually this clueless about what goes on in the inner cities, in Chicago to use an example, or Detroit? Driven down the streets of Detroit have you, or the South Bronx? Yeah, that's the solution. Fewer police.

Has everyone also forgotten what happened when the police backed off in Philadelphia? Robbery, home invasions, assault, rape, and murder rates went through the roof, and the "leaders" had to eat crow and ask them to step up police activity.

You know what happened the last time "community activists" took over the policing of an American city? Look up the Black Panther "policing" of Oakland.

Go ahead, withdraw the police from all the areas where radicals are demanding it. Let the "community" police itself. Let's see what it looks like in six months. It will be carnage.

Btw, you don't make public policy based on the feelings of a traumatized and grieving family, no matter how tragic and heart-rending. Where is all the public and "private" grief over the thousands of police officers killed in those same inner cities? I don't see any marches for them.

I also wonder if the Guardian thinks all the rioting by Muslim and Belgian Muslims is actually the work of the government trying to stoke up anti-Muslim feelings so they can get re-elected. Maybe they should stick to European affairs. Hopefully, they know more about them.

All anyone needs to know about Biden is that he appointed AOC as an advisor, and I think Omar as well. God knows I can't stand Trump as a human being, but I'm not about to vote for my own destruction either, and that of my children. How blind can people be?

[DuPidh]

I don't think the Trump administration has any control over the groups that protested, those are all left-wing organizations. However, I do agree Trump will use the protest and try the Nixon 1968 strategy of "Law and Order" following the 1968 Democratic Chicago Convention which was literally like War on the streets. So in that context I think the Economist is correct. Trumps strategy will be 1) Law and Order, just as the Economist noted, and 2) Continue to hammer Biden as part of the USA Politicians going back to Bush 1, Clinton, Bush 2 and Obama that set up Trade Deals that were not really Free and Fair with China that put the USA into a situation where the entire supply chain of key goods is now controlled by Communist China.

They are not left wingers! They are anarchists'! They main purpose is the extortion of free food stamps and weakening of competition! They will not succeed! Silent majority will speak with vote!

[Palermo Trapani]

Dupidh" Well, your anarchist statement is technically more accurate. I agree. Take a look at this transcript from WttW Chicago. This is the "PBS" station in Chicago. Anybody with half a damn brain, pardon my American-Sicilian flare, knows PBS is run by liberals, traditional liberals, but liberals, not conservatives. Mayor Lightfoot definitely liberal said her neighborhood Ward is a "sh...Show"... people are "f-ing lawless", her words not mine. Now why didn't she come out and say that when all this rioting and looting started. Why did she publicly rip President Trump for saying American cities need "law and order" when she was privately saying her city was in essence a War zone. One City alderman said it was worse that 1968 in Chicago, that year had the Dr. King assassination in April and the Democrat Convention in August, both had rioting in the streets. That is very typical of Big City Liberal mayors, don't say Trump's assessment of what was going on was wrong, the media telling everyone, all the Peaceful protestors, peaceful, peaceful, peaceful "my A...."

So while the Police were dealing with Looting and rioting, Chicago had its more violent 1 day murder rate in its modern History. On 31 May alone, right in the middle of all this unrest, 65,000 calls for Police service but the Police could not get to the areas where they were needed because they were dealing with the laugh "peaceful protestors". You defund the Police or in the case of Minneapolis, disband them, Cities in the USA are going to be unlivable.
https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2...e-police-crime


https://news.wttw.com/2020/06/05/wha...-sorrow-unrest

[Angela]

DeBlasio, that Democrat paragon among mayors, who has "taken the knee" numerous times, has announced that he is cutting funding for the NYPD. I guarantee you that's not happening in my town. There wasn't a march near here and still there were 150 policemen along the main commercial blocks.

As of this morning, five couples are engaged in a bidding war over my house, upping the price above what I originally put it on the market for, because they're desperate to get their families out of the city.

If people close to "urban" areas think a few old security guards and a gate are going to protect them they're crazy.

When it comes time to vote, just remember that AOC and Omar were appointed by Biden as his special advisors.

Oh, this is how people who actually live in the inner cities feel about the CNN position that sometimes you need some violence to get change.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYbXlUx97NI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBbPJsNZMPg

[Jovialis]

DeBlasio, that Democrat paragon among mayors, who has "taken the knee" numerous times, has announced that he is cutting funding for the NYPD. I guarantee you that's not happening in my town. There wasn't a march near here and still there were 150 policemen along the main commercial blocks.

As of this morning, five couples are engaged in a bidding war over my house, upping the price above what I originally put it on the market for, because they're desperate to get their families out of the city.

If people close to "urban" areas think a few old security guards and a gate are going to protect them they're crazy.

When it comes time to vote, just remember that AOC and Omar were appointed by Biden as his special advisors.

Oh, this is how people who actually live in the inner cities feel about the CNN position that sometimes you need some violence to get change.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYbXlUx97NI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBbPJsNZMPg

It is true, often I see on videos that many of the people causing destruction are sanctimonious violent white far left-wing radicals. Many of them are goofballs like the portrayal of Lee Harvey Oswald in 11.23.63:

[bigsnake49]

Just in case that you think there are tons of cops being killed in the line of duty, think again. According to FBI statistics, 89 law enforcement officers were killed in line-of-duty incidents in 2019. Of these, 48 officers died as a result of felonious acts, and 41 officers died in accidents. Now nobody should die as a result of felonious acts but for every officer that died at the hands of felons, 20 felons died at the hands of the police and 1 unarmed citizen died at the hands of the police.

[Angela]

Just in case that you think there are tons of cops being killed in the line of duty, think again. According to FBI statistics, 89 law enforcement officers were killed in line-of-duty incidents in 2019. Of these, 48 officers died as a result of felonious acts, and 41 officers died in accidents. Now nobody should die as a result of felonious acts but for every officer that died at the hands of felons, 20 felons died at the hands of the police and 1 unarmed citizen died at the hands of the police.

And that means what, exactly? How many of those deaths of felons at the hands of the police were unjustified? That's an important detail.

"According to the US Department of Justice, African Americans accounted for 52.5% of all homicide offenders from 1980 to 2008, with Whites 45.3% and "Other" 2.2%. The offending rate for African Americans was almost eight times higher than Whites, and the victim rate six times higher. Most homicides were intraracial, with 84% of White victims killed by Whites and 93% of African American victims killed by African Americans.<sup>[63][64][65]

The vast majority of black homicide victims were killed by blacks. Perhaps you should look up the annual body count for that, and imagine the number if no police were on the streets. You might also want to look up the number of police injured in the line of duty each year.

As I've tried to point out before the problem in the inner cities as their community leaders see it has always been there aren't enough police there.

Compare the number of such incidents in any one year to the total number of police encounters and see what you get.

Does that make what happened excusable? Absolutely and completely not, but let's see the whole picture, and ignore the insanity coming from the far left.</sup>

[Palermo Trapani]

Just in case that you think there are tons of cops being killed in the line of duty, think again. According to FBI statistics, 89 law enforcement officers were killed in line-of-duty incidents in 2019. Of these, 48 officers died as a result of felonious acts, and 41 officers died in accidents. Now nobody should die as a result of felonious acts but for every officer that died at the hands of felons, 20 felons died at the hands of the police and 1 unarmed citizen died at the hands of the police.

My concern about Police and Criminals related to "unarmed people". If someone is committing armed robbery, getting caught in a drug deal, etc, and the Police come up and say "Freeze". The suspect needs to Freeze, if the suspect has any weapon on their person that could reasonably be used as a lethal force weapon and the Police officer kills the criminal, I am not going to hold the Police officer account for that. If the Police officer arrests a suspect and kills an unarmed person, those are the cases I am concerned about. So again, in 2018 10.2 Million people were arrested in the USA, as I provided the stats earlier. We are talking about 1,000 criminal suspects killed by Police a year. Of those, the numbers last year were about 50 and those are down from 90 I think in 2015. So again, look at the stats, 1) 10.2 million arrests, 2) 1,000 Police shootings of criminal suspects, 3) of the 1,000 criminal suspects killed, about 50 were "unarmed" and all of those were not Black (I think the most recent stats for 2019 have been updated to 15).

So the narrative of rouge Cops under Trump is not true. My issues are as follows, of the unarmed suspects killed, do Police get charged by the local DA, if evidence suggest criminal intent, more often if the criminal suspect was "White" vs. other Racial/Ethnic groups. If the answer to that question is yes, then lets address that issue. You want a Federal bill that anytime an unarmed suspect is killed by Police the Federal Government (i.e. Justice Department) will automatically review it. I am for it. You want a Federal bill suggesting all Police officers should wear body cameras, I am for it. You want to make it easier to either fire, if warranted, or reassign to administrative positions, Police officers that have a history of bad conduct. For it.

However, what I am not personally for is villanizing all Police officers (there about 800,000 in the USA) nor I am for "Defunding the Police" and Lord Help us, "Abolishing the Police" like some Liberal Loony Tunes in this Country are proposing. Usually, secular White Liberals whose polices they will not feel the consequences of. For example, take this Politician in Los Angeles who had a public press conference demanding to "disband the Police" while the entire time she "had Police guarding her while she Made the Speech". In fact, she has had LAPD guarding her home since April well before all this Civil Unrest broke out. But Ohhhh yea, she is for "Disbanding the Police".

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/la-of...144357218.html

[Palermo Trapani]

Just in case that you think there are tons of cops being killed in the line of duty, think again. According to FBI statistics, 89 law enforcement officers were killed in line-of-duty incidents in 2019. Of these, 48 officers died as a result of felonious acts, and 41 officers died in accidents. Now nobody should die as a result of felonious acts but for every officer that died at the hands of felons, 20 felons died at the hands of the police and 1 unarmed citizen died at the hands of the police.

bigSnake: I am not trying to sound like a smart a.... but you need to do a better job with your data. Since 1990, Police have had to arrest (or attempt to arrest) anywhere from 14,100 murderers to 24,700 (going back to 1991) so on average we are talking about just eye balling it 16-17,000 murderers a year. So it is likely that the majority of Police shootings of criminal suspects are going to be related to the most violent criminals (i.e. murderers). Comparing Police shootings of criminal suspects to Police officers getting killed in the line of duty is not really a meaningful statistic.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/...us-since-1990/

[Ailchu]

As for this let's close down the police departments, have people gone utterly mad? Anyone who actually knows anything about the inner cities in this country knows that community leaders are constantly asking for meetings with police department officials to ask for MORE, and MORE police on their streets, because guess what black people are killed every day by other black people on those streets, and in huge numbers. It's like a war zone in there already, and they're the ones getting killed. They're the people who break my heart: the children, the single mothers trying to do the best they can, the grandmothers left to raise the children of children who are in jail or addicted to one drug or another, the teenagers who just want to get out.

what if they would need more help from outside to get out of this circle? money that is spent elsewhere could be used here instead. and maybe there should be more laws regarding fire arms in the US. i imagine it must be hell to be a policeman in a place where everyone could pull out a gun if he feels just a little bit threatened.

[Angela]

what if they would need more help from outside to get out of this circle? money that is spent elsewhere could be used here instead. and maybe there should be more laws regarding fire arms in the US. i imagine it must be hell to be a policeman in a place where everyone could pull out a gun if he feels just a little bit threatened.

It's such a multi-faceted problem that it requires a multi-pronged approach imo. Decades ago Daniel Patrick Moynihan, when he was still an academic, wrote a huge treatise based on the premise that many of the problems of the minority communities, excluding Asians, both East and South Asian, and also to some degree the Middle Easterners, was because of the state of the black family. The causes are myriad: the legacy of slavery, when family bonds were broken, and men, especially, could be sold away from their women and children and took no responsibility for them; reconstruction, when black women could get jobs as domestics, but men had a harder time getting and keeping jobs; well intentioned welfare programs that gave more money to single women supporting children than to intact families; perhaps even, in part, a cultural legacy from Africa, where it was accepted that men might have children by more than one woman; a cultural feeling that for a man to wear a condom was to declare he wasn't a man and that the more children he fathered, the more "manly" he was.

Then, flash forward again to welfare programs, and the fact that the factory jobs which propelled poor black men to the north for good paying jobs have dried up, devastating both the poorer blacks and whites, and that welfare payments are high enough that they're barely less than what people black or white can make at minimum wage jobs at fast food outlets, markets, etc. It's cultural as well, certain jobs are looked down upon in our society, for blacks and whites. Immigrants from Haiti have made more progress than American blacks because they were willing to take those jobs, working three jobs at a time to get a stake and be able to buy a small house, start a small business. Immigrants from Central America have done the same thing to a certain extent, although they have their own gangs and violence problems too. They are mainly the people I see working these service jobs now, working their way up to managers etc.

Even European immigrants took that route. My nanny for seven years was a Portuguese immigrant. She saved every penny while she worked for me, as did her fiance, who broke his back working construction. In fact, she married out of my house, and my son was her ring bearer. Once she got married, she cleaned two houses a day for cash. With that money and what she had saved they bought a broken down two family house, lived in one, and rented out the other. More work, more savings, and then they bought a second house, so now they could live rent free. She had only one child, and one Portuguese woman in her neighborhood watched the children of five other women who continued to work, for which they paid her. I asked her if she wasn't tired, wouldn't think of slowing down. She wouldn't think of it; she saved enough to buy a house in Portugal. Was it easy? No, it wasn't, but she learned English, got a driver's license, pays the fees to send her daughter to a Catholic school, and tells me that she lives better than she ever did in her little rural village, and has no desire to ever go back. It can be done, but you have to work incredibly hard, the mother and father have to stay together, work together, take care of their children, and above all, no alcohol abuse, no drugs etc.

Which brings me to what really precipitated the downfall of the inner cities, and that's drugs, and particularly crack. The difference was that it was so damn cheap and so damn addictive. People would sell their souls for the relief it gave. Families fell apart, mothers gave birth to crack and heroin addicted children and on and on. Why do you think our health statistics for all kinds of things, including the health and life expectancy of young children is below that of Europe. That's why there are so many poor grandmothers trying to take care of their children's children; their children are either in jail or addicted to one drug or another. Single mothers are trying to raise sons alone, with no man in the house. I know people don't want to hear it, but you can't socialize young boys into wholesome behavior when there's no father around, and they see no future where they make good money except selling drugs. And what do you need to sell drugs, to protect yourself when you're selling drugs? You need guns, or at least knives. To belong you need to belong to a gang, and the initiation rite is to kill someone.

Drugs are not innocuous. When they flood in over our southern border with impunity, ever cheaper, and derivatives are even cheaper, when anyone with a few chemicals can open up a meth lab, then anyone with psychological issues, anyone dealing with depression because he feels ill equipped to deal with the demands of an increasingly less manual labor intensive society, anyone facing what they think is a bleak future, and that increasingly includes the white working class, is in danger from them.

That's why Black and Hispanic communities like Harlem and the South Bronx turned from communities with middle class areas, with black owned shops and community centers, with vibrant cultural and entertainment venues to the hell holes they are today. It looks like bombed out Beirut up there, and cops didn't blow up the buildings or set the fires. Those middle class blacks, anyone with talent or luck, managed to get out to middle class black communities or racially mixed communities and the poorly equipped to deal with life as it is now have been left behind.

A gun is a way to feel powerful, to protect yourself and your drugs. They're easy to get, and not, trust me, because gun shops sell them or because the rules are lax in terms of getting a gun in most states. The people in the inner cities don't get their guns that way. They wouldn't be able to pass even the most lax standards. For one thing, anyone with a criminal record can't buy them. They buy them on the black market, and the source is from over the border with Mexico. A strong border would not only stop illegal immigrants, it would stop drugs and guns from flooding our inner cities, and it would stop the human sex trade as well, or at least put a serious dent in it all. That's why cities like Chicago, for example, which have very tight gun restrictions, have so much gun crime.

Rudy Giuliani tried to address the problem in NYC by instituting what was called "stop and frisk". If people looked suspicious, i.e. congregating on a corner where money was changing hands, they were stopped and frisked for illegal arms. Gun violence and homicides went down precipitously in New York City, precisely in the black areas where it was most a problem. Bloomberg, the next mayor, continued the program, but times changed: it became racist, a violation of civil liberties, and it was discontinued under the Democrat mayor, and Bloomberg had to do a humiliation tour to say mea culpa for ever permitting it.

Is there racism still in America? Yes, there is. Are there some white policemen who are racists and harass young blacks? Yes, there are. Do young white men dressed in gang clothing and hanging out drunk and high on street corners also sometimes get harassed by white, and black and brown police officers? Yes, they do. Are there some bad cops out there who are sadists? Yes, they are, and they have to be weeded out or prosecuted. Sometimes they got past the screening; sometimes they're turned and hardened by what they see; sometimes they're corrupted by the astronomical sums of money floating around connected to the drug trade. Do black defendants still get harsher sentences than white defendants? Overall, yes they do. However, if the study were done of lower class or underclass whites I know you'd see the same thing. Believe me: I've seen it. When you have no money you get government appointed lawyers who are either incompetent or just out of law school, which is the same thing.

So, does the system share some of the blame when things go wrong? Yes, it does. However, there are deep rooted, horrific issues in these underclass communities which the "new" black and white radicals never acknowledge or address, and blaming "racism" for everything is not the solution. Most importantly, to get back to the original point, removing the police presence or even decreasing it in these areas would be criminal. You would be dooming all the innocent people left. Anyone who doesn't see that is living in la la land.

[Angela]

I guess they don't read the New York Times.

Jun 13

Baltimore Residents Blame Record-High Murder Rate On Lower Police Presence https://npr.org/2017/12/31/574824963/baltimore-residents-blame-record-high-murder-rate-on-lower-police-presence?utm_campaign=storyshare&utm_source=twitte r.com&utm_medium=social


AOC and Ilhan Omar and the anti-fa crowd didn't get the memo either. :)

[Jovialis]

Looks like "CHAZ" is coming to an end soon, after two incidents of shootings:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/22/seattle-shooting-chaz-protest-capitol-hill-autonomous-zone

[ratchet_fan]

I guess they don't read the New York Times.

Jun 13

Baltimore Residents Blame Record-High Murder Rate On Lower Police Presence https://npr.org/2017/12/31/574824963/baltimore-residents-blame-record-high-murder-rate-on-lower-police-presence?utm_campaign=storyshare&utm_source=twitte r.com&utm_medium=social


AOC and Ilhan Omar and the anti-fa crowd didn't get the memo either. :)

I mean police officers are just giving these communities what they want. I disagree that the majority of blacks want police in their neighborhoods. I think most support BLM to the highest degree and think all cops are bad. White liberals think the exact same way but they live in gated communities with security away from minorities.

[Angela]

I mean police officers are just giving these communities what they want. I disagree that the majority of blacks want police in their neighborhoods. I think most support BLM to the highest degree and think all cops are bad. White liberals think the exact same way but they live in gated communities with security away from minorities.

You must not have had a lot of contact with inner city residents. The vast majority want more, not less police presence.

The big mouth progressives and self-proclaimed "leaders" the media decides should be heard are the ones getting all the attention.

[ratchet_fan]

You must not have had a lot of contact with inner city residents. The vast majority want more, not less police presence.

The big mouth progressives and self-proclaimed "leaders" the media decides should be heard are the ones getting all the attention.

That's certainly not the way they vote.