Discussion for article #235816
Click through and read the whole interview if you have a few minutes. Not sure where you could go for better insight into this stuff.
8 Likes
"Baltimore cops, he argued, forgot how to discriminate between actual criminal suspects and people who were just in their path.
“Again, that’s a department that has a diminished capacity to actually respond to crime or investigate crime, or to even distinguish innocence or guilt,” Simon said. “And that comes from too many officers who came up in a culture that taught them not the hard job of policing, but simply how to roam the city, jack everyone up, and call for the wagon.”"
There it is.
4 Likes
Except he’s wrong in one respect. Many apologists are already saying (thanks FB) that if Gray’s mother had slapped him like the one on the video maybe he’d be alive today. Sigh. Not to mention that I seem to know every single thing Gray has done in his life. Some people will choose to never believe that a victim didn’t deserve it.
5 Likes
So the Baltimore PD’s new slogan is, “Kill them all and let god sort them out?” Arnaud Amalric (August 1209).
2 Likes
I invoked him earlier today. Like B-more wants to give him another best seller.
1 Like
It’s almost like someone saw Claude Rains saying “round up the usual suspects” and used it as the basis for an entire criminal justice system.
4 Likes
I read it entirely. And it’s so disheartening because I just don’t believe that the politicians and the electorate will address the facts and root causes of these periodic and entirely predictable urban upheavals and implement measures to forestall them. I don’t have any faith in the current system to metamorphose into one that values human rights over property rights.
“And pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere up in space, 'cause there’s bugger all down here on Earth!”
5 Likes
Interesting that we get more truth from a creator of brilliant fiction based on fact than we do from the media who are supposed to cover this stuff, but are far more interested in Bruce Jenner’s sex change operation. That is not to minimize the great Baltimore Sun coverage of how much police brutality was costing the city in lawsuit settlements, but note that that story came out over a year ago and now a year later, obviously NOTHING has really changed.
6 Likes
House Speaker John Boehner, until the last election, had an opportunity to hold a vote on the Jobs Bill, which (theoretically at least) could have passed the Senate. There were probably enough Repubicans in the House
who would have voted FOR the Bill.
*****That fact should have been S.O.P. for every Talking Head, Reporter and Democratic politician for the last several days, carrying forward until Nov. 2016.
FURTHER,
There should have been an OCCUPY-like movement to GUARANTEE that the above (*****) would take place.
There is a relation between jobless, idle youth, outsourcing of jobs in general and a host of urban ills.
6 Likes
Martin O’Malley’s Presidential aspirations (as a Democrat, at least) went up in flames on Monday, too. African-Americans will NEVER vote for him.
3 Likes
And also note how little traction the Baltimore Sun piece on the lawsuits got with national media…even now.
There’s a narrative they are looking to sell, and it isn’t that this is a profession that is LONG overdue for some reflection, insight and a big ass shakeup/cleanup.
I have friends and family in law enforcement; we can barely talk about this subject because the “Blue Code” is so bloody ingrained they absolutely do not want to hear that there are things they need to be doing to make sure ethical cops get to stay ethical, and those who have no ethics are weeded out for the betterment of the force, and society.
7 Likes
White flight and mfg flt started it all for these many failed cities at least as far back as the 1950’s. Some say earlier.
I think we forget that with the distraction of police misconduct and war on drugs that came later.
The rest is post white flight, post jobs flight and post middle class including black middle class.Now we’re left what is tantamount to a postwar zone where only the poorest live because they can’t afford to flee. The police then, become effectively an occupation force and all that entails.
Baltimore, Newark, Detroit, Buffalo, Scranton, Gary, San Bernardino, major parts of LA to name just some that come to mind. Sociologically, there’s hardly a dime’s worth of difference among them.
I’m told Jacksonville FL is starting to feel white flight, but I have no way to check this.
6 Likes
His basic thesis about how destructive the “war on drugs” has been is unquestionably correct. Police adopted aggressive confrontational tactics, and prison became almost a right of passage – so kids graduate from Crime University and have a permanent record that makes its so they can’t get any legit good jobs. The war on drugs was fought in a racially unfair way, to further disenfranchise the black urban underclass and alienate them from authorities. On top of that, due to illicit trade, gangs now run many neighborhoods. Prohibition didn’t work, and neither did the War on Drugs.
5 Likes
LOL hard at those Kangol hats, who started that wackness? I mean what human is responsible because obviously the kangaroo doesn’t fully appreciate the consequences
1 Like
The War on Drugs created these situations that we are seeing now. Because of this war, regular cops just assume that anyone with dark skin is a druggie and needs to be jacked up, whether they are guilty of a crime or not. This war has created an “us vs them” mentality, and turned our streets literally into a war zone. That’s what happens when you declare war on something, you get casualties, collateral damage, and distrust. What did they expect?
I do question, however, the notion that at some great moment in the halcyon past, the cops ¨knew¨ however imperfectly, to discriminate between real criminals and someone who was just in their way. Forced confessions, racist cops, and innocent people being convicted goes back way before the War on Drugs or cell phone videos. Sounds to me a bit like nostalgia for a past that never was.
3 Likes
Thank god for this. I was tired of hearing all those sociologists, urban developers and civil rights historians talk about this. What this issue has been needing all along is the opinion of a guy who wrote a TV show. Frankly, I’m still waiting for John Waters to weigh in.
Oh, okay. To you, he’s just “a guy who wrote a TV show”. He might also be a guy who coached little league, so you could’ve couched your dumbass snark with that for a more dramatic effect. “What this issue has been needing all along is the opinion of a guy who coached little league…”
There. I did it for you.
You apparently missed the first sentence of this article, which explained why Simon’s point of view is relevant. “David Simon, former crime reporter for the Baltimore Sun…”
5 Likes
Here’s what’s interesting to me…
My father was a detective in the Milwaukee PD. For those who don’t know, Milwaukee is a very racially…tense city. Anyway, he used to lament about how back in the good old days (70’s basically) you could shoot a fleeing felon in the back without any sort of repercussions. And you very much couldn’t do that anymore.
Now, he would say these things in the 80’s and 90’s before he retired.
So, what made it go from “yes, shoot” to “no, don’t shoot” and then back to “fuck yeah, blaze away”?
2 Likes