You are inferring that the criminal justice system should somehow be a preventative to what is a deep rooted psychosocial cultural problem. There is no enforceable prophylaxis for Honor killings and turf wars in a dysfunctional culture awash in guns cannot be forcibly without applying martial law like strategies anathema to our political ethos.
The police can attempt to only clean up the mess in the aftermath. Minds have to be changed. Cops walking the beat are useless. Storehousing thousands of young black men with the resultant lowering of crime statistics is very socially and politically problematic.
Your post is consistent with what I have learned. I suspect, but don't know for sure, that the application of these methodologies for countering violence in black neighborhoods follows the same path as most other programs developed to address public problems. Namely, the interventions happen during times when the problem becomes intolerable and there is pressure on bureaucrats to do something about it. The interventions work well or not at all, but either way they get dropped when the heat is off the politicians. Then some new fad is implemented which may be the opposite of the one that worked.
In Portland during the Nineties and thereafter we had a very active Gang Unit in the police department. Officers who worked in it had a special interest in working with kids who were in the gangs or at least peripheral, but were not hardened criminals (yet). In the summer of 2020 Joann Hardesty, who is a black activist and former elected City Council member, decided that anti-gang interventions by the police were racist because "they targeted black people" and pushed successfully for defunding and dissolution of these police units. The people of Portland also elected as D.A. Mike Schmidt, who campaigned on a platform that included his opposition to incarceration. (Yes, seriously!) Hardesty was voted out of office in November of 2022, and a guy named Rene Gonzalez, who campaigned on a relatively harder law and order platform won her Council seat. I was surprised and relieved that Portlanders were actually willing to get rid of Hardesty, but I am not seeing much reduction in gang related violence and theft so far. Gonzalez can't do it all on his own, obviously, when the D.A. continues with his anti law enforcement stance, as does a high percentage of Portlanders, and their elected representatives in the state government.
I see. I haven’t seen the particular data you refer to but anecdotally I haven’t had the sense that there has been any meaningful reduction in black on black killings in gang affiliated areas like Chicago.
Ask yourself, If there was a reduction why would the Floyd incident ramp it up again? You imply the Ferguson Effect has diminished police proactivity. Perhaps so but that implies the police are only putting a bandage on a dysfunctional cultural hemorrhage which doesn’t get to the causal heart of the problem.
I also question, considering the significant number of revenge homicides, that there are only a handful of bad actors or, if so, they are readily replaced like a Hydra’s head.
Perhaps the answer is not only more intense strategic policing but better community policing that doesn’t catalyze the populace into rioting. A negative feedback loop.
Richard, you harken back to the crack wars and violating of basic rights by stop and frisk, advocating slash and burn tactics that put a generation of young black men into crime schools( prisons), leaving black children without fathers and further alienating African Americans from the society at large even if they did initially want most thugs off the street but it became a dragnet catalyzed by “broken windows” poorly executed by gung ho cops.
Yes! It lowered the crime rate, which I alluded to, in my previous response, but at what cost? The cure can be worse than the illness, ya know.
Now, you want pacifist robocops like Sir Galahad, patrolling the ghetto. Well, maybe someday it will come to that, Ha. I can see a Kevlar encumbered constable waddling in chase after a youth tripping over his sagging below the ass pants. Maybe K9’s with rubber teeth.
Brother, I feel your frustration but, I think your draconian approach will cause more civil discord than it proffers to solve. Not a Buddhist but, change comes from within in a pluralistic liberal democracy.
You are inferring that the criminal justice system should somehow be a preventative to what is a deep rooted psychosocial cultural problem. There is no enforceable prophylaxis for Honor killings and turf wars in a dysfunctional culture awash in guns cannot be forcibly without applying martial law like strategies anathema to our political ethos.
The police can attempt to only clean up the mess in the aftermath. Minds have to be changed. Cops walking the beat are useless. Storehousing thousands of young black men with the resultant lowering of crime statistics is very socially and politically problematic.
Your post is consistent with what I have learned. I suspect, but don't know for sure, that the application of these methodologies for countering violence in black neighborhoods follows the same path as most other programs developed to address public problems. Namely, the interventions happen during times when the problem becomes intolerable and there is pressure on bureaucrats to do something about it. The interventions work well or not at all, but either way they get dropped when the heat is off the politicians. Then some new fad is implemented which may be the opposite of the one that worked.
In Portland during the Nineties and thereafter we had a very active Gang Unit in the police department. Officers who worked in it had a special interest in working with kids who were in the gangs or at least peripheral, but were not hardened criminals (yet). In the summer of 2020 Joann Hardesty, who is a black activist and former elected City Council member, decided that anti-gang interventions by the police were racist because "they targeted black people" and pushed successfully for defunding and dissolution of these police units. The people of Portland also elected as D.A. Mike Schmidt, who campaigned on a platform that included his opposition to incarceration. (Yes, seriously!) Hardesty was voted out of office in November of 2022, and a guy named Rene Gonzalez, who campaigned on a relatively harder law and order platform won her Council seat. I was surprised and relieved that Portlanders were actually willing to get rid of Hardesty, but I am not seeing much reduction in gang related violence and theft so far. Gonzalez can't do it all on his own, obviously, when the D.A. continues with his anti law enforcement stance, as does a high percentage of Portlanders, and their elected representatives in the state government.
https://www.opb.org/news/article/portland-mayor-ted-wheeler-changes-city-police-bureau/
I see. I haven’t seen the particular data you refer to but anecdotally I haven’t had the sense that there has been any meaningful reduction in black on black killings in gang affiliated areas like Chicago.
Ask yourself, If there was a reduction why would the Floyd incident ramp it up again? You imply the Ferguson Effect has diminished police proactivity. Perhaps so but that implies the police are only putting a bandage on a dysfunctional cultural hemorrhage which doesn’t get to the causal heart of the problem.
I also question, considering the significant number of revenge homicides, that there are only a handful of bad actors or, if so, they are readily replaced like a Hydra’s head.
Perhaps the answer is not only more intense strategic policing but better community policing that doesn’t catalyze the populace into rioting. A negative feedback loop.
Richard, you harken back to the crack wars and violating of basic rights by stop and frisk, advocating slash and burn tactics that put a generation of young black men into crime schools( prisons), leaving black children without fathers and further alienating African Americans from the society at large even if they did initially want most thugs off the street but it became a dragnet catalyzed by “broken windows” poorly executed by gung ho cops.
Yes! It lowered the crime rate, which I alluded to, in my previous response, but at what cost? The cure can be worse than the illness, ya know.
Now, you want pacifist robocops like Sir Galahad, patrolling the ghetto. Well, maybe someday it will come to that, Ha. I can see a Kevlar encumbered constable waddling in chase after a youth tripping over his sagging below the ass pants. Maybe K9’s with rubber teeth.
Brother, I feel your frustration but, I think your draconian approach will cause more civil discord than it proffers to solve. Not a Buddhist but, change comes from within in a pluralistic liberal democracy.