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Tag: ghetto culture

  • Looting in Oakland

    Reports of “Massive Looting.” And pics of looting a Foot Locker!

    Kind of surprises me a bit (I know… nothing should surprise me) because the cop was led off in handcuffs. It wasn’t like he walked off a free man.

    But then what does looting have to do with justice?

    Whatever your “cause” is, looting will not help it (notable exception: you need water and food after you’re abandoned in your flooded city). And the lasting damage of looting can last decades. If you look for it, scars of looting from the 1960s is still visible in parts of Brooklyn and more so in Baltimore’s Eastern District. And it’s 30 years later. Crazy.

    Enjoy the shoes. You sure stuck it to The Man!

    Idiots.

  • Dirt bike crashes into car. Car driver assulted.

    This dirt bike thing in Baltimore continues to be out of control. I can’t believe that 10 years after I first saw packs of these going around, they’re still a problem.

    I mean, other cities don’t have this problem. What makes Baltimore so unique?

    To ride an illegal dirt bike, especially on the sidewalk or through parks, needs to be an arrestable offense. Pursuit needs to be an option. And forfeiture laws need to be made so that people lose their bikes (and these bikes not auctioned back to city people).

    Now these are three suggestion that go against what I normally believe in. But continued tolerance of this danger is more of a risk. Baltimore’s dirt-bike culture needs to be stopped. And that will take one summer (maybe two) of aggressive enforcement.

    This is a clip from 2007:

  • Right-Wing Lies: The welfare of Larmondo “Flair” Allen

    Right-Wing Lies: The welfare of Larmondo “Flair” Allen

    Am I really the only person who is skeptical enough to check the basic truth of emails before forwarding them to my 140 closest friends? I mean, it doesn’t take too long to go to Snopes

    The thing about mass-forwarded right-wing emails is that they are almost always never true. They’re like the headlines in the supermarket tabloid Weekly World News. There might be a grain of truth. But the basic theme, the ultimate point, is a lie.

    [Now liberals forward some lies too, but not as much. Certainly not as much since people stopped forwarding that damned “Save Sesame Street” email five years ago.]

    What here’s what bothers me deep down. I don’t know if conservatives really care about the truth. It seems that for too many “faith” and “belief” and “firm conviction” are more valued attributes that the truth. I always think, “Gee, I might be wrong.” Does that make me a wishy-washy French-loving lefty? Maybe. But if your faith and beliefs are built on lies, shouldn’t that matter?

    For the record: Obama was born in the U.S., Saddam Hussein was not behind September 11th, and the ACLU never tried to ban crosses from cemeteries. Just because you get an email or hear somebody who say something on talk radio doesn’t make it true! Not evenif they’re spittle-flying mad when they say it!

    So here’s the latest, an obit about one Larmondo “Flair” Allen. Now this is indeed a gem (and there’s nothing on Snopes).

    This apparently murderous drug dealer is called “an entrepreneur.” He was 25. He left eight brothers, five sisters, and ninechildren. Three of his daughters are named Larmondhall, Lamonshea, Larmomdriel.

    So I snicker at all this. I have a sense of humor. So do most liberals (despite what many conservatives think).

    But here’s the text with the email. As usual with right-wing email, it’s large and in many colors:

    Entrepreneur?????

    It took me a couple of minutes to get it, but imagine,

    He’s 25 and has 3 sons and 6 daughters

    NINE welfare recipients collecting $1500 each…..

    That equals $13,500 a month !!! Now add food stamps,

    Free medical, free school lunches, on and on and on.

    Now that, to me, is a real Entrepreneur.

    Do the math, that’s over $156,000.00 a year.

    Anybody out there sittin’ on their a** while reading

    This message making that kind of money?

    YOUR TAX $$$$ AT WORK??

    So the message isn’t just to laugh at the obit and this loser (and I wouldn’t be surprised if the writer of this obit was fully aware of the humor in using the word “entrepreneur”), but to blame the entire Obama communist liberal welfare state for everything that is wrong with America.

    First of all (and I only went online for a few minutes to find this out–so I can’t vouch with certainly that this is all true), the obit is from 2004. OK, but it’s still true, I suppose.

    But who the hell thinks that an able bodied man (much less one with “flair”) gets $1,500 a month per child? That’s what set off my B.S. alarm.

    I mean, this is America. We don’t have such a welfare system. And yet I firmly believe that opposition to this non-existent welfare system is what drives the world view of so many conservative Americans.

    And don’t get me wrong. I know there is much abuse of disability and what little welfare system we have. But you can’t help the “deserving poor” (my wife grew up on food stamps some of the time) without some abuse from those trying to milk the system. So friggin’ what? It’s not like we’re talking big bucks.

    In all of 10 minutes online, I couldn’t find details about the welfare benefits (now called TANF) in Louisiana. But let’s take Texas simply because I could find it on line. This is federal aid. In Texas, a family of eight with one or two parents gets less than $500 a month. Total. For each additional person, add… $60. [see the update below for Louisiana stats.]

    $1,500 or $60 per kid? It kind of matters.

    There might be some people out there who might have a kid for an extra $60 a month. But there can’t be too many. But in addition to TANF, there are also food stamps and sometimes some city and state aid is well. Still, it doesn’t add up to much. And if “Flair” had a legitimate job (ha!), he could get some earned income tax credit, something I have received for more than one year of my working life.

    But the straight-up federal welfare for you and your Texas family of nine kids? $6,636 a year. Live large, baby. Live large.

    Update, August, 2011. This is from a reader’s comment:

    In Louisiana, this (now) single mother with 9 children would receive $512/month with a lifetime limit of collecting this for 5 years. She’d be able to get another $500/mo roughly in food stamps and probably get some housing assistance as well.

    Now as far as Survivor Benefits from Social Security for the children, it depends on whether or not Larmondo had a regular job and paid into Social Security for at least 18 months. If he did, then they’ll qualify for benefits. If not, no soup for the kids. Being generous and saying Larmondo spent some time workin’ at McDonald’s to get his 18 months in… his partner may be able to collect the one time payment of $255 for his death and 7 of the kids would be eligible for continuing payments until 18. Those payments would be kind of small though, a total of less than $500/mo. combined.

    Shameless Promotion: This post has been viewed almost 30,000 times. If you found this post interesting, even if you don’t agree with it, please consider buying one of my books! Cop in the Hood is about my days as police officer in Baltimore. Published Weeklycalled this award winning book , “An adrenaline-accelerating night ride that reveals the stark realities of law enforcement.” Colonel (ret.) Margaret Patton of the Baltimore City Police Department said, “Cop in the Hood should be made mandatory reading for every recruit in the Balto. City Police Academy. … I am so proud that you were a Baltimore Police Officer and a good one.” By the end, you too may learn what police already know (but won’t tell you): the federal war on drugs is doomed to failure.

    Or maybe In Defense of Flogging is more up your alley. It’s been called a Swiftian satire, except I’m serious. I say we whip the motherf*ckers. Or at least offer the choice: five years or ten lashes — what’ll it be? In Defense of Flogging is a short and fun book that makes a great Father’s Day present in June. (Is it December? Then I mean Christmas. Hanukkah, too!)

    In Defense of Flogging has been talked about on everything from Fox TV to NPR. Even The Blaze liked it. Atlantic Magazinelisted me as one of the “Brave Thinkers” of 2011. It’s a short book, a fun read, and, as Fat Albert used to say, “you might learn something before we’re done.”

  • Check out my dope suspenders!

    I know you think it’s cool to be chillin’ with your pants hanging low, but funny things happen when your pants don’t stay up. For one, if you’re running and I’m chasing you and you’ve got one hand holding your pants up, I will actually catch you. Two, if you’re like Hector Quinones of the Bronx and kill three people and wound one more, you’ve got problems. “A fifth relative managed to escape only when Mr. Quinones lost his balance after his pants had fallen down.” Next thing you know, the po-po are coming and you make to leave out the window and fall to your death.

    The story by Michael Schmidt in the New York Times.

  • Ghetto Reading List

    Ghetto Reading List

    In a footnote (p. 215) in Cop in the Hood, I list what I consider essential books in urban sociology (they’re not all about the “ghetto”).

    Somebody was nice enough to take the time to put this list on Amazon. It’s nice to see all these books in one place.

  • “Running only leads to more running”

    A Chicago Tribunepiece on why the Fenger High School students fight. It doesn’t really answer the question. But then again it’s not like there is a good answer. What it comes down to seems to be the belief that kids from the projects are “invading” another neighborhood (with seemingly very similar socioeconomic characteristics) where the high school is.

    “As far as I know, they don’t like us,” said Young, who dreams of playing professional football even though he’s not on the school team, “and the way I feel, we don’t like them.”

    The reporter can’t actually determine any real difference between the groups (though I love dig “even though he’s not on the school team”). Perhaps the only thing that might be considered profound is this line: “I’m not gonna run from it…. Why should I have to run from where I live? If I have to run from where I live, where else do I go?”

    I guess no different than East Side versus West Side (Baltimore), Bloods versus Crips (LA), Jets versus Sharks (Broadway), or East Platform versus West Platform (L-going Cubs fans).

  • Fight. Don’t Kill.

    Thinking about the street fight in Chicago makes me think Frank Zimring and Gordon Hawkins’ 1997 book, Crime is Not the Problem. They distinguish between crime and violence and argue convincingly that America’s problem is not crime but violence.

    Other nations have as much if not more crime, they say. They just don’t kill each as much. Zimring and Hawkins emphasize guns as part of our violence problem. But I think there’s something else. I’ve see some fights. Europe has their soccer hooligans. And a lot of drinking, too. And in Greece it seem like people are always yelling at each other. And there are even seasonal riots in Athens. But somehow it’s all controlled, almost ritualized. Maybe subconsciously. Somehow, in the heat of the moment, when the adrenaline is pumping, people in much of the world know to restrain from issuing that lethal blow. People let off steam, they save face, they vent, they even hurt. But by and large they don’t kill.

    And here, for no good reason I can understand, some kids pick up giant pieces of wood and wack each other, sucker punching others, and then stomping a man till he’s dead.

    I don’t buy the “it just don’t make sense” refrain. I mean, of course it don’t. But that’s not the answer. Is it something about American exceptionalism? Do we not understand how easy it is to kill someone? Do we not value human life as much as people in other countries? Do we have less self-control? Do we have no other means of having fun? All these may be true. But none of these seem to provide a satisfactory answer.

    How do you learn to enjoy stomping a defenseless guy for fun? I don’t know. Maybe you learned it from dad. More likely you never learned anything from dad because dad got locked up a long time ago himself. And your mom, who very well may be an idiot, tells you you gotta fight. Better to fight than get punked. That’s what you gotta do to be a mom.

    Maybe stomping a guy to death actually is fun. It’s easy to tsk-tsk others. Maybe there’s nothing better than hitting a guy upside the head with a two-by-four. Maybe that’s the dirty secret we who pass judgment from afar don’t want to consider. I don’t know. I’ve never tried.

    Update: Worth quoting T. Coates at some length here:

    I am aware of all the socio-economic forces at work they make black communities more subject to violence. I’m in all for trying to ameliorate those forces. In the meantime, I’m all for doing whatever it takes to protect the rest of us–particularly young black kids–from hooliganism.

    I can’t ever say this enough–there’s nothing inconsistent about trying to understand the broad societal forces, and still holding people responsible for individual action. Being black and poor sucks. But most poor black kids aren’t out smacking innocent bystanders with 2x4s.

    If all is as it appears for these kids who were arrested, then heaven help them, because we can not. Compassion–like all resources–has limits. It’s worth spending some time on what makes young boys do these sorts of things. It’s worth at least as much time to try and protect young boys who are just trying to live right. I know from personal experience that there are more of the latter than the former. Don’t ever forget that.

  • Nasty street fight in Chicago

    One 16-year-old high-school honors student student gets sucker-hit with a large piece of wood, then cold cocked, and finally stomped and beaten to death. All this caught on video in front of a large screaming (and sometimes cheering) crowd. Finally some nearby adults carry try and rescue him and carry him away, but it’s too late. Derrion Albert died.

    Foxhas video. The Sun Timesreports.

    The winner of the latest “Bad Parent Award”? The mother of one of the likely killer saying dismissively, “Gangbangers fight. That’s what they do!” Like it’s the natural order of things. Darrion, by all accounts, wasn’t a gangbanger.

    A few days later, in what seems like it could only come from a Monty Python skit:

    Some people stood nose-to-nose, arguing over whether the gathering [at the makeshift memorial] should be in memory of Derrion or a protest of the violence that killed him.

    Police responded.

  • “People have got to get indignant”

    [Detroit Police Chief] Evans reiterated his sense that people feel Detroit is supposed to have crime. He said he goes out two nights a week and works the streets, stopping motorists who rarely have driver’s license, registration, insurance.

    “What I say is: ‘Do you drive north of 8 Mile like this?’ And they say, ‘Hell no! They’ll lock you up.’ Your conduct can be whatever you want it to be in the city of Detroit. It’s a safe haven for BS. When people feel that way about minor things, that’s the way they’ll feel about bigger things.”
    …
    Evans cites a consent decree that has governed Detroit for six years. The decree, designed to curtail police misconduct, has led to reluctance to arrest.
    …
    “Over 1,100 people being shot is getting kind of Third World to me.”

    Of course, comparing Detroit to the third world isn’t really doing justice to the third world. Third-world cities tend to have far lessviolence.

    The column by Rochelle Riley in the Detroit Free Press.

  • Blue-Light Cameras

    I’m generally not a fan of flashing blue light police cameras. I think they’re a waste of money.

    So in the interest of fairness I should point out that one in Baltimore recently got a shooter convicted.

    Peter Hermann reports.

    Not surprisingly, the victim wouldn’t cooperate.

    In an unrelated case, Hermann talks about a brutal racist attack on a elderly black man. Things like that don’t help Baltimore’s image any more than shootings in the Inner Harbor.