This image makes it seem like the Baltimore police had the situation under control. However, given 4/27's news reporting on both Fox and MSNBC, this would be the furthest thing from the truth.
Normally, I lean left of center (based on today's politics) when interpreting affairs of the day.When it comes to riots, I have no problems with police being able to "shoot to kill". "Why?" you may ask... To me, the answer is simple - a riot is like a quick moving cancer. If it is not put down quickly, a community gets labeled as a bad place to make an investment. And, as a result, there is a loss of jobs which can force the community into an economic death.
Sadly, the fact that riots are taking place are indicative of a bigger social problem. We have an excess supply of people who are willing to work, but can not find gainful work. We have draconian laws (especially in regard to recreational substances) whose net effect is to disenfranchise large segments of the population, to warehouse them where they can't compete for jobs against a blissfully unaware but shrinking middle class, and to function as a tool to keep the lower economic classes in check.
If we look at the people in places like inner-city Baltimore, we see poor people who have poor educations, who will not be able to qualify for the jobs of tomorrow. They are frustrated, and do not have the ability to articulate their complaints against the larger society. Strangely enough, Fox had a reporter on the ground, interviewing one of the locals in front of the police, while MSNBC only had talking heads in the studio. But the message was clear, no matter which side of the political aisle you were on - the people in inner-city Baltimore are tired of living in conditions of little hope.
Watching the Fox interview of the unnamed Baltimore local, I noticed that the local mentioned that he just got out of prison on a trumped up drug charge, where the policeman planted the evidence that was used to convict him. In the past, I'd be inclined to think that this would be someone lying to save face. However, with these incidents (and others) on file, I'm not so certain we can put the word of the police above the average citizen any more:
Can we assume that the police are telling the truth? Not anymore. Yet, I believe that most of the police are getting a bad reputation from these "bad eggs", and from policies meant to detect crimes, even when no crimes have been committed.
Let's assume that this unnamed Baltimore local's statement is true. Then this is the tip of a very nasty iceberg. The people we've entrusted the duty to protect us have become part of the problem. In an article on where Baltimore's police went wrong, the author notes that dealing drugs is the only "industry" left in the inner city - and that our current drug laws are creating a police force that no longer polices neighborhoods to keep them safe, but instead, becomes a tool used to keep the poor and disenfranchised in line, and afraid to challenge the corrupt status quo.
Most policemen starting out are good people who are put under a lot of stress every day. However, our elected leaders set policies that often demand that the police meet quotas to show that crime is being reduced - and our police oblige them, out of fear that they will become victims of politics. Instead of being the trusted members of the community that one could count on to find out who is committing crimes, they become the distrusted outsiders responsible for keeping a sector of society out of public sight.
The big question is - how long will it be before the lower classes in American society rebel, as the French did in their 1784 revolution? I have no idea, but I hope that we can humanely fix the problem with the disenfranchised poor before they find a way to create a successful revolution of their own....
Alcatraz, The Rock.... This is where we once placed our most hardened criminals. But what happens today? We have "supermax" facilities which have never been escaped from, and yet congress prefers to keep people captured in Afghanistan at GITMO (Guantanamo Bay) instead of a more humane site on the mainland. This political hot potato will be around until 2017, at best, and it is something I may address at a future date.
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Today's entry starts with a crime that happened almost 2 decades ago. And I'm not sure if justice could have been served, given America's feelings about mental illness, crime, and punishment.
In the mid 1990's two of my neighbors were having an ongoing feud. One of these neighbors was a retired barber, and the other was a kindergarten teacher. In America, we attach a stigma to people who suffer from mild to severe mental illness. They are told to "man up" and deal with the illness, preferably without appropriate medicines. The barber had no reality check in his life, no one to talk to, and likely had a mild depression that quickly progressed to a severe depression early in his retirement. The teacher, on the other hand, was well connected, saw reality for what it was, and was afraid of the neighbor below her.
At the time, I don't even think that their feud was on my radar. My wife was still alive, and I was seeing her gradual decline cause by the cancer which would take her life. But I was quickly awakened to the problem one weekend in January, 1996, when I saw police cars in my driveway, and police tape tied to the antenna of my car. As I remember the story (and time has made my memories much more fuzzy than I'd like) Neighbor B shot neighbor D in the chest with one of his shotguns. He went back to his apartment, and saw neighbor A on the way. She asked him "what happened?" and he said "go upstairs." Neighbor did so, and found neighbor D on the floor, saying her last words before she died.... Over the next few hours, the police were there, and traffic in my co-op's parking was paralyzed due to the presence of police cars, county mortician, etc. blocking access to the rest of the parking lot.
Over the years, I often wondered what happened to this fellow. What was his life like afterwards? If this crime had occurred in Europe, he'd have served time, but gotten the mental health treatment he obviously needed - and maybe have gotten released once he was no longer a danger to society. However, this crime occurred in America, a country which believes in harsher punishment than many of our peer nations. After he was convicted, he was incarcerated in a facility roughly 400 miles away from home (making it very hard for any family members, if any, to visit), and spent the rest of his life behind bars.
Was this justice? I think it all depends on your viewpoint. If you were of the victim's family, you might feel that the fellow deserved it. If you were of the criminal's family, you might feel very sad, but believe a softer sentence would be appropriate. And if you were an interested observer like me, you might be unsure - as this was a preventable situation.
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The night I started writing this entry, I had to deal with a problem concerning the same two apartments. And once I connected the dots between the apartments, it triggered the memories that caused me to write this entry. However, this time, neighbor D2 was harassing neighbor B2. Neighbor D2 is not a native born American (nor was the original neighbor B). And both seem to be/have been isolated from the rest of their communities. I'd bet that neighbor D2 also is dealing with a psychological disorder, based on his actions toward his neighbor. I'm hoping that if things start to escalate further, that the co-op board can help prevent such extreme results....
What can we do to protect someone from an unbalanced neighbor? Can we do something without violating someone's civil rights? I have no idea. But I know that justice isn't being served as long as we, as a society, allow situations like these to escalate without proper intervention....
One of the problems we have in our society is that we have incarcerated people needlessly for low level drug crimes, causing us to spend over $90,000,000,000/year in keeping 0.5% of the USA's population locked up, and preventing them from looking for well paid (legal) work due to the fact that these people now have criminal records.
Over the past few months, I have had a correspondence with a special-ed teacher in a New Jersey school district which is having trouble with an autistic child (19 years old) who is biting others, and is a danger to the school - but who is not being removed, due to the school's principal seeing this child as a source of school funding. The situation is very bad, and the staff is helpless in getting the problems fixed.
So, I made the following suggestion:
I wonder if there isn't another way this problem can be attacked. The kid is 19, and he assaults people. What if someone made a formal complaint to the police, for assault. That would blow up things, and the administration might be forced to keep the kid out of school for the safety of others.... Also - what about notifying the parents of the other children that the biter could be putting their kids at risk? There are so many ways to blow up this situation before serious, permanent damage is done by this kid.....
And my friend responded:
I appreciate your ideas but with an administration (superintendent, principal & supervisor) who all came from a place where a whole class of 5 boys could be this bad and most classes had at least one of these (according to the gym teacher who also is from that school) I doubt much can be done. They did temporarily "exclude" (not expel) another kid, younger, who drank from the toilet and put his feces all over the walls in the bathroom. He also threw things at other kids (one of whom could get a detached retina easily as he is going blind anyway and has other medical issues). Our consulting psychiatrist did an eval now the parents must do their own before he is allowed to come back. Our shrink, who is terrific, said the kid needs meds before interacting with others but mom is opposed. At least that kid is out. Now -- this is where I said we have little hope of anything changing for the biter kid.... this poop smearing kid was in my friend (R)'s room. She is an outstanding teacher. She never, ever raises her voice. Every teacher knows she is wonderful and non assertive. When she got poop smear kid who is classified as 'autistic' put into her class and then he acted up she asked the principal why the kid was in her class and not the class (same ages) of all autistic. Well, anorexic principal didn't like being asked that I guess so when R was "observed and evaluated" the principal wrote lies, such as R didn't greet this monster kid when he arrived, didn't talk to him at all, etc. So she went to the union rep and it turns out the principal only admitted she was in the class 15 minutes not the 20 that is required for an observation so the whole thing had to be discarded !!! The union rep is convinced the ridiculous eval was due to R asking a legit question. Most of us who have been at the school 5 years and did NOT come from the principal's old school know that the reason this monster didn't get put in the autistic class was because that class is taught by the Japanese lady (aka 'golden girl') who, of course, taught with the principal in the old school district !!!! That teacher is never short of aides, like the rest of us are at times due to absenteeism. She gets first crack at substitutes, etc.
Many of our student's parents are just glad their kids are someplace and if the admin could figure out who notified these parents our jobs would be gone or we would be treated unfairly (like my pal R). Years ago in our adjacent school for the emotionally disturbed, a teacher did call the police and he was transferred to another school. Apparently the kids can injure us, maim us, grope us, etc and we have no alternative except a CPI (crisis prevention intervention) blocking action which does not work (according to the course we had to take) IF the student is bigger (the 19 year old is taller than me and all the female staff). I think we are stuck with having to put up with it because it is "special ed" -- I am definitely going to look for another job in April when jobs are posted, although I am realistic about finding a district that will hire someone over 50 --- it was hard enough when I was over 40 and looking and now I am "more expensive" since they will believe I won't take a starting salary. (I would take less but not starting).
P.S.: When "mentally challenged" people (usually men) get away with crimes, including murder, do you think anyone is going to do anything about this kid?
And this got me thinking.... What if we repurposed the prisons, so that they can hold "children" like this 19 year old "student" and remove him from society, so that he won't do any harm to innocent people? They can be made very humane, provide lots of employment, and do a real good for people.
If we took ALL the money we'd save on incarceration and spend it on health care for the "mentally challenged", we'd free the low level drug users to earn more money and pay more in taxes. Wouldn't this be a net gain for society? Of course, corporations could have their current (and in my opinion, now foolish) drug tests for new employees, but then with most drugs being legal, I'd expect to see employee retention based on performance and not on what substances they consume outside of the office. (Do we really need to arrest people like Willie Nelson for inhaling the vapors of his "medicine"? I'm pretty sure that his productivity (as well as other artists) is enhanced and not negated by cannabis.) We'd still have our laws against driving, using heavy equipment, or other high risk tasks, while under the influence of any drugs - so that abusers could be treated appropriately under the law.
In previous versions of my thought experiments on this topic, I never figured out a way to provide jobs in the areas that would lose them has my proposals taken effect. However, the answer was staring me in the face - just put a different class of people in "prisons" who really do need to be isolated from society, and keep the same players in the game. Yes, the court system will be affected. Police will not get as much overtime as they've been accustomed to. But in the whole, we'd be all be better off - including these "children" who will never likely be able to function in society as independent adults.....
