A Businesskid On A Cloud

But it really is though.

At least at the heart of the issue. That’s to say, it’s the same lowered valuation of a Black Male’s life that leads to people having higher tolerance thresholds for murder.

I ask the same question, would this man have fired into the vehicle so easily if the kids inside looked like him? Would he have felt as threatened if all the variables were the same, but they were a bunch of rowdy white kids instead?

At what point are we going to acknowledge that an inherently biased fear of Black males still exists in this country, and has led to the unnecessary murders of countless Black men and teens in our history?

A man, misidentified through an all too flawed lineup strategy, gets his reputation ruined by media exposure for a crime it turns out he did not commit. Now he can’t find a job or get personal resources because Google searches of his name turn up only his arrest, not his exoneration. As a person of color, the intersection of stereotypes and poor law enforcement structural integrity can destroy your life in a random moment’s notice.

You know, I remember reading a Judge once, in the context of a case he was presiding over where a young man was said to have willingly shown an in uniform police officer his bag of weed: “I have a hard time believing that a person willingly decided to show someone with a badge a concealed illegal substance in their possession.” (paraphrased)

And I agreed, because under most cases a mentally healthy person will not self-incriminate unless deceived or promised better options in the future.

In that same avenue of thought, I have a hard time believing someone was erratically driving around and cutting off NYPD ESU (New York’s SWAT) Trucks, with an off-duty police officer in the back seat of his car. Something is fishy about the police report on this.

So what happens when some racial integration techniques are no longer needed? Boston’s Public School population today is less than 14% White, making the need for busing (in Boston’s case, a system of busing students to schools randomly: independently of racial background) unnecessary and costly. But who has the balls in a city who’s history is ripe with racial tension to make that move?

We’ve been trained to collapse into ourselves when issues like this plague the community. Bad parenting, movies, video games, etc are being used as a scapegoat for a larger, complex macro-problem. Everyone is willing to accept the police’s wall-in approach to the violence without asking how this possibly helps a community where gun violence is clearly marked by many disputes between people that already know each other and probably live next to each other. Those walls are not to protect the residents inside. Regardless, why don’t these neighborhoods get the same treatment as others with low-crime numbers? Police Officers should be on every block, not along the artificial ghetto walls. Police Officers should be using their presence to deter people from committing violent crimes, not hanging random young people up on the walls in search of petty drugs. All the while these time-tested tactics have existed, we continue to accept pointless strategies that hardly make a permanent dent in controlling violent crime and blame ourselves and our “influences” for factors brought on by poverty and attempts to mitigate the loss of basic community resources such as effective policing.

Dunno if I posted this already….

Power to the people! Bringing awareness to a subject can be enough to significantly turn up the heat for change.

Certainly the job isn’t done yet, but keeping this persistently at the front of NYC politics (and sometimes Federal politics) will certainly facilitate and maintain the environment necessary to dialogue and push for successful and cooperative change for the better.

Shine a light into the darkness.

From the age of six.

This victim’s ex-boxing coach (also ex-narcotics detective) is trying to use this teen’s death as an argument for why stop and frisk should continue. In his eyes, his client/student Tray Franklin would not have been a victim had these criminals been stopped and frisked in the first place. Honestly though, is Stop and Frisk the only solution people think exists to counter violence? Have some people forgotten that the backbone of crime prevention, since before the police science field even existed, has always been the presence of an Officer? Instead of stop and frisking willy nilly, how about we make a real effort to maintain officers on the ground and walking in these neighborhoods? Officers that build relationships with stakeholders and common occupants to focus efforts and deter crime? You know what would have saved Tray Franklin that night? If an officer, or two, was actually on the block. He wouldn’t have had to stop, frisk, or harass anyone. He would have just had to be there, with two eyes, two ears, and the ever present power of the City of New York behind him. That is the ultimate deterrent to shooting violence.

While I don’t question that the U.S. has a tendency to hand out exaggerated prison sentences to portray a “tough on crime” image, Mr. Haberman in this article has picked and argued the worst example of this. Ex-NYPD Officer Pena may not have murdered anyone, but the fact that he raped someone while invested with the trust of the City of New York to protect and serve, warrants a heavier than normal sentence. Mr. Pena not only was fully aware of what law he was breaking, and what harm he was causing, but he’s actually the person we look to to enforce those same laws! And to protect people from the same harm he’s causing! Notably, Mr. Haberman in this article makes no mention of the infamously egregious sentences given for crack dealing from the 90s till now. I also doubt he’s written any article arguing why those should be reduced in the face of social systems encouraging and profiting off systemic poverty. But why do that when you can write about how a rape-cop might be getting too heavy a punishment?