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It's weird but new Orleans is all of those things, super friendly and open and potentially very violent...it's contradictory but that's New Orleans. If they ever got their crime under control, what a great city it would be (and expensive).
My travels through NO always left me feeling there were a lot of people there with chips on their shoulder.
Just spoke to someone yesterday who said the same, "Too many angry drunks" was the quote.
They'll be a lot angrier should they not prepare for the impending hurricane, God seems to have it in for this state.
Right now, it seems like the #1 thing helping Black people is to leave the ghettos altogether. There have been Black people who have spoken up, to no avail. You have several problems.
1) Individuals who have a mentality of "everything is hopeless".
2) Alot of anger. Probably more mental health problems in impoverished Black neighborhoods than we might know about.
3) Gangs.
With gangs, not much we can do about them except lock them up. Technically, they aren't classified as terrorists groups, but criminal organizations. They bring terror to the neighborhoods, and they also sell drugs. Ironic considering resources spent on the drug war.
With mental health, men are less likely to seek out mental health resources than women. In the Black American population, this is even more the case. I notice that many murders are committed in the heat of arguments. Alot of anger, alot of this "you disrespected me, so you must die" mentality in the ghettos.
And in the ghetto, despair tends to be normal. There are also a large number of broken families in the ghettos.
At this point, the best thing anyone can do is call the police and have alot of people locked up. Louisiana has one of the highest imprisonment rates in the country. It doesn't stop more violence later on though. The death penalty doesn't even seem to deter violent individuals. Some individuals have a mentality of "I don't expect to live past 25 or 30, so who cares?". Some people don't care if they live or die.
Since I was never raised in the ghetto, the best thing I can do as a Black man is to stay out of the ghetto. For many, leaving the ghetto is the best way out.
I don’t mean to jump in to an old conversation, but I think this is a compelling question and at least one of the solutions is pretty simple on the surface. Examining that seemingly simple solution is a good way to see what we really think about crime as a society, and what we’re willing to do to combat it.
So, the one simple way to drastically decrease violent crime, particularly homicide requires that police solve more murders in communities with gang violence problems. However, that involves changing the way police operate in communities. There’s an excellent non-fiction book by a reporter for the LA Times named Jill Levoy who spent years working the crime beat, mostly south of the 10 - LA’s hot spot for gangs and violence, and where the population was predominantly black up until the 90’s. What she found in these communities is that most murders go unsolved, leading to cycles of revenge killings that span generations and cut down thousands of mostly young men every decade. The thing is, if police actually solve a gang murder and lock up the perps, the revenge cycle is ended because justice is achieved and the urge to get revenge through violence is gone. Read her book. It’s called ‘Ghettoside,’ and it’s an eye-opening study of how policing can change the cycle of violence in communities where gang murders are a problem.
Of course, the biggest problem with solving gang-related murders is that people in the neighborhoods won’t talk to the police. Because they don’t trust the police. Because often the police are not trustworthy and there are serious historical grievances due to past and present abuses of power. Look at Compton for an example. Within the LA Sheriff’s station in Compton, there is police gang called the Executioners. Their crimes and abuses of power have been well-documented, but they still exist and have not been sanctioned that I know of. They function, in every way, like a street gang. They also have the power of the DA’s office, prosecutors, and the entire justice system behind them. They are never held accountable and officers who have gone public were treated no different than a gang would treat a “snitch.” So, how do you rebuild trust between the police and communities they serve so that people will fell like they can turn to police to make a situation better rather than worse when serious crimes are committed?
That’s complicated and beyond the scope of this post. It involves better training, better hiring, hiring officers who live in the community, requiring a degree in criminal justice like every other developed country, more resources, less reliance on force, accountability for officers who act unethically, building relationships within the community, mentoring, ending the War on Drugs, and focusing on de-escalation as opposed to the escalation police usually bring to every situation they encounter. Those are just some of the steps that need to be taken by police departments to rebuild and restore trust within the communities they serve. Once they do that, they can be much more effective at solving violent crimes and bringing justice so that revenge isn’t sought.
After that, the job gets even harder.
My point is, I guess, that even something as simple as solving more murders is not that simple. In high-poverty, high-crime neighborhoods (because there is no such thing as wealthy high-crime neighborhoods,) the problems are numerous, multifaceted, entrenched, and in need of long-term solutions. The problem is that politicians and elected officials - the people we actually elect to address these issues - have no use for complex, expensive, long-term solutions. They want results. Fast. Cheap. That usually means flood the streets with cops and make a lot of arrests. Prosecute the hell out of everyone. Bravo. You’ve just incarcerated many of the fathers, uncles, brothers, and other male role models who could instill a more mature notion of masculinity than the “fear me or pay the price” ethos of the streets.
The solutions are all there. We could implement them any time. The fact is, we don’t want to. As a society, we don’t want to fix the problem. We are content to stay in our safe neighborhoods, rant about how bad crime is in other people’s neighborhoods or cities, and then elect “tough on crime” sheriffs, prosecutor’s, DAs, police chiefs, mayors, representatives, senators, etc.
I don’t mean to jump in to an old conversation, but I think this is a compelling question and at least one of the solutions is pretty simple on the surface. Examining that seemingly simple solution is a good way to see what we really think about crime as a society, and what we’re willing to do to combat it.
So, the one simple way to drastically decrease violent crime, particularly homicide requires that police solve more murders in communities with gang violence problems. However, that involves changing the way police operate in communities. There’s an excellent non-fiction book by a reporter for the LA Times named Jill Levoy who spent years working the crime beat, mostly south of the 10 - LA’s hot spot for gangs and violence, and where the population was predominantly black up until the 90’s. What she found in these communities is that most murders go unsolved, leading to cycles of revenge killings that span generations and cut down thousands of mostly young men every decade. The thing is, if police actually solve a gang murder and lock up the perps, the revenge cycle is ended because justice is achieved and the urge to get revenge through violence is gone. Read her book. It’s called ‘Ghettoside,’ and it’s an eye-opening study of how policing can change the cycle of violence in communities where gang murders are a problem.
Of course, the biggest problem with solving gang-related murders is that people in the neighborhoods won’t talk to the police. Because they don’t trust the police. Because often the police are not trustworthy and there are serious historical grievances due to past and present abuses of power. Look at Compton for an example. Within the LA Sheriff’s station in Compton, there is police gang called the Executioners. Their crimes and abuses of power have been well-documented, but they still exist and have not been sanctioned that I know of. They function, in every way, like a street gang. They also have the power of the DA’s office, prosecutors, and the entire justice system behind them. They are never held accountable and officers who have gone public were treated no different than a gang would treat a “snitch.” So, how do you rebuild trust between the police and communities they serve so that people will fell like they can turn to police to make a situation better rather than worse when serious crimes are committed?
That’s complicated and beyond the scope of this post. It involves better training, better hiring, hiring officers who live in the community, requiring a degree in criminal justice like every other developed country, more resources, less reliance on force, accountability for officers who act unethically, building relationships within the community, mentoring, ending the War on Drugs, and focusing on de-escalation as opposed to the escalation police usually bring to every situation they encounter. Those are just some of the steps that need to be taken by police departments to rebuild and restore trust within the communities they serve. Once they do that, they can be much more effective at solving violent crimes and bringing justice so that revenge isn’t sought.
After that, the job gets even harder.
My point is, I guess, that even something as simple as solving more murders is not that simple. In high-poverty, high-crime neighborhoods (because there is no such thing as wealthy high-crime neighborhoods,) the problems are numerous, multifaceted, entrenched, and in need of long-term solutions. The problem is that politicians and elected officials - the people we actually elect to address these issues - have no use for complex, expensive, long-term solutions. They want results. Fast. Cheap. That usually means flood the streets with cops and make a lot of arrests. Prosecute the hell out of everyone. Bravo. You’ve just incarcerated many of the fathers, uncles, brothers, and other male role models who could instill a more mature notion of masculinity than the “fear me or pay the price” ethos of the streets.
The solutions are all there. We could implement them any time. The fact is, we don’t want to. As a society, we don’t want to fix the problem. We are content to stay in our safe neighborhoods, rant about how bad crime is in other people’s neighborhoods or cities, and then elect “tough on crime” sheriffs, prosecutor’s, DAs, police chiefs, mayors, representatives, senators, etc.
So there it is.
Just to say, there are multiple high crime rich neighborhoods. White collar crime is rampant but goes unpunished many times.
Just to say, there are multiple high crime rich neighborhoods. White collar crime is rampant but goes unpunished many times.
Yes, of course. All kinds of terrible crimes happen in wealthy neighborhoods, including violent ones. However, those crimes usually take place behind walls, wealth, and privilege, so we don’t know of the scale; are not faced with the ugliness behind the lace curtains. In “poor” neighborhoods, people on the outside have a habit of making it their business to keep track of the violent crime because it’s often public, sensationalized by the media, and usually committed by people the non-poor find distasteful and dangerous; people the wealthy and working class can both resent and point to, as they so often do. For example: “we all know who really commits the crime in X city. We just can’t be honest about it.” As if they are honest in discussing or even admitting the crimes of their own people, in their own neighborhoods.
So yes, I absolutely agree and probably should have clarified what I meant when I said that.
And you think New Orleans today is dangerous? It's nothing compared to past years, for example like around the mid-90's.
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