We managed a property in a low income, high immigrant neighborhood. It was riddled with gangs, drugs, alcohol etc. The place had empty bottles, human waste, garbage and trash around both the general areas and private areas. We employed and installed a manager of the same ethnicity and background as most of the area population. The manager wanted to have an environment conducive to raising his own family. He clean the place himself, sometimes more than twice a day. He removed garbage, tossed bottles and dealt with all other forms of ‘yuck’. He had the junker/unregistered cars towed. And, he carefully screened new tenants. He began seeing the street in front of this property - although it was technically the city’s job. He covered graffiti as soon as it appeared. He gained the attention and respect of the local law enforcement, gang abatement and DA. He had their numbers on speed dial and they came when he called.
"Magically’ within about a year…the rest of the block started to clean up. It took someone starting the process and keeping at it to make a difference.
Turns out the hispanics in this area really didn’t want to live with the existing filth and really pulled together to make the neighborhood a place for themselves and their kids.
It’s doable. … but the ‘victim’ has to want to do it.
“the Hispanics in this area didn’t want to live with the existing filth and really pulled together.” "the “victim " has to want to do it.” There are too many generalizations going on in this thread regarding every group out there. No group in general wants to live in filth.
There are folks in rough neighborhoods who have been doing yeoman’s work for quite a while, but often with little help from people and organizations that could be difference-makers. Sadly, elected officials and even some social service organizations come around only when there’s a sensational crisis, when they need the help of such salt of the Earth residents to calm things down…
It is not as much blaming the victim as it is being willfully ignorant about the problem. What charming anecdotes offering proof positive that poor black Americans are determined to live in filth, surrounded by crime, watching their children die on the streets. Why even the “immigrants” know how to pick up garbage. I can’t believe no one recognized this before. Poor blacks are not only getting what they deserve, they’re getting what they want.
Rephrasing dietz’s comment probably isn’t as productive as it is satisfying.
Agreed but I think you tend to get used to your surroundings. Grow up in dirt, junk, & graffiti, and you assume it’s normal. Loathe 'broken windows if you wish, complain that it gives too much latitude to cops for hassling anyone they want, but a clean environment, free of casual criminality, is something that most people want. Pretty sure data supports it.
Absent a link to the article this isn’t anything but anecdote, but I remember the Houston Chronicle running stories, after Katrina and Houston’s acceptance of New Orleans refugees, that highlighted how different Houston was to the neighborhoods where they grew up. Lot’s of ‘how clean everything was’, especially the grocery stores.
You get used to what you live in, and some of them had never been outside NO.
Just want to point out that “broken windows” policing doesn’t have to be accompanied with gratuitious brutality and murder (or manslaughter if you prefer). Of course people in poor, crime-ridden neighborhoods want a police presence so they can walk to the corner store and let their kids play in the park.
Freddie Gray’s neighborhood didn’t riot because he was arrested under broken windows policy…it was just another “humble” petty arrest that happened all the time. All the time. There were riots because a man who was walking and talking when the police took him away ended up with his spine severed and his voice box crushed. I think that people in that neighborhood were going along with having their Fourth Amendment rights routinely brushed aside for the sake of less crime on the street, but come on, there’s a limit …the death of Gray was the last straw. It’s really not too much for that community to ask that the police at least follow their own damn regulations regarding extra-judicial punishment and the use of seatbelts in the paddywagon.
As for anecdotes about trash, there’s no context and no factual detail so you can basically just say anything.
Maybe Houston neighborhoods were cleaner because the city bothers to send its trucks around to all neighborhoods for pick up. Some cities don’t do that.
Didn’t mention riots at all, the City of Houston doesn’t do trash pick-up in grocery stores, and I’m not seeing anything other than opinion to support the meme that police are targeting black petty criminals for murder.
Are there the occasional instances that we would both agree were murder by cop? Sure. Are they racially disproportionate?
Would the thread exist, not to mention your last post, if they weren’t?
Given who’s a citizen vs. who’s actually getting counted, whites comprise - at best - a little over 70% of the US population.
The WaPo had a groundbreaking article this weekend (on how police shootings were undercounted) that purports to be an attempt to set the record straight - methodology, details, etc, etc, to follow at a later date. They did feel the need to break the news that whites only comprise 53% of fatal police shootings, but the rest of their findings are mired in ambiguous language:
That bit about the adjustment is interesting (opaque, but interesting) but… are they talking about unarmed blacks? Mixing that observation with the first statement of fact? Will they eventually consider the ill consequences of interacting with the police on other than an infrequent basis, and how statistics on criminality by race might influence their findings?
I imagine they’ve a point, they just haven’t worked up the numbers to support it.
You forgot to quote where the article mentioned, that those numbers are only from five months, starting this year. And they are talking about a total of 102 unarmed people. And that the majority of people who were killed (armed and unarmed) were white. Some pretty convenient facts to leave out, don’t you think?
Not much of a statistical example to make a sweeping generalization. So this study of the first five months of 2015 counts as an “extensive study”? Any math majors here? Hey, I was just a mere engineering major, but even I know you can’t make a solid conclusion from that. Shouldn’t they have a little more data than that, to be believable?
The startling number to me is that 102 unarmed people were killed already this year. Regardless of what color they happened to be, this year.
Take a look at this website. Yep, there’s some black men and women on there. And plenty of white and Hispanic ones too.
43 blacks were killed in May in Baltimore by other blacks, the highest rate in 40 years. My prediction - this will go up. Police was let know not to show up in some neighborhoods. Where are protests against these killings? Where is attorney general and co.? Where all speeches by certain very loud indivuduals? These lives means nothing…
Two things can be true at once. I would like aggressive, effective policing, but at the same time I would like to know why Mr. Gray died. There can be no innocent explanation for that. Either he committed suicide in a truly novel way (which I don’t believe for a second), he was abused by the police, or it was an unintended circumstance due to the fact that there, apparently, are very few seatbelts in prisoner vans in Baltimore despite the regulation. Personally, I’m thinking negligence or something worse from taking a cuffed and unsecured prisoner on a rough ride. But I don’t know and no one else does either. I think we should all want to know the answer to that, no matter what we think of policing in general. I am also personally concerned by the statements of the prosecutor and wonder at her competence.
No, not to me. I can’t quote the whole damned article but thank you for obviously looking at it.
To me, 102 people killed is a lot and the fact that twice as many white people were holding weapons is pretty significant. We all know that some cops, when “in fear for their life”, act irrationally. These numbers only back up how wrong they often are.
“No group in general wants to live in filth.
Agreed but I think you tend to get used to your surroundings. Grow up in dirt, junk, & graffiti, and you assume it’s normal. Loathe 'broken windows if you wish, complain that it gives too much latitude to cops for hassling anyone they want, but a clean environment, free of casual criminality, is something that most people want. Pretty sure data supports it.”
Go to india sometime, and marvel about how shopkeepers throw trash in front of their stores and it never occurs to them that hey - I could keep the front of my store free of trash and that would be more enticing for me and my customers. I was doing business and at one point took a break, was eating a banana I’d brought from my hotel, and asked where I should put the peel and was directed to just throw it out the window on the trash heap. Yeah. No.
@Pizzagirl I was recently in Panama. Our guide explained that throwing trash out the car window, dropping it whenever and where ever, leaving your leftovers on the table at food courts, and not recycling in any way shape or form was the cultural norm. He was trying to teach his own kids different norms. It’s a uphill battle, one where both his in-laws and the school principal (kids are K-12) raked him over the coals for his high and mighty attitudes.
Yup, some people DO like to live in filth. And, that’s okay…just don’t complain that OTHERS aren’t doing their moral, legal and financial fair share to clean up YOUR mess.
“People in the US want the cleanliness of Singapore but don’t want the same restriction, responsibilities or punishments to ensure it happens.”
That’s true. But just think, if everyone took it upon themselves to clean up their tiny corner of the earth, in the space that they occupy----what a beautiful place this would be for everyone. If you didn’t need laws or punishments to make you do so, if you didn’t need government to do it for you.
If we continue to use poverty and social class as an excuse for dropping crap where you live, walk, play and worship then …well…then nothing…no solution possible.
“There are some areas of Baltimore known for the women scrubbing their front steps every day. Clean enough to eat off.”
Good for those ladies. I hope that spreads. If one can just take care of their own little bit of space, how much better would the world be? Now I hope they can get their families to help, and not just have the women scrubbing away!