d all who dwell, or have dwelt in city slums and crowded ghettos.
Question: When was the last time the wealthy folks demonstrated and
marched on the police station or the mayor's office or the state
capitol?
Answer: They don't need to. They are the ones who made the laws in
order to protect their wealth, and their right to engage in the sort
of business that gathers them more wealth. And most importantly, the
right to oppress those who dare to try entering into fair competition
with them.
Remember 1776? Of course you don't. But read your history books and
see just when Good King George said, "I pronounce your Colonies to be
known as the United States of America. Good luck!"
And if we'd lost that little protest, do you think the British
government would have allowed a statue of George Washington to be
erected in London Square?
And since when are those folks who are brave enough to take to the
streets to protest some of the oppressive laws placed on their backs,
to be declared Anarchists by a president who has lied over and over,
and violated the very laws he was elected to defend?
Why is calling out Donald Trump an act of Treason?
How dare he call honest oppressed citizens, Traitors and Anarchists,
when he sends out unmarked vans filled with men dressed in
unidentified clothes and grab people off the streets and haul them off
without ever identifying themselves or the charges...just as is
happening in other Fascist Dictatorships. We are witnessing the end
of the Great American Experiment in democracy. No one is going to
reach down from our gated mansions and save us. No God is going to
strike fear into our oppressor's hearts. No corporate controlled
Media is going to allow us a fair hearing. We only have protests as
an avenue to express ourselves.
The Empire Strikes Back! As it must, if it is to maintain control.
Those who benefit from the current Ruling Classes control will spring
to its defense, while those who suffer will take to the streets. It
is an eternal pattern. A never ending struggle.
Right or Wrong depends upon which side you are on, and who is
currently winning. But it is not Good or Evil like those in control
would have us believe.
Nor is it Patriot versus Anti American. We are all Patriots, with the
only exceptions being those who are trouble makers.
Pointing fingers and laying the blame at the feet of other nations is
nothing more than cowardly avoidance, and will never solve our
problems.
But for certain, the problem will solve itself...one way or another.
Carl Jarvis
On 7/21/20, Frank Ventura via acb-chat <acb-chat@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Carl, like I said it is obvious he has never lived for any length of time in
a poor urban area. I lived 26 years in the South Bronx. The drop in arrests
has nothing to do with George Floyd or protests. It is the normal cycle of
cops having a work slowdown during the mid-cycle of their contracts and then
ramping up the arrests just prior to contract negotiations to better their
positions. We could always tell when police contracts were going to be
negotiated as the 43rd precinct would round up all of us kids to make the
arrest numbers look "pretty". What a bunch of hard working souls rounding up
a bunch of 10 year old kids. During the mid-points in the contract cycles
when the arrests go down it is common to see cops sleeping or drinking in
their cruisers. Anyone remember Anthony Baez? He was playing football with
his brother near his housing projects. Officer Francis LIVOTI was sleeping
in his cruiser and was awoken by the sound of the football game. The penalty
that Anthony received
as punishment for waking up LIVOTI was death. He was strangled to death by
LIVOTI's choke hold. That was 1994. See how much things change the more they
stay the same. The author also mentioned the gangs. Sorry Mr. Suburbia,
gangs are not autonomous. The way it works is two-fold. There is a symbiotic
relationship between the gangs and the cops. The gangs license their "turf"
from the cops. The gang that pays the most gets to operate in certain areas.
That is one part of the relationship, the other is that often the gangs are
sub-contractors for the cops. To keep profits high and poor people down the
cops collect payoffs from the citizens. In my time we used to call these
"dropsies". The more prominent you are in a poor neighborhood the more you
pay. For example a single old lady living in a housing project will pay x. A
family with two adults and 3 kids will pay 3x and a small minority business
owner with a successful bodega will pay 10x. You get the idea. It is just
another form of
the old protection racket. The gangs are just the collection agencies for
the cops. If you don't pay up or can't pay up you can expect a little bang,
bang in the 'hood. If folks don't show respect to the gangs the cops step in
and do a show of force. They walk through the projects and tenements and
take care of anyone trying to organize against the gangs. Once in a rare
while someone is brave enough to stand up to this form of urban extortion
and they usually pay with their lives. Anyone remember Elanor Bumpers? She
was a victim of what happens when someone stands up to the extortion. She
refused to pay the gangs and then the housing cops tried to illegally evict
her (no court order, no cause). When she wasn't intimidated with that the
ESU (NYC's version of SWAT) burst in with a squad of almost a dozen armored
cops and blew her head off with a shotgun. Finally he mentions guns? Do you
really think you can walk up to a pretzel vendor outside of Yankee Stadium
and buy a gross of AK-
47s? I think not. So where do they come from? Well lets just say keep your
eye on I-95 and what comes up from the red states in the South (hint,
Florida). It sure isn't 15 year old black kids that are running that billion
dollar business now is it? The author seems to fear young black males but
does he fear the wealthy whites and the NRA that are enabling the killing of
these kids as well?
Frank
-----Original Message-----
From: acb-chat <acb-chat-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis via
acb-chat
Sent: Monday, July 20, 2020 3:48 PM
To: General discussion list for ACB members and friends where a wide range
of topics from blindness to politics, issues of the day or whatever comes to
mind are welcome. This is a free form discussion list.
<acb-chat@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Carl Jarvis <carjar82@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [acb-chat] Guess What? We Need More Police in Urban
Neighborhoods, Arresting More People
Really? Crowded, impoverished neighborhoods feel safer when more police are
present?
Where is Rich Lowry getting his information and statistics?
More police has been tried over and over again, leading to bigger and more
crowded prisons. We already lock up more people than any other nation on
Earth. Do we really need to haul in even more, in order to "be safe"?
There's something wrong with this picture. Maybe, and this is just a silly
thought, maybe if the folks in the ghettos and slums had decent jobs and
affordable housing, along with fewer rats and cockroaches, maybe shootings
would go down. More income would bring in more property taxes which would
translate to better schools and smaller classes. It still would not equal
the quality education, housing, medical care, and hired help experienced by
the wealthy folks on the gated hills.
How long will we keep trying to force non violence on the Lower/Working
Class before we finally wake up to the fact that it's not working? But no,
instead of decent education and decent jobs, and decent housing, we make
guns easily available to children, youngsters who should be living in a
neighborhood of hard working parents, where they might be doing chores or
working part time, or doing homework instead of doing drugs. But instead we
allow ourselves to be told that it's far too costly to rescue blighted
neighborhoods. Besides, they are lazy. They could pull themselves up by
their own boot straps, if they just woke up and did it. But we're being fed
a bucket of horse pucky. How much does it cost taxpayers to house a
prisoner for a year? How much does it cost taxpayers to maintain courts and
judges and all the legal services that are involved in processing law
violators? We, us taxpayers are paying the cost, but the prison
corporations are using the labor, the prisoners lab
or, to support the private corporate boards.
If I needed new furniture for our agency classerooms or for my office, I was
required by state law to first check the state prison catalogs to see if
such items were available. If so, regardless as to whether they were what I
wanted, I had to buy from the Prison factories first.
Back then the prison shops turned out some real funky furniture, but we
saved the taxpayers a few dollars by buying from the Prisons. Of course
back then I never thought about the taxpayers already paying for the support
of those prisoners, while the profits from their products went to...God only
knew where.
Carl Jarvis
On 7/20/20, Chris Feist via acb-chat <acb-chat@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Shootings Spike in Poorest Neighborhoods When Cops Pull Back_______________________________________________
National Review
Guess What? We Need More Police in Urban Neighborhoods, Arresting More
People
By Rich Lowry
July 19, 2020 10:55 PM
New York City needs more arrests. More arrests in the subways. More
arrests in housing projects. More drug arrests. More arrests of gang
members.
And it isn't alone.
If there's one lesson from the unrest and anti-police agitation in the
wake of the killing of George Floyd, it's that poor minorities living
in distressed neighborhoods pay the highest price - in fear and in
blood - when the cops retreat and the worst elements feel emboldened.
The spikes in shootings in cities around the country haven't taken
place in high-end neighborhoods, not in Billionaire's Row in
Manhattan, not in Buckhead in Atlanta, not in Forest Glen in Chicago.
No, they blight the most marginal neighborhoods and make everyday life
a hazard for people who have no option but to live in a tough place.
The last couple of months should have made it obvious that what these
people have to fear most is not the cops or white supremacy but the
violent, vengeful, and heedless young men in their midst.
Stopping or discouraging the cops from disproportionately policing
these neighborhoods isn't a blow for justice. It's an obstacle for
upstanding, low-income citizens who are trying to lead decent lives
and shouldn't have to routinely hear gunshots or worry every day about
their kids getting shot.
Consider New York City. The New York Times ran an extensive piece the
other day on the spike in shootings in the city. Clearly, a driver of
the violence is a marked reduction in arrests:
block quote
Arrests have declined drastically this summer, falling 62 percent
across the board for the last four weeks compared with the same period
last year, police data show. Narcotics arrests fell 85 percent.
Detectives in the gang unit made 90 percent fewer arrests. There were
similarly steep drops in the number of arrests by officers that patrol
the subways and housing projects.
Gun arrests have dropped 67 percent during the same four weeks
compared with last year, even as shootings have continued to spiral
upward.
block quote end
So what we've seen is a crude version of Black Lives Matter policing -
a "defund the police" approach, in which many fewer African-American
males are arrested. Has this made heavily African-American communities
better or safer? Emphatically not.
The story is the same in cities around the country. The equation is
simple:
A less robust police presence equals more shootings.
According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, "Ninety-three people
were shot in Atlanta during the four-week period of May 31 to June 27,
up drastically from 46 in the same period last year, the latest
complete data available. And fourteen people died of homicide in that
span, compared to six during the same time frame in 2019."
Why? "'There seems to be withdrawal by police,' said Russell Covey,
Georgia State University criminal law professor. 'The lack of a police
presence may create something of a vacuum of authority.'" The
president of the local chapter of the International Brotherhood of
Police Officers agreed that there's been a pullback. "Officers are afraid
to do their job," he said.
The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported late last month, "So far this
year, ShotSpotter activations and 911 calls about gunshots in
Minneapolis have more than doubled from a year ago, according to a
Star Tribune analysis of police data. Out of 3,218 such shots-fired
calls this year, nearly half have been filed since George Floyd was
killed on May 25."
Amazingly enough according to the paper, "Some council members and
activists see the focus on crime stats as a way to stoke public fears
and distract from the issue of police reform." In other words, don't
let the number of people getting shot distract you from the need to
kneecap the peace officers necessary to keep people from getting shot.
We don't need to settle here the dispute over why there is now a less
robust police presence in urban neighborhoods. Is it a function of the
cops being overwhelmed by work related to the protests on top of their
ordinary duties?
Are cops overly cautious because of the anti-cop hostility of elected
officials? Are they engaging in a deliberate work-slowdown? All of the
above?
What matters at the most basic level is that if there are fewer cops
arresting fewer dangerous people, shootings go up.
This dynamic should put paid to the lazy analysis that says that
disproportionate police interactions with minorities must be a result
of racist policing. It's the opposite: Only people who have no regard
for the welfare of poor communities would want fewer, less active cops
patrolling them.
An expression of this simplistic way of thinking, by the way, was New
York City's decision to disband a plainclothes anti-crime unit that
was involved in controversial shootings. Maybe this was because the
unit was out of control. But maybe it was because it was engaged in
the hard work of keeping communities from being overrun by gangs and
illegal guns.
Indeed, the unit was reportedly responsible for 50 percent of gun
arrests in 2019, and some community leaders are now calling for its
reinstatement.
(In response to the spate of violence, New York City has launched a
new initiative that, in part, puts more cops on the streets of
violence-plagued areas of Brooklyn.)
Of course, it's true that bad cops should be held to account, and the
police should have the best relationship possible with the communities
they serve.
This can and should happen without exposing vulnerable people to the
depredations of dangerous malefactors the way we've seen in recent weeks.
People who live in the affected communities know this and, to their
credit, often say it. But their voices don't get the megaphone of
anti-police agitators. The cultural gatekeepers in our country could
elevate them and highlight the rise in shootings as a direct threat to
black lives.
The media could drive home their concerns, not simply in straight news
accounts, but with the sympathetic wall-to-wall coverage of the
protestors.
Celebrities could take up their cause. Corporations could shower
little-known activists desperately trying to improve the lot of their
neighborhoods with resources.
But, no, this isn't the narrative these gatekeepers are interested in
- for them, black lives can only be put at risk by the cops, never
made more secure and safe.
Rich Lowry is the editor of National Review.
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