3 ms·

Yeah, but this all makes sense as long as it's someone else. "I don't care if there's gross miscarriage of justice for hundreds or thousands of other people as

by jbooth 13y ago

Yeah, but this all makes sense as long as it's someone else. "I don't care if there's gross miscarriage of justice for hundreds or thousands of other people as long as I feel safe" is what you're saying.

rayiner 13y ago
Not just me, but everyone who wants to live in the city and feel safe doing so. I.e. the hundreds of thousands or millions of other people. Life is messy, and human interactions are messy, and all that comes to a head in cities where people live in such close proximity. Creating sufficient order to let the majority feel safe is an important consideration that deserves its due weight. Ideally, that's achieved without trampling on anyone's rights, but a slavish focus on rights to the exclusion of security will just cause people to "opt out." To put it another way, I grew up in a lily-white upper middle class suburb surrounding by morally righteous people who believed it was better to let 10,000 guilty go free than to send one innocent person to jail. That was easy to believe in a town where political assassination was more likely than gang-related crossfire.
- jbooth 13y ago
  I don't think you're the majority in your neighborhood, from what you described. I lived in the hood for a few years once, I knew what I was doing, minded my own business, and I didn't want police to crack other people's heads for me to feel safe. I get that it's different if you have a family, I don't live there anymore. But perpetuating the system through more hopelessness isn't going to work in the long term.
  - rayiner 13y ago
    > I don't think you're the majority in your neighborhood, from what you described. The majority of people in Wilmington are hard-working folks who deserve to live in a safe neighborhood as much as any suburban family. They aren't involved in gangs, and steer clear of the kind of activity that might get them hassled by the police. > But perpetuating the system through more hopelessness isn't going to work in the long term. You know what won't help the situation? Focusing so much on the rights of the people committing crimes that you ignore the mass exodus of middle class people looking for safer surroundings. Chicago has lost 200,000 black people in the last decade, and I guarantee you they didn't leave because of police profiling. They left because the police have utterly failed to get a hold of the gang activity pervading the south side. And of course these were the kind of people you didn't want leaving: the ones that can afford to.
    - jbooth 13y ago
      They steer clear of walking down the street while black? Maybe it works different in Wilmington than in Brooklyn or the Bronx, but being teenaged and black is plenty to get hassled by police in NYC. Just one minor detail you hear from people, young black boys/men have it drilled into them by their parents never to go walking around without ID on them, because it will make things more difficult for them if the police stop them. People's lives are full of details like that. Is that the kind of thing you're advocating other people go through so you feel safer?
      - rayiner 13y ago
        Of course I'm not advocating for the full breadth and generality of the NYC's policies. And I'm not advocating treating people differently solely because they're black. But the example in the article? Someone painting graffiti? I think that person deserves greater police scrutiny in Wilmington or New York than in Greenwich, CT, whether they're black or white. And I don't think the fact that they're more likely to be black, just by the demographics of the place, in the former case is a reason, by itself, not to provide that greater scrutiny. One of the things that's missing in these neighborhoods is any sort of authority structure to keep a check on this sort of behavior. To a certain extent, the police have to fill that void to keep things under control.
    - pessimizer 13y ago
      >They left because the police have utterly failed to get a hold of the gang activity pervading the south side. I don't think this is even vaguely true. They left because of the property bubble raising prices, the crash shattering the black middle class, the dismantling of Chicago public schools, and having the half of the city that they occupy being utterly neglected by the administration. Crime is bad in Chicago, but crime is down in Chicago. >And of course these were the kind of people you didn't want leaving: the ones that can afford to. No, it isn't. Most of the migration is people moving South, where they have family, because they can't afford to live in Chicago anymore. This city caters to upper-middle class white suburbanites and the cream of the small town Midwest to the exclusion of the rest of the population.

by jbooth 13y ago

rayiner 13y ago

Not just me, but everyone who wants to live in the city and feel safe doing so. I.e. the hundreds of thousands or millions of other people. Life is messy, and human interactions are messy, and all that comes to a head in cities where people live in such close proximity. Creating sufficient order to let the majority feel safe is an important consideration that deserves its due weight. Ideally, that's achieved without trampling on anyone's rights, but a slavish focus on rights to the exclusion of security will just cause people to "opt out." To put it another way, I grew up in a lily-white upper middle class suburb surrounding by morally righteous people who believed it was better to let 10,000 guilty go free than to send one innocent person to jail. That was easy to believe in a town where political assassination was more likely than gang-related crossfire.

jbooth 13y ago
I don't think you're the majority in your neighborhood, from what you described. I lived in the hood for a few years once, I knew what I was doing, minded my own business, and I didn't want police to crack other people's heads for me to feel safe. I get that it's different if you have a family, I don't live there anymore. But perpetuating the system through more hopelessness isn't going to work in the long term.
- rayiner 13y ago
  > I don't think you're the majority in your neighborhood, from what you described. The majority of people in Wilmington are hard-working folks who deserve to live in a safe neighborhood as much as any suburban family. They aren't involved in gangs, and steer clear of the kind of activity that might get them hassled by the police. > But perpetuating the system through more hopelessness isn't going to work in the long term. You know what won't help the situation? Focusing so much on the rights of the people committing crimes that you ignore the mass exodus of middle class people looking for safer surroundings. Chicago has lost 200,000 black people in the last decade, and I guarantee you they didn't leave because of police profiling. They left because the police have utterly failed to get a hold of the gang activity pervading the south side. And of course these were the kind of people you didn't want leaving: the ones that can afford to.
  - jbooth 13y ago
    They steer clear of walking down the street while black? Maybe it works different in Wilmington than in Brooklyn or the Bronx, but being teenaged and black is plenty to get hassled by police in NYC. Just one minor detail you hear from people, young black boys/men have it drilled into them by their parents never to go walking around without ID on them, because it will make things more difficult for them if the police stop them. People's lives are full of details like that. Is that the kind of thing you're advocating other people go through so you feel safer?
    - rayiner 13y ago
      Of course I'm not advocating for the full breadth and generality of the NYC's policies. And I'm not advocating treating people differently solely because they're black. But the example in the article? Someone painting graffiti? I think that person deserves greater police scrutiny in Wilmington or New York than in Greenwich, CT, whether they're black or white. And I don't think the fact that they're more likely to be black, just by the demographics of the place, in the former case is a reason, by itself, not to provide that greater scrutiny. One of the things that's missing in these neighborhoods is any sort of authority structure to keep a check on this sort of behavior. To a certain extent, the police have to fill that void to keep things under control.
  - pessimizer 13y ago
    >They left because the police have utterly failed to get a hold of the gang activity pervading the south side. I don't think this is even vaguely true. They left because of the property bubble raising prices, the crash shattering the black middle class, the dismantling of Chicago public schools, and having the half of the city that they occupy being utterly neglected by the administration. Crime is bad in Chicago, but crime is down in Chicago. >And of course these were the kind of people you didn't want leaving: the ones that can afford to. No, it isn't. Most of the migration is people moving South, where they have family, because they can't afford to live in Chicago anymore. This city caters to upper-middle class white suburbanites and the cream of the small town Midwest to the exclusion of the rest of the population.