If you haven't been paying attention to New York news Stop and Frisk has been frisked pretty well by Federal Judge Shira Scheindlin and found to be holding a big bag of unconstitutional in it's left pocket.
Why is this important? First if you're not a Black person in New York why should this matter to you? Well because we know from history that bad things metastasize. Crack was in the Black community. What happened? Twenty years later the white community got methamphetamine. And crack. 90% of crack in America is used by whites. Black people got drive-by shootings. What happened? Twenty years later the white community got Adam Lanza and Newtown or Dylan Clebold and Colombine or ... you get the picture.
So Judge Shira Scheindlin sought to stop this unconstitutional action early if you can call ten years in early.
But who cares? Stop and frisk doesn't stop crime. It just pretends to.
New York has about 400 murders a year, down from 2,000 a year a couple years ago. For a city of 8,000,0000 that's great. But Bloomberg being the overachiever that he is wants a city of zero murders a year. And it's close to happening. 400 is a small and shrinking number. But the question becomes what kind of murders are these?
Make no mistake. The Blacks & Hispanics (B&H) killing each other in New York (80%+ of the murders in New York are of young Black and Hispanic men) is not like Chicago.
In Chicago these murders are happening over drug territory. It's about cliques, sets, gangs, crips, bloods, and small groups killing each other over the lucrative drug trade. But in New York that's largely stopped. Guiliani put his foot up the arse of drug murders in New York. Under Guiliani the sign to New York said, "Welcome to New York. Don't start no ish, won't be no ish." Criminals got the message. Murders went down.
But these last 400 are persistent like Athlete's Foot. So what kind of murders are these?
They're the kind that's very difficult to stop: emotionally driven murders. They're catching your wife with another man in the act, grabbing a pistol, and shooting him to death. They're arguing at a party drinks and someone has too much and shoots someone in an emotional moment.
These aren't murders that will be caught by stop and frisk because stop and frisk looks for criminals. It looks for people that carry guns as a matter of course as a means of doing business. Rather, these murders are by emotional individuals who become criminals in the heat of the moment, namely second degree criminals (emotional and unplanned) as opposed to first degree criminals (planned strictly business criminals).
So how do you stop these murders?
If B&H are doing the shootings maybe B&H can stop them? At least that's the thinking of Mayor Bloomberg (yeah, the same guy). He funds the program that allows the guy above and a bunch like him that are ex-convicts who walk the street, no badge, no gun, just their handshake and a boatload of street cred. These guys basically are part of the communities they are patrolling. They get word of a murder, well before the murder takes place. They are privy to something every cop in America wishes they were privy to: the word on the street.
The result (wait for it):
There hasn't been a murder in East New York (a rough part of town) for the last year. No murders. None. Zero. A Zero murder rate.
The Holy Grail has been achieved in a rough part of New York and it's right in Bloomberg's back yard.
Now the cops don't love these guys. They're ex-convicts. They don't turn in suspected offenders. They don't share information. But they do what the cops can't. They stop murders before they happen.
There's a way to get to zero murders in New York (and every city). But it's not with handcuffs and guns. It's a controversial tactic. It's not with Stop and Frisk. It's with Walk and Talk from a bunch of guys (and girls) that used to Shoot and Kill.
How ironic is that?
Why is this important? First if you're not a Black person in New York why should this matter to you? Well because we know from history that bad things metastasize. Crack was in the Black community. What happened? Twenty years later the white community got methamphetamine. And crack. 90% of crack in America is used by whites. Black people got drive-by shootings. What happened? Twenty years later the white community got Adam Lanza and Newtown or Dylan Clebold and Colombine or ... you get the picture.
So Judge Shira Scheindlin sought to stop this unconstitutional action early if you can call ten years in early.
But who cares? Stop and frisk doesn't stop crime. It just pretends to.
New York has about 400 murders a year, down from 2,000 a year a couple years ago. For a city of 8,000,0000 that's great. But Bloomberg being the overachiever that he is wants a city of zero murders a year. And it's close to happening. 400 is a small and shrinking number. But the question becomes what kind of murders are these?
Make no mistake. The Blacks & Hispanics (B&H) killing each other in New York (80%+ of the murders in New York are of young Black and Hispanic men) is not like Chicago.
In Chicago these murders are happening over drug territory. It's about cliques, sets, gangs, crips, bloods, and small groups killing each other over the lucrative drug trade. But in New York that's largely stopped. Guiliani put his foot up the arse of drug murders in New York. Under Guiliani the sign to New York said, "Welcome to New York. Don't start no ish, won't be no ish." Criminals got the message. Murders went down.
But these last 400 are persistent like Athlete's Foot. So what kind of murders are these?
They're the kind that's very difficult to stop: emotionally driven murders. They're catching your wife with another man in the act, grabbing a pistol, and shooting him to death. They're arguing at a party drinks and someone has too much and shoots someone in an emotional moment.
These aren't murders that will be caught by stop and frisk because stop and frisk looks for criminals. It looks for people that carry guns as a matter of course as a means of doing business. Rather, these murders are by emotional individuals who become criminals in the heat of the moment, namely second degree criminals (emotional and unplanned) as opposed to first degree criminals (planned strictly business criminals).
So how do you stop these murders?
If B&H are doing the shootings maybe B&H can stop them? At least that's the thinking of Mayor Bloomberg (yeah, the same guy). He funds the program that allows the guy above and a bunch like him that are ex-convicts who walk the street, no badge, no gun, just their handshake and a boatload of street cred. These guys basically are part of the communities they are patrolling. They get word of a murder, well before the murder takes place. They are privy to something every cop in America wishes they were privy to: the word on the street.
The result (wait for it):
There hasn't been a murder in East New York (a rough part of town) for the last year. No murders. None. Zero. A Zero murder rate.
The Holy Grail has been achieved in a rough part of New York and it's right in Bloomberg's back yard.
Now the cops don't love these guys. They're ex-convicts. They don't turn in suspected offenders. They don't share information. But they do what the cops can't. They stop murders before they happen.
There's a way to get to zero murders in New York (and every city). But it's not with handcuffs and guns. It's a controversial tactic. It's not with Stop and Frisk. It's with Walk and Talk from a bunch of guys (and girls) that used to Shoot and Kill.
How ironic is that?
No comments:
Post a Comment