Wilmington Breaks Its Shootings Record
Over the past several days, Wilmington lived through another rash of shootings resulting in a new shootings record: 147, surpassing the 2010 record of 142. On Monday, I returned home from seeing The Godfather on the big screen at Penn Cinema to multiple flashing red lights at 6th and Madison Sts — 2 women had been shot sitting on their porch earlier that evening. Earlier on Monday, the WPD reported arresting a man carrying an illegal gun not far from this spot — on the 500 block of W 5th — and credited the community with reporting this guy. On Friday, a man was shot in the 600 blk of W 6th St. Other shootings up on Lea Blvd AND at the Riverfront made this a heartbreaker of a Thanksgiving weekend for Wilmington.
Let’s remember the campaign promise, shall we?
Only a safe city can be a great city. I will hire a new police chief who will be held directly accountable to me for results. I will work to enhance the morale and professionalism of the WPD. We will proactively combat crime in violent, high-crime areas where crime is rampant. We cannot sit back and wait for crime to happen and merely be reactive to threats. On day one, the city will have a more visible police presence in the neighborhoods and also at rush hour to enhance traffic flow. We will work with preachers and families to make sure juveniles and first offenders have an opportunity to get on the right track. But I will not coddle violent criminals and repeat offenders. I am tired of families feeling trapped in their homes and feeling unsafe to walk their neighborhoods.
This is from Candidate Williams’ NJ Questionaire (Thanks to Anonymous Tipster for sending this link). So how are we doing on this? I very much like Chief Dunning, but seriously, there is little going on at the WPD that hasn’t been going on before. They ramped up some of the newer units that had been in place and now they want to eliminate the special units to just respond to calls. And responding to calls isn’t particularly proactive. From where I sit — there has been little proactive about combating crime in West Center City — or anyplace else for that matter, except for Downtown. Some of my neighbors report seeing a few more police cars during the day, but if that is so, there’s been little result from that. I’m on Pennsylvania Ave and Washington St during rush hour and don’t see police working with traffic flow. And no one I’ve spoken to has seen much effort to work with preachers and families to better steer juveniles.
Not much of a surprise, really. Nor is the current effort by Mayor Williams, Chief Dunning and various Councilpeople to try to blame residents for not speaking out. It *should* be normal to speak out about people who are destroying your peace. Wilmington’s problem is that all too often you can speak up and whoever gets arrested is back on the street looking for who told within a few hours or days. There are neighborhoods that are genuinely being terrorized by some folks and blame those who are being terrorized isn’t a solution or smart. It just plays to the suburbanites who think that people living in tough neighborhoods brought that on themselves.
Quick story — when I moved into my house, there was a house catercorner to mine across the alley that had a burned fence. The man I bought the place from told me it was the former house of a WPD officer. Once who was a big presence in West Center City — pushing back on dealers and other miscreants — until the miscreants decided to burn his fence. The officer promptly moved his family away from there. Because even this guy couldn’t withstand the terroristic elements. That’s just one story, but communities that are being terrorized need some help in developing trust that speaking up won’t be a risk they live with on their own. Which currently it is in some places — if you report, and the person is back on the street shortly thereafter to continue terrorizing people, the problem person continues to be a problem until someone calls again.
Berating people for not speaking means that you aren’t being especially proactive. It means that all you can do is respond to calls and you need people to call you in order to deal with bad guys. It means that the WPD isn’t doing itself the favor of working on better trust relationships with these communities. Which it badly needs to do and which Community Policing was meant to try to address. Community Policing is now officially defunct. Replaced by hectoring residents for not calling the WPD. The Atlantic Cities wrote about this and the lack of trust some neighborhoods have in the police last week:
An unwillingness to deploy community policing strategies could help explain why Wilmington is having a record-breaking year for firearm assaults (143 year-to-date, beating 2010’s record of 142), and why an individual who opened fire on six cops and a fellow resident is still walking around free.
Replacing hectoring with forming partnerships with communities so that they feel that law enforcement has their backs in trying to take back their communities is really the goal here. Many in the WPD are taking much of the reporting about the increase in crime personally — even though this isn’t about the failure of individual officers (who are often great people), but the failure of management to wrap their arms around the problem. And in the meantime, Mayor Williams is talking about replacing command staff. I doubt this will make much difference since these staff are pretty much following whatever exists of the Williams policing plan in the first place. Chief Dunning notes that there are multiple systemic problems that contribute to Wilmington’s violence problems. She is quite right about that. The WPD can’t deal with most of those systemic problems and you certainly won’t cure any of those with Stop and Frisk. Most certainly you won’t gain back much community trust with Stop and Frisk or whatever aggressiveness is currently on offer. This problem needs a broadbased and highly focused *set* of solutions, and the WPD is but one piece of it. Other communities — like Philly — are getting this. Wonder when Wilmington will?
Tags: Featured, Mayor Dennis Williams, Violence, Wilmington
“In the ghettos the white man has built for us, he has forced us not to aspire to greater things, but view everyday living as survival.” Malcolm X
I find this all so heartbreaking because Wilmington really is a great little city. I see so much potential that just isn’t tapped into. I think if we invested a little more in building on our strengths we could push back on some of the negatives.
I updated this post with a link to this morning’s NJ story, rather than the one posted last night. A couple of interesting points:
1. Some residents of the 600 block of W 6th St *did* speak to speak to reporters — and I’m sure these reporters were on the block and talking to people. Not driving by and wondering why people won’t talk to them.
2. Sending consultants to City Council to discuss police strategy means that the Police aren’t especially invested in whatever these consultants are doing. Period. And the next time consultants show up to speak for the police, Mike Brown should send them on their way and tell them they are welcome only in the presence of their employer.
3. I’ve heard of this Situational Policing strategy and as far as I know, it is being tested in Browntown ONLY. Certainly there’s no effort in West Center City to do this yet.
4. Williams:
Sherman? I thought it was U.S. Grant who turned the tables for Lincoln. But what do I know. I get the War On Crime metaphor and seriously this has been a failure everyplace. The solutions — and there are some that do help — are broader than this and it is time to implement these.
Haha, I didn’t see that. Sherman? Jesus our mayor is an idiot. I hope the next chief doesn’t burn down the city in a march to, eh, the Christina River.
The problem is exactly the “War On…” mentality. If citizens are “the enemy” and all are “suspicious” then the tactics genrally get more and more draconian and it only makes things worse..
Just ONCE I’d love it if one of these posts didn’t slide in some haterade on people who live in the suburbs. Just once.
This suburbanite thinks there are dangerous parts of the city, and that this violence epidemic is tragic, and something needs to be done. I also know it is a complicated and multi-faceted problem that involves stuff like broken windows, community policing (that isn’t in just the business district), our bail system, and better services for city youth and people with drug issues. If that makes me some kind of paralyzed by fear idot then fine.
I work and go out in the city. I have family that lives in the city. I’ve started skipping these posts because half the time they just dissolve into you guys making fun of the people who live near the mall instead of discussing what’s going on in your own backyard. Just some constructive criticism.
Some decent manufacturing jobs would sure be nice. Of course, Bill Clinton said that we didn’t need manufacturing jobs because we’d all be designing hover cars on computers. Still waiting for that.
Flood the areas with flying squads stop and frisk only with probable cause
It just plays to the suburbanites who think that people living in tough neighborhoods brought that on themselves.
This isn’t *haterade* if it exists and certainly if city management consistently seeks to assuage these people — rather than the people who are actually living with this mess. Go over to the NJ article on this today, and read the comments. That’s what I’m talking about and that is what seems more important to many in the city rather than those who live here. And I can’t remember the last time one of these violence threads made fun of suburbanites, but if it happens, consider it a good corrective for the people who show up here getting their Wilmington hate on.
Literally the last post on this topic:
http://delawareliberal.net//2013/11/18/another-year-and-we-are-still-not-close-to-fixing-wilmingtons-violence-problems/
I’m not saying that there aren’t irrational chicken littles living in suburban areas that aren’t helping the cause. I’m just saying that sometimes these posts tend to alienate those that might support you and your on point analysis for no discernable reason.
@V Where’s the suburbanite bashing on this one? I don’t see it. In the past I have been guilty of some suburbanite teasing, but c’mon, that’s common. NYC residents have refered to suburbanites as the “bridge and tunnel crowd” for as long as I can remember.
The point is that many suburban residents have many misconceptions of the city. They always have. I did when I lived in the suburbans. Fact is I’m going to give more weight to an opinion about Wilmington from people who live here, take the bus to work, walk to get groceries and walk home from bars, restaurants and theatres. That’s just how it is.
We can name the squads the Fast Action Response Team otherwise know as FART
One thing about Stop & Frisk — I think that Community Policing (certainly the framework that had been proposed for Wilmington some years back) is a reasonable way to implement an effective Stop & Frisk program. The framework proposed would have put the same officers in the same neighborhoods — day in, day out, 24/7. Under this plan, officers would get to know the neighborhoods AND the people who live and work there. That means that the officers could potentially target the people they know don’t belong there — rather than just all of the black and brown people in sight. Stop & Frisk isn’t a complete solution but there is a narrow path to getting it to work, I think.
Really? So pointing out that suburban areas have some of the same crime issues as places in Wilmington is *haterade*? Really? It happens to be true, and much like there are places in Wilmington you might not go to, there are certainly places in the county I’d think twice about going to. If the fact that serious crime exists outside of the City of Wilmington challenges you in some way, then maybe you *are* better off not reading these threads. Sheesh.
I get that the police and community do not have a good relationship and fault lies on both sides. How can you build a relationship when neither party is willing to say hello or give the other party the time of day? This distrust of the police is deeply ingrained.
I was out with One Corner at a Time, middle school girls were coming by, wanting to roast a marshmallow, and rather than saying hello to the police officers they stated they didn’t like police, they were afraid of the police. When asked why they related because the police were in their schools. Wow. Something is wrong with how police deal with the public and in particular our children if police in schools causes middle school students to fear them. I also think something is wrong in the home and that no matter what police do the distrust will remain because children are taught that the police are not their friend before they ever encounter an officer.
Real community policing can help, but this will take time. One thing I have realized is that no one has the patience for change; if an initiative isn’t a raging success within a few weeks it is abandoned for the next big idea. We have to be prepared to work a sustained and prolonged effort if we expect things to change. The Mayor’s rhetoric feeds right into this, change will be immediate is what he promised on the campaign trail and seems to be how he is managing the city too.
@ Dorian and many of the cityfolk on this blog have misconceptions about what people in the suburbs 1) think of the city and 2) have a weird hate on for the suburbs (how ugly it is, how boring it is, how crappy the restaurants are, etc.) that show up in the comments and posts themselves. Not this one specifically, but generally. I just don’t understand that to be pro one you have to be anti the other. It’s distracting and unneccessarily devisive.
I’d much rather have discussions about stuff like the city’s implementation of Stop and Frisk. Cassandra’s on to something up there.
cass – it’s not pointing out the crime. it’s the tone. “oh suburbanite people are so DUMB for ignoring their own crime and focusing on ours.” Don’t play dumb about it.
and now i’ve managed to highjack the thread with exactly what annoys me about these threads when you guys were talking about good substantive solutions. So i’m stepping away. carry on since I live in the wrong area code to have any thoughts on the subject.
On a related note: I need downtown Wilmington lunch recommendations. help me out internets.
carry on since I live in the wrong area code to have any thoughts on the subject.
No need to get your victim on — I’m the one whose explanation of why I make these comments has been ignored, right?
Jason — where will you be? Market St or Riverfront?
La Fia is KILLER and they are open for lunch. The Chelsea Tavern and Ernest & Scott are good choices too. Chelsea is probably better for a lunch meeting. These are on Market.
At the Riverfront, Ubon Thai is *very* good as is Harry’s Seafood for a lunch meeting.
no victimization and your point was taken.
Jason for sit down I really like Mikis for sushi or World Cafe Live (but both are usually a little slow). For cheap eats DiMaio’s is great for pizza or there’s a good rotation of stuff in the basement of the Hotel DuPont if you’re closer to Rodney square. If you’re in the Trolley Square area and need something quick you really can’t beat El Diablo Burritos (they’re gone now, but in the summer their fish tacos are awesome).
I actually get what V is saying, I think. And, we do need people from suburbia to be willing to travel into the city for events. Unfortunately, some of suburbia will develop their opinion of the city by reading about the frequent shootings/violence. Let’s hear what suburban people think of the city, and why?
@Cass OperaDelaware, so I’ll be driving either way.
And Thanks for the Rec!
At this risk of being super snarky if you live in the wrong “area code” then yes please leave the thread, you don’t even live in Delaware.
I think you may have meant to say that you live in the wrong zip code, that being a suburban zip code.
ugh yes AG, my bad. snark deserved. Delawarean born and raised.
City people can get a bit touchy, and yeah, I’m including myself in that! 😉
But there’s a history with that and it applies to mostly all cities. White flight to the suburbs was, and still is, a very real thing. I grew up in the city and live in the city today and I’ve lost count of all the city slapping I’ve been subjected to. Here are just a few that I hear constantly:
“Oh, you live in the city? Aren’t you afraid?”
“You don’t go out at night, do you?”
“I remember when the city was great… before all those (insert racial term of choice here) moved in.”
“Of course, you’ll move out to the suburbs once you have kids.”
“I can’t believe you’re raising your kids in that city.”
“How can you live in such a dirty place – there’s trash and used needles and feces everywhere! And don’t even get me started on all the crime and bums. I would never go into that place… let alone, take my children!”
“I bet when you make more money, you’ll move to the suburbs.”
“Is it safe for me to come to your house for dinner?”
And on, and on, and on it goes. People are very comfortable slamming the city, but let a city resident call into question their choices and all hell breaks loose. And I’m not solely directing this at V. This is a constant for city residents. People outside the city feel free to question our life choices and how, and where, we raise our kids. It really isn’t surprising that city residents push back – mainly because the view of the city by non-city residents is so one-sided.
And, Jason, you cannot go wrong with La Fia! Just booked dinner reservations for next Saturday! It’s amazing. Chelsea and Ubon and two of my favorites, as well.
@Pandora add to that the hypocrisy of Salesianum parents. They send their sons to school at 18th and Broom but lord forbid they may want to come to visit their classmate who lives in the city let alone spend the night at his house. Oh, not so sure about that, it might not be safe, your car might be broken into or you might get shot. Give me a break. Not to mention their shock that you, gasp, walked to the parent teacher meeting or whatever night time activity was going on.
Yep, I am a city resident and sent my son to Salesianum lived it. I am not making this up.
While I have NO DOUBT you get that stuff IRL (and a lot of it is just ignorant and a simplistic view of where we live), I’m just saying I don’t see a huge amount of that here (notice I haven’t said anything bad about the city) but I see the anti-suburb stuff every time. Like a preemptive strike. Maybe it’s just the ratio of city people on this blog. I just don’t see my comments here as “all hell breaking loose” but a reminder that not all the people outside the city limits are small-minded jerks. I want a safer, better city too.
I realize that my comments though might just be a trigger for the real-life irritations you guys are dealing with. Which is normally why i just sort of stay out of it.
Of course you’re not making it up, AGovernor – it’s what city residents live with constantly and it becomes tiresome. We’ve run into the exact same thing with my daughter’s suburban friends’ parents (some of which live in Claymont and Edgemoor, just sayin’. Also sayin’ that I’ve delivered her to many parties and sleepovers at those houses.) I live very close to Salesianum – hardly a bad area – in fact, a much safer area than some of her classmates live in, but hey! Don’t let that stop the city bashing!
Look, I get the city has problems that desperately need to be solved. I’m just looking for honest brokers, not people who justify their decision to not live in the city by pointing fingers at city residents. I guess I could strike up their constant attacks by citing their insecurity about where they live, but I’m so over it. The city has problems – so do a LOT of suburban communities – but it also has a LOT of great things that suburbia will never have – and, yes, restaurants and theater and music are a big part of what the city has that suburbia doesn’t.
What Wilmington needs is more people living in it – which is starting to happen. And if you haven’t hung out in LOMA, you’re missing out. I love the art students. They’re young, hip, friendly and everywhere!
They are a trigger, V. City residents hear this stuff all the time – and I mean all the time. So yeah, we’re a bit defensive.
Whenever my suburban relatives come to my house they always say they are “going back to god’s country” when they leave. Aren’t they funny, and if they didn’t make a point of saying it every single time I wouldn’t make a big deal of it, but they do say it every time – right along with the questions of when I’ll finally move out of the city. And the questions I’ve received about raising my kids in the city are deeply offensive. On Halloween, we saw over 200 kids. My friend from Pike Creek helped hand out the candy. At the end of the night he said, “I didn’t expect these kids to be so polite.” WTF did he expect? To be shanked? Like I said, it’s constant.
This is probably one of those things you can’t understand until you live it. And city residents live it day in and day out. So we have a short fuse.
I’m laughing a little Pandora. If you live right by Sallies I live MAYBE 8 minutes from you. If I drive really really slow. Where does the cultural wasteland begin? Right by Fulton Paper?
LOL! You gotta head towards that dangerous park with the cobblestone hill. Scary, scary place – a veritable cesspool. 😉
When I moved out of New Castle County in May of 2002, there were some nicer, gentrifying areas of Wilmington, some places on streets close to downtown where people were investing their money to fix up older houses. Occasionally I’d stop at the Cathedral, because they offered Confession at 11:30 daily, and that was more convenient than at my home parish, and I was never afraid to walk in that (small) neighborhood.
But, let’s face facts: when y’all are talking about the crime problems, you aren’t talking about Pandora’s neighborhood near Salesianum, or wherever AGovernor, who had enough money to send his son to Sallie, lived; you are talking about West Second Street (assuming that hasn’t changed in the last 11 years), and the mostly black and Hispanic poor neighborhoods.
Pandora wrote:
Yup, sure are . . . and what you are talking about, without referring to race at all, is expanding gentrification which means, as bluntly as I can put it, moving more well-to-do, mostly white people back into the city. You won’t like that characterization of it, but it’s true.
But even if you could do that, it isn’t the solution to the problems. The real solutions to the problems, you won’t like, and you will call them racist and sexist, but they are still true:
1 – Recognize that the first contributor to the problem is that way too many young black and Hispanic males drop out of school. You have to combat that culture, which pushes the sad notion that working hard and doing well in school is “acting white.” You need to flood, and I mean really flood, the schools, every day, with educated and successful black and Hispanic men (and yes, I mean mostly men, because your targets are the black and Hispanic male youth far more than the females), to not only push the notion that the smart thing to do is to stay in school, but to be living examples of that. They need to be there to demonstrate to young males that they really can succeed, really can avoid prison, and that they all have the ability to do it.
2 – Recognize that a large part of the problem is what leads to status and rewards among black and Hispanic males in the depressed area. You need to strongly push the notion to black and Hispanic females in the schools that copulating with the thugs is a form of rewarding thug behavior. There’s little that teenaged males want more than sex, and if you can ever get to the point where teenaged females are not giving them sex because they are bad guys, you will have put a major disincentive in the way of becoming a thug. You need successful women, married to successful men, to push the notion that sex is something that carries huge responsibilities, and that sex with irresponsible men not only creates larger burdens on the women, but enables irresponsibility among males.
3 – Recognize that drugs are a large part of the problem, and treat drug crimes, even just possession, as major crimes, crimes which get you locked up for as long as the law allows. You have to get the drug dealers off the streets, and the only way to do that is to attack the demand side; make drug use too big a risk.
Those are not quick fixes, and would probably take at least a decade; you have already lost so many of the current generation of high schoolers; and the area on which to concentrate is the middle schools, where you still have a chance.
Oh yes, that’s useful. Your racial baggage as a diagnosis of the problem. Way to be a white man.
I expected that response, but perhaps you can tell me where I got it wrong.
You can never expect to solve a problem if you are not honest with yourself about what the problem is.
Dana obviously doesn’t know any black or brown people. I absolutely despise the absolute BS contained in that “acting white” nonsense. Please turn off your tv and get out of the house.
And I didn’t say white art students because I didn’t mean white art students – and the art students are quite diverse. If anything I meant young people – the type who don’t consider a garage an asset.
You can never expect to solve a problem if you are not honest with yourself about what the problem is.
Since your response isn’t especially honest, you can start with yourself in this honesty project.
Cassandra wrote:
Ok, let’s be honest: is the problem all over the city, pretty much uniformly, or is it concentrated in the poor, heavily black and Hispanic areas?
@Dana “You can never expect to solve a problem if you are not honest with yourself about what the problem is.”
The real problem is that guns and poverty don’t mix well. We need to get rid of one or the other. …but Republicans seem to be happy with both.
Mr Elite wrote:
In Cassandra’s original, she reported that the gentleman arrested not far from the scene of the crime had “an illegal gun.” Obviously, gun control laws didn’t have much impact here, because the man was willing to break the law to carry a firearm. It’s kind of odd to to base your ideas on thinking that criminals would obey gun control laws.
But, if you read what I wrote, you’d note that I was very specifically addressing the problems of poverty. Oh, that wasn’t the term I used, but it was based on having successful people come into the schools and push a culture modification which would help alleviate poverty; the greatest contributor to poverty is dropping out of school, and that was the problem I addressed.
Other than far more strictly enforcing the drug problem, I mentioned nothing about policing, which was the subject of Cassandra’s original, because police work is not the solution. The police don’t prevent crimes; the police simply have to clean up after crimes. If you want to lower the crime rate, you need to attack it before young people have a real chance to become criminals, you need to address it while they still have a chance to be successful in society.
Mr Dana, other than slashing poverty assistance, which totally wouldnt lead to more theft; what, and more importantly, who’s culture would you modify, and how?
@Dana “Obviously, gun control laws didn’t have much impact here, because the man was willing to break the law to carry a firearm.”
How about some critical thinking skills here… This is SO obviously false.
Does anyone here really need for me to explain why this is so stupid?
“…having successful people come into the schools and push a culture modification which would help alleviate poverty; the greatest contributor to poverty is dropping out of school.”
A symptom, not a cause. You don’t cure a disease by treating the symptoms.
One could argue that the raison-d’etre of FOX news is to promote social inequity. There is an active campaign to keep things bad.
Does anyone here really need for me to explain why this is so stupid?
Dana does. Seriously.
Well, SOME PEOPLE really think that “black culture” means staying poor on purpose, seeing how many children you can have out of wedlock, and beating up white people on the street. When they talk about “changing the culture of poverty” that is the “reality” they are arguing from.
Id really like to see Dana show he does NOT think like that
Weirdly enough Dana I think your assertion that stricter drug laws and harsher sentences is actually a terrible idea. I’ve always thought a part of the problem was young people (really any age is too young, but young enough that they don’t realize the life long consequences) end up with felony drug convictions. This makes them virtually unhireable for work that offers 1. any room for growth or 2. enough money to support a family. Selling drugs is a way to get around at least #2. Our felony drug laws as is have created an entire strata of second class citizens that only helps feed recitivism problems.
Ben wrote:
That’s just it, Ben: Dana most certainly does think that. Oh, it is certainly not something that the vast majority ever think that they are doing on purpose, but whether they think that or not, those are the results.
When you have young black males dropping out of school at such high rates, they may not be saying, explicitly, “I want to stay poor on purpose,” but that’s what they are doing. The black out-of-wedlock birth rate is enormous, even though it’s well-known that substantially contributes to childhood poverty, and even though the schools practically give out contraceptives like candy; there might not be anybody saying, “I want to see how many children I can have out of wedlock,” but those are the results.
Y’all are so very, very concerned about not saying or doing or thinking anything that anyone could ever construe as being racist that you cannot admit the truth to yourselves. You can call it what you like, but the facts are indisputable: American blacks living in the urban black culture are following cultural norms which are leading to economically and socially harmful results. Thinking that I’m some sort of horrible racist because I recognize that, and am willing to say so, might make you think you can just dismiss what I wrote, but if you examine the facts, what I wrote, regardless of what you might think of my motives, is accurate.
Mr V wrote:
The trouble is that if they use drugs, they also wind up making themselves unemployable for good jobs, because so many jobs that involve industry or equipment or handling money or a whole host of other things require passing a drug test to get.
Thinking that I’m some sort of horrible racist because I recognize that, and am willing to say so, might make you think you can just dismiss what I wrote, but if you examine the facts, what I wrote, regardless of what you might think of my motives, is accurate.
An examination of the facts doesn’t yield a so-called analysis that is mostly your standard issue “this is why black people are inferior” bullshit. There are genuine issues to be certain and they are complex — and you bypass every single discussion of those issues to get to your own baggage. If you are talking just about the failure of the “black culture” whatever you imagine that to be, then you aren’t even pretending to have a serious discussion about anything other than your issues.
A favor – I’m skipping Dana’s comments because I assume his is talking out of his ass about black people, having learned all he ever needed to know about black people from the character Huggie Bear on ‘Starsky and Hutch’.
If he ever makes a cogent point can someone tip me off so I can scroll back and read it.
OK, Cassandra, I presented three suggestions as to what policies needed to be adopted. Given that you believe I am proceeding from a faulty premise or understanding of the “complex” issues involve, can you tell me just which of those three suggestions you find unacceptable or not addressing the issues, and why?
Poor people do drugs because they are poor. If they did not do drugs, they would still be poor. If they were not poor, they would be less inclined to do drugs.
We did this before when you were white-splaining the wholesale dysfunction of the Black Community.
There was nothing you wanted to hear then — other than yourself accusing me of calling you a raaaaacist, when I did no such thing. And you haven’t apologized for that yet. So, no, I’m not doing that again, because learning something isn’t your project here.
@X — Poor people do drugs for the same reasons that everyone else does drugs. Poor people even *sell* drugs for the same reasons that other people do — because they need the money and this stuff is a quick way to get it. For poor people, though, selling drugs is sometimes one of their very limited options for money.
Fun fact, though — I have 2 colleagues and friends who sold drugs as a way to pay for college and grad school. Both are respected in their fields with PEs and everything. Anyone want to guess what color they are?
I know lots of people who have sold drugs. 99.8% of them are white. 80+% of them were never poor. Ever.
A guy I attendend high school with (he was a year behind me) sold cocaine in HS & college.
He stopped when he graduated from UD. He claims he made more money (annually) in 10th grade than he did is his first five years of working in his field. He’s white, as are most of the drug dealers I’ve met.
The difference between the “urban” (I hate that word as it is currently used–you might as well just say “non-white”) and suburban drug dealers is that urban dealers do their business on the street, often in plain view.
White people/other suburbanites often don’t realize that there are drug dealers in their neighborhood simply because they don’t do drugs & don’t socialize w/ those who use drugs, and they don’t see stereotypical drug dealers in their neighborhood.
ATTENTION WHITE PEOPLE: There is at least one drug dealer in your neighborhood. I don’t care where you live. There’s a guy who sells drugs in your area. If you don’t live in a city, that guy is probably a white guy.
The issue of crime and violent crime is so complex the cause and remedies are extremely complex. The City suffers from years of polarization and fragmented planning and inconsistent implementation .The city suffers from a lack of incentives for reinvestment in housing , economic development , and job creation.Unions and politicians have fought for special interest often at the expense of residents We want reinvestment but make the demolition of abandoned and obsolete buildings almost impossible We scorn back and white city flight at the same time we fear the reentry of diverse income households and scream gentrification We have totally neglected communities like West Center City for over forty years and wonder why the neighborhood is deplorable . We maintain a top heavy police force with no regard for community policing. We have a inefficient , bloated city hall that continues it’s tradition of creating new positions based on political favors. And we have city, state and county goverents that barely talk let alone coordinate. All exacerbated by a no growth economy . On the brighter side we have tenacious residents and businesses who refuse to give up. I am sure I left something out.
In other news, did anyone hear Mayor DPW on WDEL today? I heard a few snippets, but missed most of it.
Later in the day I heard Rick Jensen slathering all over the Mayor’s cock. Then I heard Jensen’s awful Fisker song. Then I changed the station to 91FM.
@Dana, why do you assume my son didn’t win a full scholarship? or that we didn’t receive financial aid?
I would assume your son didn’t get financial aid if he went to Sallies.
Dana, strictly enforcing the drug problem should not include long prison time. It should include long term rehab. Unless you are willing to just write off young people. Or, not just young people, but people!
All the talk about knowing people who sell drugs. What about people who use them? My guess is that everyone on this blog, (or close to everyone) knows someone with a drug addiction.. you might not know which family member or friend, but they’re there. I know several. oddly enough, Dana, none of them are poor. Drug addiction has no boundaries.
I don’t know because I’ve never done it, but I think that many people who sell drugs, do it to help pay for their own drug addiction.
What Wilmington needs is someone that shoots from the hip, but is a straight shooter.
Maybe she’s better off pretending to be a princess in prayerland. Seriously, stop shooting each other or Delaware might elect yet another cop.
It’s interesting that I started off the entire comment string with that Malcolm X quote and then Dana says something like:
“Ok, let’s be honest: is the problem all over the city, pretty much uniformly, or is it concentrated in the poor, heavily black and Hispanic areas?”
Even if this is so, how does that make it a black/hispanic problem. Consider the quote again.
“In the ghettos the white man has built for us, he has forced us not to aspire to greater things, but view everyday living as survival.”
White people created the ghettos, dude, and built an economy and a culture to keep people down. The fact that the crime is in emproverished areas is actually very truly and directly our fault (I’m white). So this entire idea that it is isolated to the areas because of the people in that area is absolute nonsense.
Dana is a raft of cognitive biases. The good news is that bitter old dim wits like Dana are dying off and being replaced by people who are not nearly as imprisoned by the the fallacies and superstitions they view as facts.
Paul, why did you drop out of the mayors race anyway? Perhaps “insiders” know, but I never heard why. I wonder what a Calistro administration would look like now after a year in office. I am sure complex problems would not be solved, but I can’t help but think the city’s trajectory would look a whole lot different…