Violence and Wilmington
Last night, there was a quickly called meeting by Herman Holloway, Jr. to get “community leaders” to discuss Wilmington’s violence problem. Specifically, Holloway wanted to talk about strategies to get more people to tell what they know about violent crime and illegal guns to the police. He also wanted to float a couple of other ideas for addressing Wilmington’s violence problem — basically urging Wilmington’s Community Leaders to come together to support the Mayor and the Police. But supporting them in exactly what is still not clear.
There were two main pieces to Holloway’s proposal — one is a billboard to be placed around the city encouraging folks to call the police with what they know about issues. This is meant to be a way for residents to call the WPD anonymously and he proposed to use a number that had been in use during the Reagan War on Drugs era (Holloway specifically referenced this and referenced the War on Drugs during Reagan as a success). Evidently, this number still works and he wants to repurpose it to let people report info anonymously.
There are already ways to report info to the WPD anonymously, including an 800 number maintained by the WPD (that can’t track your location the way 911 can) and the Crimestoppers line. The fact that we have community leaders who don’t know this indicates an education problem — the WPD hasn’t done enough to make sure that people know how to contact them safely.
Holloway also wants to revive something called the Citizens Community Board — a Jim Sills-era invention that pretty much let a certain set of Community Leaders convince themselves they had some influence over the Administration. It wasn’t all that effective, and dropped by the Baker Administration. Holloway sees this new incarnation as a way for Community Leaders to come together to discuss strategies to reduce violence with the WPD and other City Agencies. He wants to hear from various communities about what they are doing to reduce violence in their neighborhoods and have the WPD and others at the table to see how they can help. For those of us who are STILL advocates of a Community Policing strategy, this looks alot like a part of what Community Policing would achieve without a mediating body like this Board. Better partnerships with Wilmington’s communities is still something of a pipe dream for the WPD. The Szczerba-era WPD Community Policing *Unit* had 30+ officers but worked if you had the right officers; and the Dunning-era Community Policing unit has 8 or so, with one officer per Councilmanic District. And I still don’t know if most neighborhoods know this. But the WPD does assign 2 people to Market St and 2 people to the Riverfront where people aren’t being shot.
The meeting ended with a shouting match between Holloway and Derek Johnson (Pastor D). Pastor D wanted to know who was involved in the decision on the placement of the billboards — even though there isn’t even money for these billboards yet — and rather than offer to provide input to the decision-making process, he presented himself as a gatekeeper for the community that has been impacted by the violence. Partway through the meeting, almost a dozen folks arrived to sit with Johnson and he pointed to them as the community that he was representing. Holloway wanted to talk about billboard placement outside of this meeting and Johnson kept on about consulting the community. There was more shouting, but I’ve no idea what about. According the WDEL, Johnson didn’t think that the billboards would reach the young people it should (he is probably right about that) and thought a social media campaign would be better. Frankly, whatever can be done to tell people how they can confidentially report info to the WPD is a good idea. But that bypasses the fact that one of the reasons that folks don’t talk (even the people shot) is that they want to take care of whoever is at fault themselves — which is a bigger problem than folks just not talking to the WPD.
But this is the nub of the leadership problem here — we have plenty of folks who hang around problems to promote their profile and troll for funds. We don’t have enough folks who are rolling up their sleeves and doing the hard work. And those that are, don’t get enough support. We have the Hope Commission that was meant to specifically address causes of crime and support communities. They’ve been largely invisible, but recently have been involved with re-entry support and programming, which is good. You often heard from Jim Baker’s people that crime was bigger than policing (he was always right about that) and now you are hearing from the Williams Administration that people don’t cooperate with the police (which is sometimes true). Interesting how the Williams message has gone from “I know how to reduce crime” to “people don’t cooperate with us”. When getting community cooperation was always going to be a key part of reducing crime the whole time. This was the “hug a thug” BS that Williams and his people persistently dismissed as weakness.
Ninety-six people have been shot in Wilmington this year, 23 percent more than the 78 shot by Aug. 13 last year. There were 119 people shot in the city in 2012, 25 fatally. There have been 12 homicides, including two stabbings, in the city this year.
Just up the street in Philly, they are seeing serious reductions in homicides and shootings as a result of clearly different tactics. And a violent community in NY that comes together around solving a shared problem achieves no shootings for 363 days. So we know it’s possible. What we don’t know is who will just get out of the way and help get it done.
Tags: Featured, Violence, Wilmington
Wilmington is basically a lost city. As are many today. You are dealing with an engrained culture with upside-down values. A culture that values poor performance in school, that values violence as the most effective way to 1, deal with problems, and 2, make a living. A culture that says serving time in the pen is a badge of honor, not the sign of a failed life. All the while, the music they hear 24/7 reinforces these ass-backward ideals. So, the recording industry and Hollywood are not helping.
It is easy to identify the problems and what causes them. It is far more difficult to identify solutions. For Wilmington, I would recommend what has been called for before: Ramped up police presence, neighborhood “mini-stations”, and cops walking regular beats like in the old days.
Could not agree more Cassandra! Pastor D is good for talking and promoting himself, but not so good at actually working toward solutions. The people who are willing to get out there and do the real work are ignored and trivialized.
If we had the political will, we could have universal pre school with meals and qualified teachers. I believe that would help change attitudes and provide opportunities.
I glad AG Holder is doing something sensible about drug cases.
Thanks to everyone ignoring the ignorant white-splaining of Mr. Charles here.
I should have thought to ask you, AQC, if you wanted to go to this thing.
>> Thanks to everyone ignoring the ignorant white-splaining of Mr. Charles here. <<
Being a liberal myself, I thought I'd find welcoming people here. Instead, you treat me like the enemy! Is it any wonder that we do so poorly in elections if we feel the need to fire salvos at each other?
Cassandra, what's your fix? Treat criminals like royalty? "Hate the crime, not the criminal"? By your condescending comments about my views, you must be pro-crime/criminal. Were you to ever be the victim of a violent crime, you might change your tune.
I believe it is possible to be liberal AND anti-crime simultaneously. It is possible to want social justice, universal, single-payer, healthcare (like Western Europe), an end to GOP erosion of the Constitution, tough environmental protections, a strong, organized workforce while at the same time being a hawk on crime. Truth is, in a world with out-of-control crime, the agenda I laid out doesn't matter. Safety is #1.
Since you welcomed me to this forum with such callousness and disregard, I'm out of here. You can keep your little club to yourself and your close friends.
There is NOTHING liberal about this:
You are dealing with an engrained culture with upside-down values. A culture that values poor performance in school, that values violence as the most effective way to 1, deal with problems, and 2, make a living. A culture that says serving time in the pen is a badge of honor, not the sign of a failed life. All the while, the music they hear 24/7 reinforces these ass-backward ideals. So, the recording industry and Hollywood are not helping.
This is just bigotry that is trying to masquerade as a reasonable explanation for the violence.
Which isn’t to say that there aren’t problems. Not the least of which has been an educational system failure of massive proportion within the city. Or the fact that the kind of jobs that used to sustain some of these communities are no more — exported to places like Mexico and China and Vietnam where you don’t have to pay people more than a few cents per hour. Or the fact that the city itself hasn’t been all that effective in protecting itself from some of the predatory elements that damage it.
By your condescending comments about my views, you must be pro-crime/criminal.
I know you are new here, but I’ve written pretty extensively on this subject here so if you aren’t going to ask if I’m pro-crime, you can do yourself the favor of looking at what I’ve done here previously.
Were you to ever be the victim of a violent crime, you might change your tune.
And how do you know I haven’t? The hallmark of a liberal if to maintain some relationship to reality even though the world doesn’t always deserve it. Operating from fear and loathing is the hallmark of conservatives.
Since you welcomed me to this forum with such callousness and disregard, I’m out of here.
The callousness and disregard was all yours, good buddy. You’re just upset that you got called on it. A liberal would at least try to explain where he might have been misunderstood, rather than expect that everyone would pretend that his prejudices are somehow a reasonable position. The NJ comment section is what you want for that.
You are more than welcome to be here. Just don’t expect to be given a pass on the BS.
The ACLU report on marijuana prosecutions (which you can download at the link at the end of this comment) shows that DE arrested over 2500 people for simple misdemeanor possession in 2011, a majority of whom were African-American and (you have to go looking for this stat) about half of those are in Wilmington. According to state stats DE spends nearly $7 million per year on marijuana enforcement and incarceration.
Want to free up time and resources for community policing (which I agree with cassandra is the only rational approach)? Then legalize marijuana, and put the money into paying for community policing. Yes, the education piece is critical but even if you fixed that tomorrow it would take 5-8 years to make a serious difference and several hundred more people would be dead by then.
(Or if you don’t like legalizing marijuana, just stop giving out corporate hand-outs to racinos and multi-billion-dollar corporate whores and use that money to pay for it.)
http://www.aclu.org/criminal-law-reform/war-marijuana-black-and-white-report
Sure Philly’s homicides and gun related crimes are down.Police would have you believe it’s new ways of preventing crime. The criminals are smarter and one step ahead of law enforcement the new gig up in Philly criminals renting illegal firearms to the street thugs in Wilmington to commit crimes.
Jim, who is the “they” you refer to? Thanks, Cassandra, but I had to work last night. Mike Barbieri was giving me a ri. Down this morning. As a complete aside, even I cannot believe what a totally bad mayor Dennis Williams has been!
Is the core issue with tipster anonymity that people are afraid the WPD is going to leak their name out, or that they might one day have to testify in court?
3 women stabbed to death in Wilmington in the last month has me a little nervous. I’ve heard very little detail about any of these murders but I don’t believe anyone has been charged.
There’s two issues, I think, with a single source:
1. People who are genuinely afraid of payback for telling the police about criminal activity.
2. People who think that they can take care of these issues themselves. These are the people who get shot or victimized and who don’t tell the police who did it to them. I’ve talked to WPD officers who have interviewed people in hospital beds — being treated for a gunshot — who won’t tell the WPD who shot him.
Both of these are rooted in trust issues, I think, in the WPD mostly, even though part of the problem isn’t theirs. People who are arrested for something, go to jail for a few days and then get pled out by the AGs office comes back to the community often looking to know who told. That’s tough to live with.
@AQC — I’m worried about those stabbings too. Two of them are fairly close to my house and I walk around this area. And I saw Dr. Mike at the Holloway thing too.
This is a great idea from Steve:
Then legalize marijuana, and put the money into paying for community policing.
Or even put the money into the AGs office, which seems remarkably understaffed. But don’t put the money into more militarization of the local police.
I saw a very interesting documentary about Baltimore borrowing a community based system with juvenile offenders adapted from the Maori culture in New Zealand and used in Australia that is showing promising results. Replacing the adversary system in our courts with community/family meetings facilitated by trained counselors. They use strategies aimed at emotions of the offenders and victims resulting in reconciliation and direct family to family compensation/penalties. It also saves the “system” tons of $.
Needful to say community policing is well proven and has shown great results. The abject poverty I see here, the result being damaged people without proper education and social skills is at the root of the problem and seems unaddressed with community based solutions and remedies, not imposed from the outside.
Replacing the adversary system in our courts with community/family meetings facilitated by trained counselors.
The NYT article I linked to above re: community mentoring of of a piece with this. There’s a good bit (no idea if it is quantified) of the violence that is done because the shooters don’t have better emotional coping skills. Both the Baltimore program and the NY program seem to rely on structuring kids and providing them with some grownups to help coach them in less lethal ways of managing their problems.
“You are dealing with an ingrained culture with upside-down values. A culture that values poor performance in school, that values violence as the most effective way to 1, deal with problems, and 2, make a living. ”
maybe I can whitesplain better.
I….. who knows about the other guy…. but i am taking what he said and making my own point……. I am NOT talking about black people. I’m talking about young people and people at a greater financial disadvantage.
There is most certainly a popular culture trend that discourages intellect. it has existed for YEARS. (think nerd-shaming and jock worship) Many of us who pass the “liberal test” FREQUENTLY point it out in the conservative/GOP set. Don’t think for a minute that white christian people are the only ones who have an aversion to science or learning. (disclaimer…. i know. no one has made that claim here, in this thread. I am making a statement to support my argument) Every group of people is capable of willfully being an ignorant fool. Im proof
Young people….. When an up and coming musical star DIES while sending a Tweet ending YOLO…. you have a problem. We all have a problem. “cool” role models for kids…. not the kids of anyone reading this blog……. are materialistic ignorance-loving wastes of space. Watch MTV for 3 seconds and disagree.
Here is where it relates to inner-city crime. White, or more aptly… RICH kids will get away with it. They can act like the Jersey shore with no permanent consequences. Little Timmy from Hockesson gets picked up for public drunkenness and daddy comes down to the station and works everything out. Little Timmy from 4th street gets to spend a few nights in lock up, his parents wondering where he is, before getting a harsh sentence. No wonder people who live in lower income neighborhoods are less likely to cooperate with law enforcement…. thus making it a vicious cycle. the sad part is, and while i have not experienced this first hand, plenty of friends have found themselves in the situation of….. Not being able to make an attempt at higher education… not just because they cant afford it, but because their families cant afford them NOT working full time. Unfortunately, white families, who have a huge advantage in this country…. have to make that decision less often than anyone else. It isn’t that black young adults don’t aspire to college… their reality is much different.
I think we need to accept those 2 truths. That yes, there is a non-racial cultural trend that encourages idiocy… it just effects poorer communities harder because rich people can “grow out of it” without too many lasting effects….
and 2, there truly ARE many different realities for different communities, but it doesn’t make either one wrong or invalid.
Yesterday, Mayor Williams was on WDEL (Rick Jensen, sorry) talking and answering questions for about a half an hour. I guess that the new thing is a reincarnation of the jumpout squads called a Mobile Strikeforce. You can hear this exercise in the soft bigotry of low expectations here. It is about 30 minutes long.
Could you please explain how “low expectations” are connected to jump-out squads?
The “low expectations” would refer to the entire interview.
Thanks, I was confused there. Are you saying Jensen or Williams has low expectations? Or both of them?
Mr Charles wrote:
It doesn’t matter: you can call yourself a liberal, and you can give out a few liberal political positions — ” It is possible to want social justice, universal, single-payer, healthcare (like Western Europe), an end to GOP erosion of the Constitution, tough environmental protections, a strong, organized workforce” — but you didn’t toe the line, so you’re just as bad as an evil reich-winger like me.
You wrote:
To which Cassandra replied:
No actual refutation, and not even a denial, but simply calling your statement raaaaacist. The sad fact is that there is an element of the black inner city culture which demeans education by calling it “acting white,” and black males drop out of school at far-too-high rates. Every individual who drops out of school hurts aggregate achievement, and the above-the-average black drop out rate is going to negatively impact aggregate achievement of the black community as a whole. Those are simply facts, but, at least to Cassandra, pointing them out constitutes “bigotry.”
Our friends on the left liked to refer to themselves as the “reality-based community,” an effective bit of self-marketing it must be conceded, but Cassandra’s statement is one which tells us that reality cannot be mentioned, or even considered, if it’s the wrong reality, if it’s a reality which could be considered as referring negatively to a minority community.
Then, Socialistic Ben added:
Ben manfully tries to make the point that it’s not just the urban black culture which has norms which discourage education, and he’s right, but right in a way which still ignores the problem: it ignores the fact that such cultural issues are much more heavily concentrated in the urban, heavily black environment, and effects the black community to a far greater extent.
I never had much hope for President Obama, but I did think that there was one area in which he could really help this country, that being to demonstrate to black youngsters that working hard in school and doing well was a path to success that blacks could take just as well as whites. For whatever reasons exist, that does not seem to have happened.
No actual refutation, and not even a denial, but simply calling your statement raaaaacist.
The thing that I do have here is a command of the Queen’s English. A rather good command, actually, and I use the words “prejudice”,”bigotry” and and “racist” with some precision. So not only am I on high ground here in demanding that kind of precision among my interlocutors here, I can also demand that you link to the place where I called Mr. Charles or his response “racist”. I’ll wait.
And while I’m waiting, I will also point out how the right wingnuts like Dana invoke the word “racist” expecting the word to invoke the same voodoo on people like me that it does on people like him. But this is of a piece in dealing with these wingnuts — their rhetorical skills are limited and feature this rush to claim their victimization.
And while I’m still waiting, the proof that wholesale parts of the African American are as dysfunctional as you and Mr. Charles want to portray. So I’ll be here waiting for that too. Because I don’t need to refute a stereotype that you created — it is up to you to demonstrate that your stereotype is reality. Because your description of an “urban African American community” doesn’t match what the community I was born and raised in. And I’m not an outlier by any stretch. In the meantime, get ready to defend the sins of your community.
@Geezer — it was a comment about Jensen’s interview.
Cassandra defends her position:
Drive up Second Street in Wilmington, and you’ll have all the proof you need.
But, here’s just one, from the Huffington Post, a very liberal site:
Public school is not only free, but it actually pays economically poor students to attend, in the form of free breakfasts and lunches. And dropping out is not something wicked, far-away Republicans force on inner-cit black males; it is an individual decision, taken by every student, and for whatever reasons they have, black males fall behind and drop out of school at far higher rate than white males. That has an aggregate effect on the whole black community, because it produces a larger group of less employable members, and a group who earn less when they are employed.
We pour billions and billions into our public schools, we have all sorts of anti-drop out programs, and in the vast majority of cases, our education establishment is politically liberal; it’s not like reich-wingers are trying to force black students out of schools.
“Drive up Second Street in Wilmington, and you’ll have all the proof you need.”
I used to walk to work from Union Park Gardens to downtown at 7 and back home again at 5, mostly along Second Street — not every day, but any nice-weather day on which I awoke early enough. I’ve driven it back and forth for years since. Because I have seen pretty much what you have, I respectfully ask: What part of what you could see on Second Street struck you as dysfunctional, and why?
“black males drop out of school at far-too-high rates.”
I agree. To what do you ascribe this, and do you have a preferred way to deal with it?
Interesting. Disparities in education attainment aren’t exactly new. Dropout rates are also bad for Native Americans and for Hispanics. But you’re (and Mr. Charles’) claims weren’t about educational attainment, it was this:
That’s the proof you are looking for. Proof of “upside-down values”. Proof that poor school performance is valued. Proof that the music “they” hear reinforces “their” ideals. PROOF. Especially since the music “they” listen to is the same music that kids their age listen to is incredibly popular all over the world.
And I’m still waiting for where I called anyone a racist here — are you backing up that claim or will you be retracting it and apologizing?
Proof. Bring it or STFU.
And am I the only person here noting the irony of a conservative — one who is claiming some victimization here over a word — complaining about anyone not valuing education?
Oh my all this bickering is giving me a headache.
What I took away from the meeting was that Mr. Holloway got a backer to start with a few billboards (I think they have enough money for 30 days). That was the start.
Mr. Holloway wants to bring people together to bring this message to be a part of the solution and make the call to the Wilmington community in a variety of ways.
The outburst by Pastor D demonstrated why Mr. Holloway used the terms UNITY and UNITE over and over. Wilmington is full of little fiefdoms working at the problems. That is the problem, the little fiefdoms all fighting for the same resources to serve the same people and not wanting to work together. Mr. Holloway is correct, a UNITED effort by community leaders and activists is needed to affect change.
Now, stop bickering. Cassandra brought up some very salient points. How about discussing or adding to those, otherwise this blog is just a pointless headache inducing waste of time for all of us.
Camden making some inroads on its VERY big crime problem.
The geezer wrote:
I had already said that I had hoped that President Obama, by virtue of his success, would provide the role model for emulation. However, I don’t believe that this is a problem which is susceptible to outside of the community solutions. If the common pressure on young black males is that working hard in school and trying to do well is somehow “acting white,” solutions from whites are not going to have much impact.
The problem is one within the black community, primarily the more heavily urbanized black communities, and it’s one that they will have to solve internally. It will require leadership from blacks, among blacks, it will require a social change that cannot be imposed from outside.
There is one other internal solution, that most people won’t like to read, but it’s very true nevertheless: a large part of the solution to black males dropping out has to come from black females. It has to come from their mothers not allowing it and, very bluntly, it has to come from black girls refusing to give pussy to black boys who drop out.
That’s in the women’s interest as well as the men’s; what woman needs a man who has voluntarily assigned himself to low-wage jobs — if he has a job — for the rest of his life? What woman needs a man who has almost certainly crippled his ability to support a family? And what woman needs to risk getting pregnant by a man who can’t help support his child?
As an historian (and just a human being) I have to take issue with this:
The problem is one within the black community, primarily the more heavily urbanized black communities, and it’s one that they will have to solve internally. It will require leadership from blacks, among blacks, it will require a social change that cannot be imposed from outside.
This presupposes that whatever you are talking about in terms of “black urban culture” was a unique internal creation of African-Americans in our cities not a reaction to situations imposed on them. “White flight” from our cities was not a creation of the black communities. The economic hollowing out of our industrial cities was not a creation of the black communities. The provisions of various assistance programs that made it financially preferable for there to be absent fathers was not a creation of the black communities. The absence of a local tax base in terms of high unemployment and the subsequent destruction of inner city school systems was not a creation of the black communities. The overwhelming targeting of black males for imprisonment in the decades long war on drugs was not a creation of the black communities. I could go on.
When you suggest that black communities require “a social change that cannot be imposed from outside,” you are effectively saying that until those people get their act together, we have no social responsibility toward them, despite the fact that the larger society imposed the overwhelming majority of the economic, educational, and social conditions that created this culture in the first place.
@Steve, your answer is better than anything I could have written. Bellisimo.
@AGov: It’s easy for Herman Holloway to call for unity. He gets a nice gift-wrapped package of money from the General Assembly every year, apparently as an annuity related to his father. Other people work just as hard if not harder without anything like the resources Holloway lives on.
You want to address the squabbling? Get rid of the political favors showered on some but not others.
Mr Newton wrote:
Does that matter?
Perhaps you can use such arguments to say, “Well, the problems within the black community aren’t really all their fault,” but it doesn’t change one thing: those problems are there, those problems exist, and those problems have to be solved within the black community; the solutions cannot be imposed from without.
OK, if that’s how you see it, perhaps you can tell us just what solutions we can impose or create from outside which will work? We have had a war on poverty, for three generations, and we still have blacks disproportionately poor.
But it’s an interesting notion you have posited, that “white flight” somehow “imposed the overwhelming majority of the economic, educational, and social conditions that created this culture in the first place.” You are saying, inter alia, that American blacks simply cannot live together in a socially responsible way unless there are white people living amongst them; do you think that whites are somehow needed to guide the black community?
The black community is an economically poor one, but so was virtually every white community a hundred years ago. If whites could work their way out of poverty, then so can blacks.
But, if you see what I wrote as wrong, please, tell us, what can our larger society do that we have not already done before that will make a difference? It’s easy for you to criticize what I said was the solution to the problems, but a tad more difficult, I should think, to come up with a solution yourself.
Dana
The difficult is an embarrassment of riches in where you are wrong. Start with this:
But it’s an interesting notion you have posited, that “white flight” somehow “imposed the overwhelming majority of the economic, educational, and social conditions that created this culture in the first place.” You are saying, inter alia, that American blacks simply cannot live together in a socially responsible way unless there are white people living amongst them; do you think that whites are somehow needed to guide the black community?
First, you misquote me. I listed “white flight” as one of about five factors, not the sole causal agent. Second, white flight began occurring during the late 1940s and early 1950s, accelerating after 1954. Part of the driver was economic and the development of the new suburbs which mostly were redlined against blacks during their first two decades of existence. In other words, blacks couldn’t flee to the suburbs because of both de facto and de jure segregation. Third, white flight was in fact subsidized by the Federal government after WW2 through home mortgage programs for which you could not in general qualify in the cities. Thus the tax base necessary to support city services for the population too poor and restricted by law and custom to be able to get out, disappeared. White flight was BOTH flight from cities and flight from black people.
Then there’s this:
The black community is an economically poor one, but so was virtually every white community a hundred years ago. If whites could work their way out of poverty, then so can blacks.
That’s bullshit. Every study ever done (go all the way back to Thernstrom’s “Poverty and Progress”) has uncovered the fact that majority white communities were ALWAYS less poor than their black neighbors, in large measure due to the economic restrictions placed on them by segregation laws across the nation. Access to business clients, access to credit, access to infrastructure (read the Slaughterhouse Cases some time), access to education, access to ANYTHING was doled out on racial terms between about 1877-1960. Black people were not discriminated against because they were less capable but simply because they were, you know, black.
Nor did the progressive movement make that much of a difference, having some racial ideas in its early core, and working primarily to create programs that would end up serving–by the vast majority–white poor and middle class people to the exclusion of blacks. The progressives didn’t really pick up civil rights in a racial sense until the late 1950s/1960s.
I would argue (and can make the damn case with footnotes and references) that during the first two-thirds of the 20th century that black communities got poorer and white communities got wealthier, as a group, because the power of government was used to prop up a racist cultural standard.
Then you want to shift the ground and tell me that it doesn’t matter how it got that way, it is just important to change it. And that because I disagree with you I am not responsible for creating the programs or policies to do so.
I’m not a big believer in huge government programs. What I do believe is that nothing is going to change as long as you think you can continue to blame victims of poverty that has been governmentally (and economically) racially enforced upon them, and insist that people without resources much reach some ambiguous standard you set before anybody should help them.
I already gave my first step btw: legalize marijuana and use the $7 million Delaware spends annually on enforcement and incarceration of young black men to invest in community policing (not militarization) in Wilmington.
That’s certainly more than you’ve brought to the table.
Legalize marijuana? What an absolutely brilliant idea! And then every job which requires a drug test, and will continue to require drug tests due to insurance companies, regardless of what the laws are, will be closed to people.
My company employs commercial drivers, and we are required, under federal law, to test for drug use. Marijuana waste metabolites remain present for 30 to 45 days after use. Imagine a driver who tests positive for marijuana who is allowed to continue to drive, and then he has an accident in which someone is hurt or goes to his eternal reward. When the victim or his family sues, the plaintiff’s attorney will say, “You knew this guy smoked pot, and you let him drive your truck anyway?” Insurance companies know that, and they will specify that they will not insure a company which employs people who use marijuana.
Really, any position which involved the use of machinery will be under that kind of pressure, and it is just those types of jobs for which post-secondary education is not usually a requirement.
Since tests for drugs are actually tests for waste products from metabolizing the drugs, they are tests for past drug usage; there is no available test for current marijuana intoxication. Legalizing marijuana might keep some guys from going to jail, but it’s still a prescription for a life in poverty.
Speaking of violence in Wilmington…
There was another shooting at 7th & Washington approx 30 min. ago. I heard the shots. 3 bursts of 5-6 shots each. One guy was hit in the arm.
Mr Nelson wrote:
It’s not that “people without resources much reach some ambiguous standard you set before anybody should help them,” but before anybody can help them.
We have already tried all sorts of government programs, including welfare in a zillion different forms, Head Start, Affirmative Action, jobs training programs and billions upon billions spent on public education, trying to help poor people, and they are still poor. We have tried virtually everything other than saying that people should be responsible for themselves.
Dana: You assume 1) that marijuana legalization would proceed without any other laws being affected and 2) that regulation would never be brought to bear on the obvious problem you cite.
Also, too, you apparently have little faith in American ingenuity. Researchers already are at work on a field-usable saliva test that will give more accurate results on time of usage.
More to the point, unless the insurance industry can produce figures showing that drivers under the influence of a certain amount of marijuana have more accidents, it’s exactly the sort of thing the government exists (much to your chagrin, I’m sure) to regulate.
Oh my god. I think Dana thinks that people stay high for 30-45 days after smoking. Otherwise, you must surely agree that employers should also send a sitter home to make sure their employees dont drink in the privacy of their own home either. please…. tell me how alcohol is better for you than THC.
I really dont understand how a person who so reviles government control, an entity that is beholden to us….. but you crave to be controlled by a company who can throw you out on the street at any whim. You dont believe in freedom, you just know there is one last vestige people like you can be on top. sad.
“We have tried virtually everything other than saying that people should be responsible for themselves.”
What a remarkably ahistorical statement. We tried doing nothing for thousands of years. Its lack of efficacy is why we’ve spent the last 80 trying everything else, predicated on the notion that the richest nation on Earth shouldn’t have such a high proportion of poor people.
Your solution, of course, has the benefit of asking you to do the least. It’s the driving force of all conservatism.
Mr Geezer: There may be a difference if a test for current marijuana intoxication is developed. However, right now the tests only show that marijuana has been used, and not whether someone is currently intoxicated. Lawyers will have a field day with it, and juries will award damages as they believe they should be awarded. Those are the kinds of things insurance companies look at.
Socialistic Ben wrote:
No, Dana simply knows that the waste metabolites for marijuana remain at detectable levels for 30 to 45 days, and the tests we have indicate that marijuana has been used, not whether a person is currently intoxicated. If you cause an accident, and you test hot for pot, it is virtually assumed that you were high when the accident occurred. While that’s certainly not true in a practical sense, it is in a legal one, and juries take their decisions on things like that.
Alcohol is so intoxicating in part because it is not stored in the body, and while there are some waste metabolites which can be tracked, the test for alcohol is for current intoxication.
Alcohol is not better for you than THC, but the fact is that both are bad: anything which messes with your mind is bad for you. The fact that some people believe that alcohol is worse for you than THC is not an argument for legalizing marijuana; it’s more of an argument for making alcohol illegal.
Of course, we tried that, and, very unfortunately, it didn’t work. The most we can do is place additional restrictions on it, and the seriousness with which we now take driving while intoxicated may be the best we can do.
Mr Geezer wrote:
And having spent the last 80 years trying everything else, we don’t seem to have done any better.
However, if the timeline is, as you have specified, “thousands of years,” we really have done much better. Thousands of years ago, even just a few hundred years ago, the vast majority of people even in Europe and the United States were living subsistence lifestyles. The middle class was just starting, and was very small, and there were only a few wealthy people, most of whom were wealthy due to having military power. It was individual effort and the growth of capitalism which lifted a substantial number of people out of the subsistence lifestyle.
“Alcohol is not better for you than THC, but the fact is that both are bad: anything which messes with your mind is bad for you.”
you mean like ADHD meds, anti psychotics, anti depressants, caffeine, ginger, gensing, ……. what a stupid, small minded statement.
oh, did you mean “BAD” (frowny face) drugs?
Ben, there’s a difference between medications which try to help you and “medications” which try to alter a healthy person’s mind or mood.
I’ll put it very bluntly: if you need alcohol or drugs to have a good time, you have a problem.
Have any of you seen”The People’s Report”..
All of these problems will be solved by more Street Particaptory Research.
Dana, curious about your last comment. Do you think that ADHD meds, anti psychotics, caffeine, ginger, gensing, etc. , aren’t used by people who are trying to get help??
People are abusing prescription drugs like crazy, which, by the way, leads to heroin because it’s easier to find and so much cheaper.
Would you rather be driving next to someone who you knew was drinking, on heroin, or smoking pot?
Dana, sorry but someone smoking pot is the. very. least. of. your. worries. If you don’t know that, you’ve never smoked it.. and if you don’t know what is going on out there as far as real problems with alcohol and prescription drugs, you probably live under a rock.
“anything which messes with your mind is bad for you” – Dana, caffeine ‘messes’ with my mind. Seriously. I get what you write about being a business owner and the burden of your worker being able to pass a drug test. But, if laws are passed about pot, then there would have to be laws about employment testing.
Each of you are right and wrong in your answers and thoughts. The real question is what can we agree on and go from there. Personally I lose sleep every night thinking about what is happening in our city and the impact it has short and long term on it’s residents. While we argue and debate this issue the problem continues and it’s impact is having a compounded effect. There are no simple solutions. Here are ten things each of you could do . The following are not meant solve the problem but to list simple ideas to start positive simple steps that we can all take.
1. Find a city based organization of your choice and donate 1 hour of your time a week.
2. Demand that your elected officials admit there is a problem and admit that what we are doing is not working. And ask them what they will do to help fix the problem. And measure their progress.
3.Hire or ask your employer to hire at least one youth each summer from the city.
4. Admit we have a serious drug problem in this country and focus our resources on addiction, treatment and recovery. Delaware’s treatment for opiate addiction is a disaster.
5.Knock on your neighbors door and introduce yourself.
6. Ask our legislators and educators why we are not focusing on decreasing school absence . One of the leading indicators to school dropout.
7. Develop a second chance attitude for those who have stayed drug free.(Reward their efforts)
8.When your in Wilmington be overly polite and friendly
9.List 10 things on this page that you will do and ask others to do
10.Comit to eating at least one meal or event in the City each week.
Please share your list I will try to incorporate your ideas into my daily life in an effort to turn our City around.
Into this thread a little late, but Cassandra wrote about community policing in the initial post. Three consecutive mayors have rejected the notion of community policing even though empirical evidence demonstrates it works.
Had one of them implemented a serious community policing effort, I submit to you that the inherent distrust between the police and the communities they are supposed to protect would not be there. Why? Because that’s what experience elsewhere tells us.
So now we have communities distrustful of the police, many of whom choose to live elsewhere. And now we have the spectre of ‘jump-out’ squads.
Sen. Marshall secured funding for a serious community policing effort some 15 years ago, some of it from the Feds and also from state emergency law enforcement assistance. A lot of community leaders were on board. But the mayors knew/know better. Except they didn’t/don’t.
Opportunity squandered.
“Alcohol is not better for you than THC, but the fact is that both are bad: anything which messes with your mind is bad for you.”
“if you need alcohol or drugs to have a good time, you have a problem.”
Puritanism at its finest, in every sense.
@ Paul Calistro. Thank you! Finally a voice of reason.
I do most of the things on your list.
Here is one: Pick up the stray trash in front of your home; everyday. (Free and really makes a difference in how your neighborhood looks and the impression it makes)
“It was individual effort and the growth of capitalism which lifted a substantial number of people out of the subsistence lifestyle.”
Ah, what an ahistorical mind you have. Did you not notice anything else that was going on besides the “growth of capitalism” you love so well? Anything on the order of using military power to seize the land of people in Asia, Africa and both Americas? Taking, for “free,” what belonged to someone else and living well off the spoils?
Jesus Christ, but you ‘Murka-centric asshats will be the death of humanity.
I’ll take Paul Calistro’s post one step further. There is not merely an empirical link between school absence and dropping out of school. There is an empirical link between school absence and juvenile crime.
Studies also demonstrate that, the earlier you identify the problem of school absence, the likelier you are to successfully address the problem and limit the likelihood that absentees will commit juvenile offenses.
We actually passed legislation about 15 years or so ago to create this early warning system, which provided for school intervention, required parental involvement, and laid out steps to forestall this cycle, including the involvement of family case workers. It was initially focused on elementary schools b/c, the sooner you intervene with younger absentees, the greater the demonstrated degree of success.
I’ve been out of the loop, so I don’t know the current status of that program. But DSEA, the Department of Education, Department of Children Youth & Their Families, and school superintendents, all took part in creating the legislation, which was sponsored by Sen. Sharp.
Can someone from the education community please let me know what the status of that program is now?
Didn’t Sharp’s plan involve bringing back the whipping post?
No, puck, Red Hannah was to be used for drug addicts.
The still-serving David McBride seconded that bill, IIRC.
El Som, I can’t tell you the precise status of that program, but I can tell you why it is unlikely to be delivering results.
In Delaware (and especially in Wilmington, which is carved up between multiple school districts) we have a very highly mobile low SES student population. For some of our high-poverty schools that mobile population is as high as 10-13%.
Here’s how it works: when poor families get broken up by arrests, illnesses, inability to pay rent, changes in custody, loss of jobs, etc., the kids are often moved to another relative. Within the city a move of even a block or two can not just move a child between feeder patterns but into a different district. The original district notices the absences and takes appropriate steps (escalating, beginning with phone calls home and then a visit to the home) often only to discover that the child no longer lives there and there is no forwarding address. At that point the child is completely inaccessible to the school district until he or she resurfaces in another school or district and they begin the process of tracking the records down.
This mobility is often so bad that we will have children attending 2, 3, or even 4 different elementary schools in the same year. It doesn’t take much research to determine that these children are not getting much of an education no matter how hard individual teachers may be working.
Schools are not the appropriate agency, necessarily, to handle this problem. Yes, they have a reporting requirement, obviously, but no district that covers Wilmington has the staff to cover this issue, and the way the districts are laid out and the laws are written, the schools cannot effectively track these kids and get them back into school.
It’s all well and good for those who will come by to shout “parental responsibility,” but many of these parents are primarily concerned with feeding, housing, and clothing their children, and the fact that they do usually resurface in another school is an indication that they want their kids educated.
Thanks, Steve. The program recognized both the parents’ responsibilities and the unlikelihood that that in and of itself would suffice. Which is why the DSCYF played a key role. But, you’re right about the problems of transitory families, and that’s a real tough one.
As for Sharp and the bill, he had challenged the Red Clay Education Association to develop a legislative proposal on any topic of importance to them, and he promised to help them move it through the legislature. Designed in part to enable educators to understand how the legislative process works. The proposal came from RCEA itself, and we enlisted help from the appropriate agencies and even worked with the National Conference of State Legislatures to get technical assistance. I had a chance to work closely with several of the teachers, and they were fantastic. Just one more reason I’ll never badmouth public school teachers. One of my favorite legislative experiences ever.
Bring back the stocks! Put the no-good lousy drug slinging criminals in stocks on Rodney Square. That’ll fix things.
Thanks Steve N for his post yesterday at 10:38 for getting this thread back on topic. I was mostly away from the internet most of the day yesterday, so I appreciate that we’re back to a discussion of issues.
“I’ll put it very bluntly: if you need alcohol or drugs to have a good time, you have a problem.”
woah, quite a bold and progressive statement there…. Carrie Nation, circa 1880…
“I’ll put it very bluntly: if you need alcohol or drugs to have a good time, you have a problem.”
This is typical of opponents. They use the word need as if everyone who likes to use drugs or alcohol needs to use them. Many things add to having a good time but are not needed.
The only drug that I have a small dependance on is coffee. Maybe it is time to outlaw coffee now.
I would recommend our Mayor Williams meet with one of my former Mayors from Houston, Hon. Lee Brown who was also Houston’s Chief of Police and held the same positions in several other major US cities. Dr. Brown, a PhD in Criminal Justice, now also teaching at Rice University, is credited with being one of the founders of the community policing concept which he implemented in several major urban areas years ago. It is well tested and dramatically reduces crime, especially violent crime. Dr. Brown happens also to be African American, from a working class family background. Why it hasn’t been done in Wilmington is a total mystery to me.