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Originally posted by Pi?a:
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by Gunslinger:
Ok, after reading this I have come to some conclusions:
1) Reason is absolutely correct in what he is doing. More people should be as involved in their neighborhoods and care about their surroundings as he and his neighbors do. Crime flourishes mainly due to indifference or fear and these people are showing that neither applies to them.
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Yup, involvement is one of the requisites. It?s not the answer but without it change isn?t going to happen.
Crime does not flourish because of indifference and lack of fear. It flourishes because the people committing the crimes think it benefits them. Create an alternative that they understand and believe is attainable and they will leave crime behind.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">indifference and fear does help crime. Criminals (drug dealers, thieves, prostitutes, et al) know that if people don't care or are afraid of them they will not act, therefore they go out and do what they do with impunity. As for the alternatives, these kids aren't interested in the alternatives. Do you know how many kids I have talked to about working at McDonalds or Krogers to make their money instead of them dealing drugs or stealing? They aren't interested in working for $8.00 an hour when they know they can either peddle some crack for an hour and make $300.00 or just go into a store and take what they want for free. They also aren't interested in the programs that ARE out there b/c it's not the 'cool thing to do'.
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2) Pina, you are an idiot. Come sit with me for a day at work and you will see how flawed your 'vision' is of how things work. It is houses like these that perpetuate the drug trade in this city.
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">(An aside: )GS, kiss my ass.(Back to the discussion)[/quote]
ok, idiot was too harsh a word. My mistake.
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Houses do not perpetuate crime. Crime creates the conditions that creates the degradation. You have put the horse before the cart and don?t see it.
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Empty houses DO perpetuate crime. As long as these houses stay empty the criminals know that they have a 'safe haven' as it were. YOu get rid of the 'safe havens', then where do they go to shoot up or whatever it is they do in those houses? If you take away there hiding place where can they go?
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3) Buildings that are boarded up or run down need to be gotten rid of. These are the houses that drug dealers turn into crack houses. They serve no useful purpose to society and need to be gotten rid of.
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I agree that boarded up, uncared for properties need to be addressed. The problem is that it just aint gonna happen and you can howl at the moon as long as you want but it won?t change a thing. I strongly disagree that getting rid of them is going to affect the drug/prostitution trade. Just like the, oh-so-effective, ?war on drugs? the only thing that happens when you make it more expensive for the dealers is that the drugs become more expensive and the crimes committed to feed the addictions go up.
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">See above. If you take their 'hidey hole' away what are they going to do?
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4) While the idea of getting rid of those houses, taking some kind of punitive measures against the absentee owners and turning streets either into dead ends or making them one way is the sensible thing to do it will never happen with the bozos we have on city council. Since y'all live in Northside and not Over the Rhine or Avondale you won't get any help. It's not "newsworthy" enough nor does it sell to the African American voter to help out a neighborhood that is mostly white.
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The common thread in the above paragraph is that none of these things will work. That none of these things has ever worked to change the overall behaviors. The best that they have ever done is to make them relocate, temporarily, to some other neighborhood. To change the behaviors you need to make better alternatives not only available but more attractive to those whose behavior you wish to change.
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Like I said before, these kids aren't interested in the alternatives. They aren't interested in living a 'regular life'. They wanna be hard core gangstas. Working at Krogers bagging groceries and going to school and getting good grades don't fit that role. In order to change the behavior you have to show them that the way they are living now is unacceptable. You do that by hauling them off to jail and taking away the crack houses that shelter them from society. That is why the boarded up buildings must go. That is why City Council needs to stop hounding the police department and get out there in the community to show these kids that there is a better way. Yeah, I know, siding with the cops and making sure that buildings are either kept up to code or gotten rid of may not be 'headline grabbing', but these are a couple of the things that need to be done in order to start getting this city and some of its communities turned around.
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Or you could just beat your head against the wall as we?ve been doing for damn near forever.
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I do that enough at work. The only thing that should be beaten are some of the parents of the kids I see at work. They are a big part of the problem also.