Stooping

**reason** · July 28th, 2005, 10:55 AM

Because, really... how do you KNOW that the people you saw were hookers and dealers?

Neighborhood activists who live on Pitts, Witler, and Lakeman know who lives where, who owns what, the number of police visits to each location. They've spent a lot of time observing their surroundings, and it is truly amazing how aware of what everyone's doing around them.

**reason** · July 28th, 2005, 10:57 AM

Another alternative is to remove the economic incentive that marries violence and abject conditions to drug use and prostitution.

How do you do this?

**reason** · July 28th, 2005, 11:08 AM

Why is it ?obvious? that crime should be punished? Another alternative is to remove the economic incentive that marries violence and abject conditions to drug use and prostitution. Would you be as ready to suggest that ?crime? should be punished if it were still illegal for people to engage in homosexual behaviors?

This is getting off topic.

If we want to discuss whether drugs and prostitution should be legalized, fine. But they aren't legal, and their presence in a residential neighborhood has brought a slew of well-documented violence, including drive-by shootings and murders. Landlords who willingly and repeatedly host these activities to the detriment of the neighborhood should be punished.

Oh, I've never known the presence in a neighborhood of two dudes bumping uglies to cause drive-bys and other assorted street violence.

Anton von Stockhoff · July 28th, 2005, 12:54 PM

You know what I think would be funny? Handcuffing your overly effeminate self to a fence at the corner of Hanfield and Witler at midnight on a hot steamy summer night. You and the bros can hang out and get to know each other. Maybe you can discuss your sunset paintings with them.

You know you are about the sickest individual I have ever encountered on-line. Tell me, what does it feel like being a homophobic queer? Life must be hell for you... I suspect while you were growing up you never received any praise or encouragement for anything, just criticism. It's about the only explanation for your bitter hostility now. Either that or just plain self-loathing.

And as to the value of your brick and mortar home, I'm not impressed. I could easily sell my home for 3x what I paid for it in 2002. But I won't go on in this vein because you have a sick need to engage in pissing contests. Lack of self esteem is your main problem, it comes across in almost everything you post. From your homophobic comments to your sarcastic put downs. You are to be pitied.

**Piña** · July 28th, 2005, 01:11 PM

Originally posted by Captain Whizbang:
<blockquote>quote:<hr />Because, really... how do you KNOW that the people you saw were hookers and dealers?

Neighborhood activists who live on Pitts, Witler, and Lakeman know who lives where, who owns what, the number of police visits to each location. They've spent a lot of time observing their surroundings, and it is truly amazing how aware of what everyone's doing around them.<hr /></blockquote>Even though gae brought this into the conversation in an attempt to introduce the false idea that profiling was relevant and even more false idea that ?liberals? were somehow against using any type of profiling to identify those engaged in illegal behaviors. It?s not relevant to the current discussion. It?s just another distraction that she and her mate like to drag in when they know they can?t prevail by sticking to the subject.

I did want, however, to comment on your statement about what neighborhood activists ?know? about the targets of their scrutiny. While I?m sure that many, if not most, of the people they have observed are indeed engaging in illegal pastimes you really need to be very careful as to what you consider to be reliable information, the conclusions you come to based on that information and the actions you take based on those conclusions.

People are notorious for getting things wrong and skewing their observations to fit preconceived notions. If you go into a situation believing that there is illegal activity going on you will tend to see it everywhere you look whether it is actually occurring or not. It?s one of the reasons why our particular system has the burden of proof placed on the accuser instead of on the accused. It?s very easy to get swept up in the fervor of the moment, give in to our desire to be one of the good guys fighting the good fight and end up doing very wrong things in the name of all that is goodness and light.

For a good example of this you only need to look to interesting phenomenon like the Salem witch trials or an even grander and more contemporary example might be the way that american patriotism was manipulated to make it look justifiable to invade an essentially unarmed country based on trumped up evidence and bald faced lies. Remember all the flags? All the nuke ?em back to the stone age talk? Same principle, different scale.

Mob mentality is a very ugly, and usually wrong, sort of thing.

**reason** · July 28th, 2005, 01:23 PM

People are notorious for getting things wrong and skewing their observations to fit preconceived notions. If you go into a situation believing that there is illegal activity going on you will tend to see it everywhere you look whether it is actually occurring or not. It?s one of the reasons why our particular system has the burden of proof placed on the accuser instead of on the accused. It?s very easy to get swept up in the fervor of the moment, give in to our desire to be one of the good guys fighting the good fight and end up doing very wrong things in the name of all that is goodness and light.

Ok, I'm sitting on the corner and one woman pulls out three sheets of paper with police statistics of hotspots. Hanfield and Witler is number 2.

These are people who have meticulously accumlated evidence and worked within the confines of the laws. By and large, they are liberals.

This is no Salem witch trial. There are clearly problems and they have been going on for years.

The prostitute to which I was speaking? A repeat offender. She's been in and out of the court system repeatedly. The police know it; the activists know it; the neighbors know it.

The violence is real, the vacant homes are real, the drug dealers are real, the dead people are real. This is no overzealous witch trial.

There's no reason to "believe" antisocial behavior is going on. The simple reality is that it IS going on.

Pina, you imply that stoopers only focus on the black yoof. On the contrary, when the big, shiney Hummer full of white suburbanites-types moseys on through, their license plate gets written down. You might call that a witch hunt, I call it common sense monitoring.

[ July 28, 2005 10:29 AM: Message edited by: Captain Whizbang ]

**reason** · July 28th, 2005, 01:42 PM

Originally posted by Live from Florida:
<blockquote>quote:<hr />You know what I think would be funny? Handcuffing your overly effeminate self to a fence at the corner of Hanfield and Witler at midnight on a hot steamy summer night. You and the bros can hang out and get to know each other. Maybe you can discuss your sunset paintings with them.

You know you are about the sickest individual I have ever encountered on-line. Tell me, what does it feel like being a homophobic queer? Life must be hell for you... I suspect while you were growing up you never received any praise or encouragement for anything, just criticism. It's about the only explanation for your bitter hostility now. Either that or just plain self-loathing.

And as to the value of your brick and mortar home, I'm not impressed. I could easily sell my home for 3x what I paid for it in 2002. But I won't go on in this vein because you have a sick need to engage in pissing contests. Lack of self esteem is your main problem, it comes across in almost everything you post. From your homophobic comments to your sarcastic put downs. You are to be pitied.<hr /></blockquote>My experience is that the biggest homophobes are the ones who refuse to fess up. Lashing out against someone who is open is a means to hide who they don't want to admit they are. Happens all the time.

While I normally don't respond to some of the silly stuff you post, I'm happy to report that I had a rather nice "Disney" childhood. After the death of my uncle last week and the ensuing day and a half of extended family activities, I got to reflecting on my family and realizing just how lucky I had it.

Last night I watched a 50 minute video of spliced 8mm home movies put to shmaltzy music. It's the second time I've watched it since my uncle died. I smiled through most of it, got teary-eyed through the rest of it. So many great memories.

My childhood was blessed, thank you very much. Despite my parents' flaws I couldn't have asked for anything better. They did a wonderful job raising their children.

Every birthday, Mom sends me a card with basically the same theme: How proud she is of me and who I am (Dad also signs the card). Every year. I save every one of them.

Should you be so lucky.

[ July 28, 2005 10:49 AM: Message edited by: Captain Whizbang ]

**Piña** · July 28th, 2005, 01:50 PM

Originally posted by Captain Whizbang:
<blockquote>quote:<hr />Why is it ?obvious? that crime should be punished? Another alternative is to remove the economic incentive that marries violence and abject conditions to drug use and prostitution. Would you be as ready to suggest that ?crime? should be punished if it were still illegal for people to engage in homosexual behaviors?

This is getting off topic.<hr /></blockquote>Well, see, I think it?s right on topic.

You have a concern, a very valid concern, about the degradation of your neighborhood. I?m suggesting that there might be better ways of handling it than to call out the bulldozers and attempt to get rid of a problem by trying to manage it?s symptoms instead of working on the underlying causal factors.

If we want to discuss whether drugs and prostitution should be legalized, fine. But they aren't legal, and their presence in a residential neighborhood has brought a slew of well-documented violence, including drive-by shootings and murders.

Actually I would suggest that neither drug use nor prostitution, in and of themselves, brings accompanying violence. For the violence component to become a factor you need to add some form of suppression and some benefit that causes the activities to be perceived as having some net good to the practitioners. It?s a very complex problem that has many many factors contributing to make it seem like a good idea to those involved. You and I might disagree and say that they are fooling themselves but what we think really doesn?t matter as they aren?t motivated by our perceptions, they?re motivated by their perceptions and beliefs. Change that and you change behavior. (Ask Karl Rove about the power of perception as opposed to the power of objective reality and see which he thinks is more important to control.)

Landlords who willingly and repeatedly host these activities to the detriment of the neighborhood should be punished.

While I?m sure that ?punishing? them would seem somehow morally cathartic it does little to solve your problem. Frankly, this approach has never worked and IMO never will. We?ve been trying it for centuries and the only thing I see increasing is the number of prison being built. Some might think there is something wrong with the basic assumptions. (Note: I am not saying that we should not hold property owners to some minimal standards. I am only saying that we should approach it from a different perspective as the punitive just isn?t terribly effective overall.)

Oh, I've never known the presence in a neighborhood of two dudes bumping uglies to cause drive-bys and other assorted street violence.

Really?!? Funny, I seem to have heard of a minority, a very vocal and currently powerful minority, that believes that ?two dudes bumping uglies? will be the ruin of everything we hold dear and are acting as if this ?ugly bumping? is of the same order of threat to apple pie america as drug use and prostitution.

I would have thought you?d have heard about that. Rick Santorum, one of Pennsylvania?s finest, just wrote a book attacking them thar ?bumpers? under the guise of family values. He and his brethren would just as soon string you up as any other unclean law-breaker and would feel just fine bragging about it at Sunday service as a service to the neighborhood.

To them you are just as bad as the drug dealers and prostitutes and just as much of a problem. Aint perceptions grand?

**Gunslinger** · July 28th, 2005, 02:01 PM

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.

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.

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.

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.

**Piña** · July 28th, 2005, 02:02 PM

Originally posted by Captain Whizbang:

Pina, you imply that stoopers only focus on the black yoof. On the contrary, when the big, shiney Hummer full of white suburbanites-types moseys on through, their license plate gets written down. You might call that a witch hunt, I call it common sense monitoring.

Reason (I just can't call you captain [img]smile.gif[/img] )

I've implied no such thing. I merely cautioned you about some very real tendencies that people exhibit related to how they perceive and interpret events.

I did not say that anyone was making mistakes. I did say that people tend to make mistakes. You are smart enough to understand that those are very different statements so I'll not belabor the point.

I also did not call stooping a witch hunt. I did say that there are human tendencies that made that witch hunts possible that we need to always keep in mind when accusing anyone of anything, whether those accusations are valid or not.

I happen to think that ?stooping? is a very good idea. It is also very prone to error based on preconceptions that invariably work their way into any such endeavor. Ask Lew about how reliable people are when it comes to reporting on objective events objectively.

It?s just a commentary on human fallibility and our need to factor it in.

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