“How do you propose to end mass shootings then?”

[willie]

When neighborhoods were stolen with token pay and bulldozed and then their inhabitants put in housing projects, cohesiveness within community disappeared. Mrs.Jones' house was on the corner. Uncle Willie lived next door, and my best buddies lived a block over. This community was similar and certainly as good and maybe better than than what the rich folks across town had. Mrs. Jones, Uncle Willie, and the white cop who came over here when he wanted to hide all had high expectations for youth. Pride was evident The men had gone to war in 1917, 1942, 1950, and 1965. They came back, contributed, raised families, and died. My scenario is not idyllic because it omitted poverty, limited opportunity, and discrimination. But today we have fewer such neighborhoods. Instead we have public housing.

For 10 years of my 16 year tenure I directed and taught an in school GED program. I was told that I had the highest pass rate in the state. When my kids did not attend, I went into housing projects alone and looked for them. I searched in nearby areas. Always I found them. After I retired, several black adults from these neighborhoods told me that the only reason that somebody didn't kill me was that they thought I was crazy and left me alone. However, many knew me and understood my mission. I had help. Always I got a passport from the guy who controlled the drug trade. I minded my business and stayed out of theirs. I digress to show that when I write about the inner city, I have personal knowledge. At night I worked at the jail.

[wvincent]

@willie, your'e a good man for doing that. Wish more teachers would put forth that kind of effort.
You just became MISTER Willie in my eye's.

[Totem Polar]

You don't need fucking chains to enslave people, just oppress them for a few generations, and make them fear getting away from the only support system they know.

QFT.

There is other good stuff in your post, but this sentence deserves a spotlight, IMO.

[UniSol]

Going further, the one flaw in the quoted line of thinking (from the polemecist) is that disarming the populace will always result in a state monopoly of force. Maybe... but the history of parts of Latin America says that control of power can also end up being split between the state and criminal factions, with Jose and Jane Q Public caught helplessly in the middle. That’s also a thing.

Absolutely. To me it's not as black and white as Me vs. The Govt, it's me/us vs all the shit that starts going down when rule of law weakens, including corrupt institutions but just as likely armed gangs of all stripes, usually operating on the premise of some ideology but really going after any targets of opportunity. Venezuela is a good example.

[Sensei]

Yesterday, the cops brought a 13 year old kid to the ED in cuffs and shackles because he went berserk on the teacher and SRO when told that he could not just walk off school property because he didn’t like class. In his rage, the kid made the dreaded “finger gun” sign and threatened to “turn the place over.” The SRO supervisor told me that the kid has not been on his ADHD meds for months, a common practice in the summer, and they would not accept him back at school unless we started him back on meds. The kid sat in our ED alone for 18 hours because his mom had to go to work and his dad didn’t have enough gas to go to the hospital.

To my law enforcement colleagues, please stop dumping your adult and juvenile justice cases to the emergency department. We are already so overrun with the drunks, addicts, and the homeless in search of a sandwich that we cannot care for the truly sick people with heart attacks, sepsis, depression, schizophrenia, and bipolar (not on meth or cocaine). People who are violent when they are mad belong in jail or juvenile detention - not in an emergency department with peopling have actual medical or psychiatric emergencies.

Moreover, there is no pill or ADHD medicine that is going to keep a 13 year old kid from kicking a teacher in the nuts because they are mad. That rage comes from living in an environment where your parents can’t come get you for 18 hours in the hospital. It’s not a “mental health issue” that is going to be fixed with a pill - life is not that easy.

[CWM11B]

@Sensei I wish we could do as you ask. We don't have choice. Trust me, you dont hate having them there more than I hate/hated bringing them and having to give up one of my guys to babysit, then try to cover calls for service to 1/3 of the city with three or four guys. We are just as short handed, if not more so than you guys. And are increasingly asked to do things that are not even remotely part of our duties or responsibilities. I wish you could see some of the bitch sessions we had internally about the lack of feasibility of most of what we are required to do by law or some external "policy"

Our systems just may have to collapse in order to do a reset. They are currently out of control, with no will to fix them. I absolutely believe there are those who do not want a fix and whose goal IS to cause a collapse. Just wait until December, when 16 and 17 year olds become "juveniles" for all offenses except traffic in NC. One guess as to what it's going to do to the crime rate.

[runcible]

Would be interesting to see if the ACLU gets involved for violations of his rights.

Why would the American Communist Lawyers Union do that?

http://riaclu.org/images/uploads/180...egislation.pdf

Published March 2018.

I think many forget that the ACLU is centered on Constitutionality, and has been the enemy of either major political party more than once in its history.

[JAD]

I don’t forget that at all, because it isn’t true. The ACLU is a leftist organization that uses the stalking horse of pseudoconstitutionality to accomplish leftist objectives.

[runcible]

If efforts like the canonical work of the WRP are exclusively leftist agenda, then one can appreciate why about half of the country votes in such a manner.

[TGS]

Yesterday, the cops brought a 13 year old kid to the ED in cuffs and shackles because he went berserk on the teacher and SRO when told that he could not just walk off school property because he didn’t like class. In his rage, the kid made the dreaded “finger gun” sign and threatened to “turn the place over.” The SRO supervisor told me that the kid has not been on his ADHD meds for months, a common practice in the summer, and they would not accept him back at school unless we started him back on meds. The kid sat in our ED alone for 18 hours because his mom had to go to work and his dad didn’t have enough gas to go to the hospital.

To my law enforcement colleagues, please stop dumping your adult and juvenile justice cases to the emergency department. We are already so overrun with the drunks, addicts, and the homeless in search of a sandwich that we cannot care for the truly sick people with heart attacks, sepsis, depression, schizophrenia, and bipolar (not on meth or cocaine). People who are violent when they are mad belong in jail or juvenile detention - not in an emergency department with peopling have actual medical or psychiatric emergencies.

Moreover, there is no pill or ADHD medicine that is going to keep a 13 year old kid from kicking a teacher in the nuts because they are mad. That rage comes from living in an environment where your parents can’t come get you for 18 hours in the hospital. It’s not a “mental health issue” that is going to be fixed with a pill - life is not that easy.

Cops are not medical providers, and when told that a kid has some sort of behavorial disorder, is supposed to be on medication and isn't taking it/doesn't have it, penchant for violence and made terroristic threats, they'd be negligent to not bring the kid to medical providers.


In fact, in various systems they wouldn't even be allowed to bring such a subject to jail due to the medication issue alone (without even getting into the other issues) without getting a "fit for confinement" letter from the ED.