Posted on 05/05/2006 8:01:45 AM PDT by dukeman
On April 12, a Wednesday, a boulder-size concrete block was hurled at my car as I passed the Janie Poe public-housing complex on Central Avenue in Sarasota's Newtown. [The predominantly black neighborhood north of downtown.]
It narrowly missed the windshield and, after swerving out the way of oncoming traffic, I hotheadedly pulled a U-turn back toward the 15 or so youths -- who appeared to be 12- to 18-year-olds -- standing in front of and just beyond the wall of an apartment at the edges of Janie Poe. I turned into 23rd Street and called 911, and several of the youths came at the car with a barrage of smaller rocks. This time I did not think twice about speedily getting out of there. The 911 dispatcher told me to go home and that an officer would be there to take a report if I chose.
Awhile later at home, after yet another call to 911 by my husband, wondering where the officers were, two patrolmen showed up. I hurriedly explained the incident, thinking that we would drive back to the scene and that I would show them the where and who of it all. Instead, the officers admonished me for having been on Central in the first place. Their solution was for me never to drive on Central again and instead stay on U.S. 41, where I belonged. Perhaps misunderstanding that our similar skin colors suggested that we were of one mind, one said that if Janie Poe were to catch on fire overnight it wouldn't be a bad thing. Coincidentally, as we stood there, a radio call came in saying a police car was under attack on the same corner by youths throwing boulders.
The officers wrote all of it off to criminal mischief. I liken it more to assault with a deadly weapon. The cinder block was not simply tossed from beyond a wall; my car was singled out by a youth who ran up to and alongside it and hurled the block purposefully, leaving a crater on the hood.
Until then my daily trek along Central had been a benign journey home, but the incident has shaken my sense of where and why I live here. I can't ignore the irony of this incredibly philanthropic city, which lulls us into a false sense of security that life is so good in Sarasota and aren't we all doing a lot for the community?
I don't operate in a vacuum, and it's bad enough that if I ever wanted to buy drugs in this town, or pay for sex, I wouldn't have to think twice about exactly which corner I should head to, passing it every day as I head downtown.
But sadly, Janie Poe is just one sharp example of the rampant income inequality in Sarasota,and the boulder-throwing an illustration of the complexities we face throughout our community. I've seen various politicians show up at Janie Poe for photo-ops in recent years, and I've read about the wretched conditions the residents face. Recently, I had read an article in West Coast Woman about Valerie Buchand, a community activist who works tirelessly for the rights of Janie Poe residents. So I called her.
Ms. Buchand said policing in and around Janie Poe has been a problem for years, and wondered "who the police are working for." She said that the laws should be for everyone, and that they \[the police\] could care less what happens within the environs of the public-housing project and that if this happened on Lido Key the response would be anything but nonchalant. Ms. Buchand hardly condoned the acts of the children, saying that if their mothers knew what they were up to, they would take them to task. She urged me to speak up about what happened.
I'm aware of the good work that the relatively new police Chief Peter Abbott is doing since his arrival in late 2002. So I called him and reached his assistant, who was duly dismayed at the incident. I offered to send along a draft of this missive for his response, rather than elicit a reaction after the fact. She seemed appreciative, but I have received no reply.
My first reaction is to indict law enforcement; the police are supposed to uphold the law, not make excuses based on where one drives. What on earth is going to happen when Wal-Mart opens on U.S. 301? Will people need to avoid Janie Poe and circumnavigate that part of town because the police would prefer that the project burned rather than participate in real policing to keep all our neighborhoods safe?
But for me it's clearly only part of the problem. Why should it be unsafe to drive on any road in Sarasota at midday, and why are these children growing up in an environment where the pastime of throwing rocks into traffic is OK?
I believe it will be torn down, perhaps as part of this affordable housing issue which is currently percolating through the county.
Say, have you noticed lately how the paper keeps throwing in Atkins' nickname, "Glossie"? What's the deal with that?
next time mow 'em down with your auto......only a traffic ticket and 4 points......
That only applies if you're trying to run over Katherine Harris.
I noticed she didn't say anything about all of the poor "Mothers" of these little bastards out throwing rocks at her. Most of those kids are illegitimate (73% of black babies) and don't stand a snowballs chance in hell of breaking out of the poverty they didn't ask to be born into. Education of them is the key, and the libs won't allow vouchers in Florida... in a way it is sad the writer of the article didn't lose a few teeth from the rocks, that would have changed the whole texture of her silly-assed article and made for some interesting reading.
I think we need to amend that famous observation with a qualification: a conservative is an intelligent liberal who's been mugged. As this writer proves by her statement blaming society for the boulder hurling thugs' behavior, she is neither conservative, nor intelligent nor even liberal in the classic sense of the word: she's just another dumb racial paternalist who thinks that african-americans aren't capable of exercising free will and conducting themselves in a civilized way unless whitey gives them enough goodies to bribe them out of moral turpitude.
To her, black folks are akin to brain-damaged children who cannot be held responsible for their actions, as any member of any other racial,ethnic,national or social group on the planet would be.If she were attacked by a roving gang of left-handed Lithuanian Lutherans you can rest assured she would be holding them personally accountable and not blaming the cops for any failure to restrain them from pursuing this felonious misconduct with more midnight basketball programs or other racially paternialistic "remedies." .
As the attitude in her article suggests, she just doesn't think that black kids are capable of decent conduct unless & until government lavishes bucket-loads of cash on them in an effort to civilize them. Outrageous. What does she think melanin is? Some malignant substance that paralyzes the moral conscience? If I were one of the african-american moms I would be almost as offended by this woman's patently racist attitudes as I was by my child's violent behavior.
Funny you say that. A buddy of mine used to work in the State Attorney's Office (the name for prosecutors in Florida) in Sarasota. He used to joke that a white guy in a van in this part of town was probable cause for the cops to suspect a drug deal. And a good joke always contains a kernel of truth.
I grew up in Sarasota and, except for attending college, have spent about 47 years here. Yes, there are big social and economic separations, but (believe it or not) I've seen improvement. I can't argue with your underlying premise. I just wouldn't have stated it as strongly as you. I'll bet you're a real hoot at city commission meetings! :-)
Did you see where the Young Professionals Club rallied in favor of the affordable housing initiative? Young professionals need subsidized housing too? LOL
Now I read where they're going to force owners, when they want to sell their affordable housing, to sell at the same price they purchased it for. Unbelievable. No incentive to maintain or improve their property. Guaranteed to create another ghetto. Our commissioners are absolutely clueless. They run as republicans but they are socialists through and through.
As for "Glossie"....apparently this was his mothers name so in honor of her, he's taken it on as a middle name. Fred's a piece of work. The SH!T interviewed him about his plans as mayor and he said he will be focused on disparity in wealth, affordable housing and racism. Thank goodness the mayor doesn't have any power.
As a Massachusetts conservative, I can tell you, you got that right.
Say, with a name like geezerwheezer shouldn't you be living down in Florida already? Bring cash and a pistol.....
Public housing is the farm team for penitentiaries.
Or it's known as the "good-ol days" before they were in the pen!
Boy, you got that all stated in a single post!
And true it is...When I saw the thing about Walmart, the scotch tape that keeps my eyes from rolling into my head ripped off.
They need economic opportunites to either get off the government teat or get a job to get ahead, but at the first sign of that happening, Liberals panic.
If only she'd been DWK (driving while Kennedy) instead - her car would have been swerving back and forth so much it couldn't possibly have been struck.
Welcome to the REAL world, honey. Their Mommas might be fine upstanding women who go to church twice a week and work hard to put food on the table. More likely than not, though, their Mommas are crack sluts who could give a rat's rear end where their sons are. And I assume there are no Daddys around because no one has taken the time to teach these boys that throwing rocks at cars is something you DO NOT DO.
If she's concerned about the police nonchalance, she should ride with them when something big goes down in the 'hood' and watch them try to get ANY information from the residents. Nobody saw or heard NOTHIN!! My sister encountered this when she was a cop and there was a murder in the 'projects'. A potential witness was gunned down in broad daylight in an area full of people, but when the cops arrived no one knew who he was, how he got there, or why he was lying there in a pool of blood.
It's very frustrating for the police, and it doesn't help when activists in these neighborhoods exhort the people NOT to help the police because 'they've never helped us'. Well, that only keeps things going in a downward spiral. Things will only change when a few people in those areas get the GUTS to stand up and say "enough is enough", and that they're tired of being held hostange to thugs and criminals out of some distorted sense of 'brotherhood'.
Sadly, the majority of the broodmares who give us little darlings like these kids would nod their heads and praise this author for her "understanding", if someone read the column to them and explained what the words meant, and then only if they weren't drugged or drunked out.
Ignorant, illiterate, stoned and perpetually angry - just how the liberals like them to be.
Well from this LEO's POV, it's like this: You have to pay police not only their salalry and bennies (especially if they're likely to find themselves eating concrete blocks now and then - that dental work is expensive!) You have to have enough police. You have to train them - which is an ongoing thing, not a one-time thing, so you have to have enough to keep an area patrolled while some of the force is at the range, gym, or classroom. You have to provide some protection against liability suits arising from the way so and so broke his teeth when he tried to run away with his hands cuffed behind his back and tripped over the curb.
All this costs money. If you are spending your tax dollars on understanding why kids throw concrete blocks at cars, you probably aren't spending enough on policing, courts, Juvenile Detention Centers, and the one or two programs that actually do some good -- especially because those programs are faith-based and the ACLU has already said they're going to climb all over your butt if you try them in your prison.
What Rodney King did for our department - clear over on the other side of the country - was deprive us of a good tool for tussles with bogies and essentially cripple us when we're working with some crazed, testosterone-poisoned hoodlum who is so coked up that he can't even feel the peppper spray until 10 minutes after it hits him. (No kidding. I was there. Sumbidge kicked out a cruiser window, blacked a buddy's eye and split his lip, and then suddenly, yells "OW!" and starts wiping his face.)
I personally enjoy the challenge, but I'm stupid. Wise LEOs decide thay'd like to come home in one piece and try to contain w hat they cannot control - because the tools for control whave been taken away.
/rant off.
The Liberal who wrote that apparently needs another mugging, as the first one did not "take".
It is no joke. I have a van and drive in Detroit almost daily. I am stopped and harrassed by the police on a regular basis. The cops tell me that since I'm white - I'm obviously buying drugs or picking up whores.
A black cop told me once to get out of "his city" and stay on my side of Eight Mile Road. I asked him, "If I was a black male driving in Bloomfield Hills and was told by a white cop to get out of "his" city and stay in "my part of town" - the cop would probably be fired, sued and prosecuted for a "hate crime".
The cop just looked at me and said, "What's your point?"
I answered, "I think I just made it"
Driving While White is no joke in Detroit.
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