The riots in Baltimore brought back memories of the 1968 riots after Dr. King’s murder when I worked in the inner city. The city burned around us and it took time before the violence played itself out. It seems very little has changed.
We need to go deeper into the causes. The accusations are flying back and forth as the police are accused of not being forceful enough or not prepared enough. If they had responded forcefully they would have been accused of being excessive and if the government had been more “prepared” they would have been accused of provocation.
One root cause relates to what the black community has been telling us. We are seeing videos documenting instances of abuse. The fault does not lie with the police. It lies with us and our policies. Some of it has a racist base but much of it has a misguided policy base.
The “war on drugs” was a major contributor. We have a drug problem but it is not how it is often characterized. Think back to the movies when cigarettes were everywhere. Finally we addressed nicotine addiction and are still working on it decades later. Now in film and on television the focus is on coffee (caffeine).
We all have receptors for drugs and they vary from person to person. It took me decades to deal with my excellent nicotine receptors. After an auto accident, with enduring pain, I learned that I am not an opiate enthusiast. Each of us has our own story.
The point is that drug problems are intense and widespread and we do not address them well. At last we are constructively dealing with the second failed prohibition of marijuana. Now we begin the journey of appropriate regulation. And in line behind it are many other drugs to be addressed.
Politicians proclaimed the war on drugs and the sentences were harsh including such things as twenty-five years for possession of one joint of marijuana in Texas. Over thirty years we went from a million people incarcerated to 2.4 million today. We seem to be recognizing our mistake. But the consensus is more about money wasted than humanity.
In fact, this war was unfairly visited upon young black and brown men. Recently I drove through inner city Baltimore and saw black men sitting on the sidewalk with a few items for sale in front of them. I knew who they were. Men who had been imprisoned for minor drug offenses. After often lengthy incarceration they had no meaningful education or job skills. Their feelings of outrage about their treatment surely lie just under the surface.
Then there was the effect on the police. We say they are to protect and to serve. Older citizens have images of the much beloved local officer walking through the streets of the town greeting his fellow citizens. That was before the police were pushed into the position of enforcing absurdly harsh and often inappropriate drug laws. There will always be some bad apples in any organization but it was our policies which changed the standing of police in the community.
We have a lot of our misdeeds to rectify starting now. Under the circumstances the job will be a difficult one. We need to carefully reconsider our laws and policies and to reach out to one another to restore mutual respect and restore the police to their proper place in society. And our perspective on drugs needs serious attention along with in depth education and treatment.
Drugs are being hawked on television. “Tell your doctor about the drugs you take and your medical conditions.” Seriously? These drugs should not be sold on television and certainly we should have better communications with our doctors. Drugs are everywhere and we need a solid campaign of education and involvement. Dealing with the complex issue of addiction and drug use in general requires wise consideration. And we very much need to get the (expletives deleted) manipulative, self serving politicians out of it. They have done immeasurable damage.
We have spent decades fighting nicotine addiction and we need to move on to enlightened policies regarding all drugs. When we return to reality the public and the police can deal with each other with mutual respect. And, need I say, it is time to deal with what has been revealed about the treatment of young black men? This is a time for long overdue careful consideration and new forms of commitment.
Gerald maynes says
Yes, it does bring back memories when as a twelve year old kid living in Jersey City, I looked out the window to see two policemen come to our house armed with Thompsons (Korean war surplus purchased in the mid 60!s by the Jersey City PD) and watched as these gents escorted my Dad who managed a Supermarket in that city to his store. Riots had broken out in Newark and in New York City, The Mayor of Jersey City addressed his town, that rioters, looters and arsonist would be shot on sight. We did not have any riots inn that city, my dad did not have any customers that day at all and the local paper had a picture of My Dad entering his store with his escort and not looking to happy about it.
The lesson to this role down memory lane is, due the quick action of the Mayor, no was got hurt no building burned no property was stolen and the city was soon turned back to normal every day life (Mayor Whelan would soon be indicted for mass corruption and sent to jail, after all this was Hudson county after all). But the end result was my Family as well as most middle-class folks headed to Bergen County. The city lost its tax basis and the poor were left with a crumbling school system saw two hospitals out of three close and the city fall into a quick decline, that not until very recently has begun to reverse.
The real question in Baltimore is, how will this play out/ Will the Middle-class depart? will the Inner Harbor become a ghost town and will the jobs associated with it leave.
As for the folks who rioted, they are criminals period and do not deserve any other consideration. Due process is not achieved in a Day or a week( What happened to that man is simply awful ) But , rioting wounding 14 cops, one that is just hanging on to life is just as bad, neither should be tolerated and all involved in both cases should be held responsible and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
Joe Diamond says
I was present for the 1968 riot in Washington, D.C. & I just missed the one in Baltimore,
These took place while I was involved in my extended undergraduate work-a-little-study-a-little years. Even back then I felt the summary of events which identified all occurrences as part of the same riot and all participants as members of the same mob were simplistic. That analysis was not accurate then. The recent CNN (and others ) coverage of events in Baltimore also misses deeper points…..I think.
Perhaps the major error is to assume that everyone in the streets is responding to the inciting event and shares the same motivations. In 1968 the killing of Dr. King was presented as another southern murder. The looting & burning was presented as the response, according to TV news. Press & print media are still covering the event in much greater depth as information surfaces.
Now we have a death at the hands of the police. Rioting is presented as the response. And we have the rush to a superficial explanation. As one police officer is quoted, “. . .you don’t respond to the demands of rioters. You pepper spray them and lock them up if you can . . .” The curious onlookers will disperse, go home and avoid a police contact. The rioters; those seeing a crowd situation as an opportunity to steal and rob during a time of reduced police potential will do what they can, only limited by what the cops can do to stop them. Some will be arrested. Most will drift away. Nothing will be resolved. There will be no change.
What can be said for those who see the death of another prisoner in police custody as part of a continued excess by cops? They demand their right to due process under law and resent the continued taking of this right by local police. Realizing the current death would have gone unnoticed or reported except for a cell phone camera in the hands of a private citizen, they question police procedure and have stopped trusting cops. What can be said to those who see the cops as an occupying army? They want the thugs gone. They want their civil rights. They want equal protection under law. The last time these rights were denied by an occupation army it didn’t end well for the soldiers or their king. Someone even wrote a song about it over in Baltimore.
Joe
Gerald Maynes says
Sorry, The song you refer to was written about the war of 1812. The army of occupation that you refer to was the Revolutionary war. Comparing the police department of any city as and an army of occupation is silly and solves nothing. If the police simply withdrew from inner city areas as what happened under David Dinkins did in New York, the results would be the same, The highest rate of murder and violent crime in those areas in the entire history of the City of New York .
The real answer is for the kids to stay in school, get the skills to get a job. It would also help if the kids Dads would get involved in their childrens lives. I spent many years working in areas like the South Bronx and in the alphabet . Most of the people I met were nice people, but a certain percentage were simply hell bent for self destruction . How you cure that problem( We as a society have spent a fortune trying to fix the problem) I haven’t a clue. It is just sad.
Joe Diamond says
Ok Gerry,
I did try to smoke one past you with the Baltimore song……….but the cop occupation army is part of the problem over there as it is in many cities.
As you report, most people, even in the roughest urban areas, are nice people. In the name of public order the innocent and well meaning population is subjected to stop and frisk patrols. Force, including guns is used as a first response rather than a last resort on some city streets.
It is as if there are two different worlds here in the same country…governed by the same rule of law. It is nuts!
Perhaps it is the cities themselves. Economic shifts have abandoned a segment of the population, leaving them to exist in old, substandard housing in former industrial areas. In these settings children grow in a lead poisoned environment with street crime so dangerous there is an equal chance of being shot by a cop or a robber. Often the only source of income is the drug industry……..while crime related to drugs removes one or both parents from child rearing. It is not a great society.
I could go on. I spent a year teaching in a school a few blocks where Freddy Gray was arrested. That was forty years ago. Not much has changed except now all the industry is gone and the drug engine is really running. …….over there in in the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Joe (also clueless)
Gerald Maynes says
Yes, I worked in New York’s saddest areas as a manager in the supermarket business. You want to have direct contact with people be their grocer. Crime, I was held up at least six times, and I have been shot at. Shop lifting every day. Thank God for the Police I am sure that I would not be here today. I have seen sadness and acts of extreme kindness in the city. The things that I did see, you can’t get and education if you do not go to school. You can!t get a job if you do not have job skills. Basic things like being able to count and read. Knowing that you have to show up at the correct time each and every day also would be a good idea
How do you teach these things on a mass scale that is the question. I do know that the kids that I worked with figured it out; some that I still keep in touch with now have become store managers, department heads, etc. So, I guess it can be done.
But just tossing more money at the problem isn!t going to cure it.
Stephan Sonn says
A debate at last. and this one could be great.
Classic: enlightenment V denial.. Set minds are static
but that condition often rivals the subject itself to set the stakes.