Posted on 11/17/2018 7:50:10 AM PST by Olog-hai
Veteran Alabama law enforcement officer Mark Pettway grew up in a black neighborhood called Dynamite Hill because the Ku Klux Klan bombed so many houses there in the 1950s and 60s.
Now, after becoming the first black person elected sheriff in Birmingham on the same day voters elected the communitys first black district attorney Pettway sees himself as part of a new wave of officers and court officials tasked with enforcing laws and rebuilding community trust fractured by police shootings, mass incarceration, and uneven enforcement that critics call racist.
In a state where conservative politicians typically preach about getting tough on crime, Jefferson Countys new sheriff ran and won on an alternative message. He favors decriminalizing marijuana, opposes arming school employees, supports additional jailhouse education programs to reduce recidivism and plans for deputies to go out and talk to people more often, rather than just patrolling.
Going forward we need to think about being smarter and not being harder, said the Democrat Pettway, 54.
While the nations law enforcement officers are still mostly white men, and groups including the American Civil Liberties Union and Black Lives Matter call for sweeping changes in the criminal justice system, minorities appear to be making gains nationwide.
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.com ...
” . . . a black neighborhood called Dynamite Hill because the Ku Klux Klan bombed so many houses there in the 1950s and 60s.”
That was half a century ago. Birmingham now has a large muslim population.
If you keep looking backwards, you’re going to find out you have become irrelevant.
Riiiiight, because citizens need nannies, not protection. Got it. When parents and schools fail, it is the job of our police force to compensate for those failures. Outsourcing responsibility is the trend, and it always winds up in the lap of law enforcement. That is the start of the creation of a police state. What fun!
“Veteran Alabama law enforcement officer Mark Pettway grew up in a black neighborhood called Dynamite Hill because the Ku Klux Klan bombed so many houses there in the 1950s and 60s.”
He is a Democrat and I wonder if he realizes the KKK was created and and ran by the Democrats?
According to the left whites are all evil. Forget that whites built the best nations known to man.
We just elected a new black sheriff in Wake Co North Carolina.
Mumbles when he speaks but managed to determine that he is stopping the sheriff dept cooperation with ICE.
Yea.. /s
Sheriff’s dont write the law, they enforce it so what he thinks should happen to the law is unimportant.
Naah. Birmingham has lost nearly half its residents. Virtually most of the Whites voted with their feets and fled to the adjacent counties. In 1960, it had 340,000 people (205k White, 135k Black). By 2010, it plummeted to 212,000 (with just 44k White & 156k Black). Even Blacks are leaving, too, dropping from a peak population of 178k in 2000. There’s virtually as many White folks in the city of Dothan as in B’ham today (probably more since 2010), and Dothan only has 65k overall.
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