While Baltimore Police Idle, Black Lives Perish

The Intercept ^ | June 17, 2015 | Juan Thompson

[Brooklyn Attitude]

Girl goes to party, thugs follow her home and kill her. How are the police to blame for this or any of the other killings? Were they supposed to predict the crime and arrest the future-perps before the event?

[Sherman Logan]

Vigilante justice

A truly classic oxymoron.

[ConservaTexan]

— purportedly members of the Bloods street organization —

That's one way to put it if you don't want to offend the natives.

[Sherman Logan]

Many of the killings, perhaps including this one, probably happened because the cops are keeping a low profile rather than being highly visible. It emboldens the thugs.

Of course, keeping a low profile is exactly what they claimed to want, and indeed what the author of this piece calls for.

16 year old really cute girl partying with thugs. What could possibly go wrong?

[Senator_Blutarski]

This is a mathematics issue. They got upset that blacks were being arrested in disproportionate numbers as compared to other racial groups. Now the arrest rate is proportional. The Baltimore Police fixed the problem.

[sphinx]

What the residents of Baltimore seek from police isn’t difficult to comprehend. Like most people, they want to be free of harassment and brutality, but they also need the police to do their jobs and protect them from the most violent criminal elements of urban life. In the context of Baltimore, this means not targeting impoverished people hustling for a better existence who may be involved in petty street crime.

This goes straight to the heart of broken windows policing, which many of us regard as the key policing innovation of the last generation. People who write articles like this should be sent to Singapore.

[Alberta's Child]

Actually, I think there's a lot of confusion about what exactly "broken windows policing" is all about. It's typically understood to mean a policing method that deals with low-level street crime as a way to make criminals feel less comfortable about committing more serious crimes. But that's not really the case at all. The whole purpose of arresting petty criminals is to get them processed in the system, check their fingerprints and/or DNA against records for unsolved crimes, and keep their data on file so they can be identified more easily if they are later involved in a serious crime.

That last point is an important one. There was a high-profile Central Park rape case in New York City a few years ago where the perpetrator was identified because he left fingerprint evidence at the scene. And his fingerprints were only on file because he had previously been arrested -- just once -- for jumping a subway turnstile a few years earlier.

[Vermont Lt]

The bloods are a street organization?

Just like the nuns who care for the homeless in our town.

The bloods must wear red habits. //sarc.

[Terry L Smith]

Y’all complain about how bad the cops are to all the Negro citizens of Baltimore. So, the cops are put on a leash. THEN, y’all complain about the so-called increase in crime in yo’ backyard, demanding those nasty cops come and catch criminals in that same yard????

Go fish!

[1rudeboy]

I have a hard time caring about any of this.

I wish I could be so callous.

[Vermont Lt]

I think it falls under, “Physician, cure thyself.”

If your community doesn’t tolerate lawlessness, this stuff doesn’t happen.

[1rudeboy]

And in other news, a 16-year-old girl lies dead after being raped, and FReepers rationalize it.

[Vermont Lt]

No one is saying it’s ok. Please don’t think that.

But there is no way this is on the cops. THAT is what the story is trying to convey. I think it’s dawning on the people of Baltimore that the Police might be targeting blacks, because blacks might be causing crime.

But what happened to that young woman is a tragedy. Tell me how the cops are going to stop that.

[Vermont Lt]

Also, when you were 16 were you going to house parties with 23 year olds?

I know I wasn’t. And I sure as hell wasn’t going home with them.

[Sherman Logan]

She didn’t “go home with them.”

They followed her home and then broke in.

[Vermont Lt]

You are correct. I got that wrong.

But once again, if you had a 16 year old daughter would she be going to a house party with 23 year olds? And once they got home, would there not be anyone in the house to defend this 16 year old?

You don’t see anything wrong with this picture?

I am not excusing the murderers. I am questioning what happened leading up to this.

[Theodore R.]

No matter what, the Baltimore people will never figure it out.

[Truth29]

"“Vigilante justice may need to have a comeback”........... Thereby contributing to more crime by those who wish to fix the problem."

True, but justice is defined by those in charge. If we are headed to a road warrior future, justice will be determined locally.

[Sherman Logan]

I agree. As other comments on this thread demonstrate.

Girls of this age (any age, really), should not be partying with thugs. But they’ve got that whole bad-boy vibe going for them.

But note what the article does. Black thugs kill a black girl, and they blame white America and the police.

[conservativejoy]

Exactly. How could police work have prevented the bad judgment of this young girl and the savage callousness of her murderers?