Back in my in-class-teaching days, I was teaching a philosophy of ethics class, where the assignment was to analyze the recent stand-down of Cleveland OH police because of charges of racial profiling. When the class was over, I returned with the written assignments to the faculty area, which was empty and silent. Wondering where my colleagues were, I went into the faculty lounge, where everyone was standing, silently watching the television. A plane was flying into the second World Trade Center tower.
If you had told me at that moment that 13 years later America would be the laughingstock of the world and the biggest issue in the news would still be racial profiling by police...
Here in NJ it isn’t a story at all anymore; the police have completely “stood down”...
9/11 highlighted other problems in this area (we are in plain view of the towers, about a dozen miles to the west in NJ); the collapse of commercial real estate demand (numerous vacancies in the towers themselves undoubtedly saved lives that day) and the fact that the new mayor stated they would not be replacing the 343 firefighters killed that day - they had been anticipating downsizing anyway (think about the money involved in keeping those bloated payrolls).
Both of those issues are much more pressing today than any race issues; all sides concerned with that are resigned to the fact that we have a permanent underclass that will never assimilate and a shrinking base of productive workers to provide for them. A few years after 9/11, while Newark NJ was setting records with murders, they laid off 160+ cops due to budget problems - those that can’t provide for their own police protection simply don’t get any...
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No one would have told you that, and if by some odd chance they had, you wouldn't have believed them.