[off-topic hijack]
Thank you for sharing, Superdude. Your story reminded me of my own mother, though details vary. It was while she was still married to abusive husband that she attempted suicide multiple times. Politics might have been part of the problem: Dad was moving toward right-wing racism, while Mom was marching with César Chávez and volunteering at health clinics for braceros, etc. (She brought me along to mop the floors.)
She never experienced severe poverty — by the time Dad found a judge to lower his alimony, I was earning enough to help out. And she didn’t ever finish the college program marriage had interrupted. But she did graduate from rehab to become a renowned alcohol and drug treatment counselor herself, even writing a book. She was so admired that her employer practically insisted she keep working in her 70’s. She was my best friend and the person I admire most.
Sometimes in her old age I would visit her on Sunday, and she and I would go to an outdoor cafe in town center to drink chai and listen to music. We’d often run into someone (usually an ex-junkie) delighted to see her; almost invariably the person would tell me that my mother had saved his or her life.
I was slightly conservative during my college years (1979-1983), though nowhere near as conservative as most of my peers. (I went to a very conservative fundamentalist college – David Lipscomb in Nashville, Tennessee).
My views begin changing during grad school at Vanderbilt. The more widely I read, the less sense conservative viewpoints seemed to have. Now I am 59, and fairly liberal in most respects.
I used to usually vote for whatever conservative party was up (Canada’s had some name changes.) Now I don’t.
I personally haven’t changed that much - I am a bit more liberal on some issues, still conservative on others. But the conservative movement in general, here and really throughout the Western world, has lurched into brainless populism and proto-fascism and I have no time for either.
I always thought that one of the functions of police was to investigate shootings, find who was responsible and send evidence to a prosecutor. Boy is my face red!
I suspect DrDeth plans to die on the hill of “but they can’t be sued for not protecting any individual person,” or some similar nonsense.
It’s pretty well-known that a lot of kids who join gangs do so as a risk-mitigation strategy. Joining a gang earns you powerful enemies–but it also gets you some powerful friends. If you’re getting the enemies without joining the gang (i.e., you’re getting shot at even though you never joined), joining in order to gain those powerful friends can be a rational survival strategy.
Yes- investigate. But they are not there to stand guard over you. And it’s very hard to investigate shootings when all the witnesses refuse to “snitch”.
The police are there to protect society or the community, not just one person.
I refuse to accept that the “only way” for a youth in a bad neighborhood is to join a criminal gang which very often leads to deaths or incarceration.
And yes, that kid had been shot- but *by accident. * After joining a gang he was in high danger of being shot- *on purpose. *
I dont see how joining the gang reduced his risk, especially since Esprise Me“A young man was arrested for robbing a liquor store. Because he was a known gang member, he got slapped with a gang enhancement on top of that.” so basically he went to prison for a long time- because he joined a gang. I dont see that as “protection”.
Tell me** Left Hand of Dorkness,** exactly how is the Police force supposed to "protect’ someone from a accidental drive by shooting?
Let us even assume they catch and convict the guy who did it. How does that ensure no other accidental drive by shooting will ever occur?
And what is the chance of a kid being accidentally targeted twice?
Until you walk a mile in their shoes, you can’t know what decisions make sense and don’t make sense in those circumstances. These are just human beings. If decent humans are in desperate enough circumstances, they might resort to desperate things, like joining a gang. This is as true in America as it is anywhere else. Desperate humans do desperate things. Unfortunately, there are a lot of desperate human children in the US. Some of them are going to do things that seem irrational or unreasonable to comfortable folks like us.
Once you just decide to accept that most of these folks are just regular humans, things like this start to make a lot more sense. These aren’t moral superhumans, always taking the perfectly morally correct action no matter their circumstances. Just regular people, with regular capabilities and regular endurance and moral fiber.
Sure, desperate people make bad choices, I understand this. I was a Federal Agent for 20 years, I understand this more than most. And gawd knows poor people in the ghettos are sadly faced with more desperate choices than many other Americans.
But what was pushed here is that this desperate bad choice was actually a good choice.
Now- do I blame the kid for making this bad, desperate choice? No. I understandwhy he made that choice. But it wasnt his* only* choice and it was- as we have seen- a very *bad *choice.
Sometimes there are no good choices, only bad ones. Desperate circumstances really can call for desperate measures. Sucks, but that’s the real world sometimes.
True. But in the example given the law to be enforced would be ‘don’t shoot people, except possibly in immediate self-defense’. Admittedly the details of this are going to be in the form of multiple laws and more complicated language; but the overlap with protecting the public ought to be pretty good.
It’s unfortunately possible that the police in a given area and set of circumstances may be unable to enforce the law and therefore unable to protect the public. But that doesn’t mean that it isn’t their job.
Yes, it is the job of the police to protect the public. They do this by arresting bad guys and doing patrols. They wont take one kid, wrap him in a bulletproof vest and stand guard over him 24/7/365 until he grows up.
So- not any one individual. If you call the police and ask they put a patrol car out in front of your house as you have received a threat, they will rarely comply.