Part of the juvy crime/gang rates in the 90s was the crack epidemic, iirc.
Here, gang crimes are going up and gangs are expanding. Denver had a gang problem in the 90s - especially in the high schools - that is seeing an upward trend. It went down a lot and now seems to be edging its way up (according to the news and DPD).
And let’s face it - the longer you lock up people, the safer the streets will be (temporarily).
Finally, not all crimes committed by juveniles are reported to law enforcement.
To add: For those that grew up in middle class America, we’d never think of those things. But some of these kids are just acting the way their parents did 20 years ago. So we see what “other people’s kids are doing” and think, “Back in my day…”
Well, back in your day, your ethnic background/neighborhood/religion/socioeconomic group may have never done those things. So for some of us, it’s apples and oranges.
I grew up in Iowa. Hard for me to look at Seattle and say, “Kids these days!” if I didn’t grow up there.
You can cite that then, can’t you? 'Cause I resubscribed to the Post approximately one minute after I got back in town, and I watch the local news on Channel 4 almost every night, and I’ve seen nothing in or on the news that gang crimes are going up.
So, no-one has tried “I don’t want to kill you, and you don’t want to be dead”? Pity, I always wanted to know if that worked.
Back when I got around by train, I was always armed with a nice thick book. Little shits would have to go nuclear before I noticed them. If they did manage to get my attention, I wouldn’t say a word, just give them this flat, narrow look. If that didn’t work - it always worked - my back plan was to pull out a cigarette. People might look the other way while you get stomped, but no one would put up with that.
Where did Haredye get banned? S/he was less aggressive than the s-Punk.
Seriously Ferret Herder… You’re talking to an ex Chicago Housing Authority officer.. We use to make open air drug buys right in front of Green street building and then walk to the Water Tower and have lunch..
Not to mention the open air drug dealing on Howard street the Jamaicans were running through the 90’s.. Right by Rogers Park.. and Evanston. Too bad I couldn’t have taken you on a ride along..
I’m not doubting anything you’re saying, but I saw more shit go down in a 15-minute walk through San Francisco’s Tenderloin at noon than I saw in numerous visits to the neighborhood around Rosa’s around midnight. San Fran may not be as rough as some cities, but it wears it’s rough patches on its sleeve much more openly than most.
Exactly, especially your last sentence. I’ve walked through parts of Chicago with burned-out shells of buildings, boarded-up houses, and people watching me pass like they were wondering WTF I was doing there (frankly, I was wondering the same thing), but damn, the Tenderloin in the middle of the day made me want to get the hell out of there much more desperately than anything I’ve seen in Chicago. And I agree with whoever commented on the sheer number of homeless that are visible in SF as well.
Because the largest of the little shits offered to fight the guy who told them to knock it off. (“You want to go?” is a challenge to fight.)
Last I heard, Washington state has a consent to battery law. If someone says “You think you can take me? Then bring it!” that’s consent, and if he subsequently gets his ass kicked it’s not a criminal offense. I assume there are limits to what degree of violence is covered, and obviously if the other party didn’t consent any damage to him still qualifies as assault. My impression is that it’s intended to let stupid people who pick fights get what they deserve without anyone incurring an unnecessarily harsh criminal record. They can still be charged with stupidity in public or the local equivalent.
My sources are old, though, so check up on this before laying into anyone.
I would have to see a citation. Generally speaking, “consent to battery” applies to things such as surgery and contact sports, not to being beaten up just because you were behaving obnoxiously.
I, too, would like evidence of this mysteriously unreported rise in gang activity. I do know that there was a spike a few years ago in Asian gang-related violence, but that seems to have disappeared. I worked in community corrections in the early 90s, and about half of my caseload were gang members, and that was the midst of the uptick in violence.
That was me. I love San Francisco a lot (really) but there are parts of it that were shitholes. The homeless issue was bad enough when I lived there but the part that made it scary for me was that a lot were genuinely mentally ill in a scary fashion.
This thread is odd because it’s as if people are implying only one place can have shitholes:
“San Francisco has shithole parts of town”
“oh yeah? Then about Chicago, hmmm?”
Just about every major city in the US has areas I’d classify as shitholes.
