Thursday, November 13, 2008

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

A fifth attack in the parking lot of Arundel Mills Mall!

24 comments:

Anonymous said...

Got to love the great descriptions of the perps they give in Sun. Man, men, woman, women; that narrows it down.

ppatin said...

Gee, I wonder what the race of the perps was...

Cham said...

Ppatin:

Racist are we?

Sebastian-PGP said...

Sooner or later the perps will make the mistake of going after an off duty cop or one of the unfortunately all too rare MD citizens with a carry permit and this will stop.

Apparently nothing else is going to work. If the knee jerk "the cops will take care of it" response was the answer...it'd have worked already.

Sebastian-PGP said...

Cham...I'm sure you mean well, but if you're going to argue that it's racist to point out that certain communities have issues with criminality disproportionate to their percentage of the population...well, then that's just as silly as being a racist.

Cham said...

Arundel Mills Mall is like a big melting pot of every type of race. How can one possibly figure out the race of someone committing a crime in the parking of that place? The perp could be latino, black, white, asian, indian, it could be anybody.

Why would anyone salivate over learning the race of the perp, unless they are making the assumption that the perpetrator most likely will be a member of one race, a race they don't like? That would be a racist.

Anonymous said...

Publish the witnesses race descriptions and then we would know. The papers just dance around the subject.

Sebastian-PGP said...

I don't think it's about salivation so much as it's relishing a chance to prod people who (ahem) are uncomfortable talking about the fact that it is more likely to be from some races or groups than others. The odds are it wasn't a Sihk, an Orthodox Hassidic, a emigre from Denmark, or a Vietnamese person.

A disproportionately large number of MD's violent crimes are perpetrated by people of a particular demographic--ppatin is getting a rise out of how uncomfortable that seems to make you.

All squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares. Just because you happen to be in that particular demographic doesn't mean there's anything inherently wrong with you.

A racist statement is something like "being in group XYZ means there's something wrong with you that makes you a criminal." A non racist statement is something like "for any number of reasons, group XYZ is over represented in crime stats". The reason might be the moons of Saturn or the alignment of the stars, but it doesn't really matter.

Baltimore_Yeti said...

So what did the perps look like?
If someone fitting the description of the perps is seen in the mall parking lot the police can be notified.

It would be helpful to know the RACE, age, sex, height, weight.Did they have facial hair? Wear glasses? Have gold teeth? Did they have an afro, bald, dreed locks or mullet? What type car was involved? Did they talk with a accent?

ppatin said...

"It would be helpful to know the RACE, age, sex, height, weight.Did they have facial hair? Wear glasses? Have gold teeth? Did they have an afro, bald, dreed locks or mullet? What type car was involved? Did they talk with a accent?"

Bingo. They ought to publish as much identifying information about the perps as possible, and the two most obvious characteristics are gender and race. Plus of course it's fun to push the buttons of politically correct whiners.

Cham said...

Ppatin, let's get back to the second comment on this board which was "I wonder what the race of the perp was."

You weren't worried about what they looked like, the length and color of their hair, what they were wearing, their height, their build or anything else. You wanted to know about the race of the perp. RACIST!!!

When is your next KKK meeting?

ppatin said...

Hold on while I call 911 so they can send a waaaaaaaaambulance for you.

Cham said...

Clearly you got nothing.

Sean said...

I believe it's spelled "sikh."

helix said...

Settle down kids, there are legit reasons for giving or not giving the race of the perp, depending on the situation.

For one thing, the race of the perp might not be clear. Yes, victims and witnesses get it wrong more often than we might think. Under stress, people fail to notice even the most basic things. Stating an accurate description of someone is not easy for folks that don't practice it regularly.

Secondly, the purpose of a description is to narrow down the possible suspects withing a particular context. Of course, during a 911 call the police will take whatever scant description they have to work with when the lead is hot. However, by the time the sun rises, details that are as slim as "it was a black teenager with a white t-shirt" lose all value. I mean, honestly, does it help the general public IN ANY WAY to know that a "black" perp in a "white" t-shirt robbed someone in arundel mills mall. Does the word "black" in any way practically narrow down the possible people who could have committed the crime. More importantly, if you heard on the news that a "black" guy is robbing people at the mall, would you be wise to automatically let your guard down in front of a pack of seedy-looking white teens when walking to your car?

The reason people bitch about the news not mentioning the race of a perp is because they are upset that the media is not pandering to their own racist ideas of what a criminal is.

Sebastian-PGP said...

Sean is correct.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikhism

Sean said...

Thanks, Helix!

ppatin said...

"The reason people bitch about the news not mentioning the race of a perp is because they are upset that the media is not pandering to their own racist ideas of what a criminal is."

Uh, look at the statistics about criminals in Baltimore. Is there something racist about acknowledging the facts? Hell, is it sexist to state the fact that most violent criminals are men?

Maurice Bradbury said...

Arundel Mills Mall is in Hanover, south of Baltimore city between Jessup and Glen Burnie, not in Baltimore.

Anonymous said...

ppatin.....

They cannot handle the truth of the facts before their eyes. You cannot argue with them, it's a religion to them.

Baltimore_Yeti said...

I guess I shouldn't complain. Hey, at least we got the fact that they walked on two legs and breathed air.

John Galt said...

Why can we not simply agree to eliminate the criminal chunk of the population regardless of what they look like ????

Why not simply declare war on criminality ??

Notice, I didn't say counseling or job training. I said eradicate them from free society, presumably through incarceration.

Sebastian-PGP said...

John,
What's interesting about your point is that in practice our criminal justice system is actually more lenient than Europe or Asia's. We actually should try incarceration once in a while instead of the revolving door policy we employ now.

ppatin said...

"Notice, I didn't say counseling or job training. I said eradicate them from free society, presumably through incarceration."

I prefer more old-school methods of eradication. Three violent felony convictions and you hang.