Friday, January 12, 2007

January 12

Mother Jones revisits the 1963 murder of Hattie Carroll, made famous by the world's most overrated musician.
(Here's more)
Did you know? Before the Internets, crime blogs were performed in epic folk song form!
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15 comments:

kris said...

Glad you linked to it. I love me some Bob Dylan.

Fri Jan 12, 08:39:00 PM EST
kris said...

btw, he is so not over rated!

Fri Jan 12, 08:40:00 PM EST
burgersub said...

or at least not the world's MOST over rated

Fri Jan 12, 10:02:00 PM EST
John Galt said...

I just saw Lenny Hamm's interview with WBAL about violent crime.

He said there's nothing to be done about the killings. He said "It all depends upon where you live... and upon [gender] and race."

OK, then let's delineate the areas where you're allowing murder and declare them unprotectable/ uninhabitable and for God's sake stop asking people to live here and BELIEVE. That's just wrong.

Fri Jan 12, 11:20:00 PM EST
John Galt said...

I just saw Lenny Hamm's interview with WBAL about violent crime.

He said there's nothing to be done about the killings. He said "It all depends upon where you live... and upon [gender] and race."

OK, then let's delineate the areas where you're allowing murder and declare them unprotectable/ uninhabitable and for God's sake stop asking people to live here and BELIEVE. That's just wrong.

Fri Jan 12, 11:20:00 PM EST
Anonymous said...

"It all depends upon where you live... and upon [gender] and race." WTF!!!!! Your daughter is a damn ADDICT!!!!!!

Fri Jan 12, 11:56:00 PM EST
Anonymous said...

Jaimetab,

What I find more disturbing about this is that many of the idiots who live here don't seem to care about how many people have been killed this year. Yet I can't walk five feet downtown without seeing some building draped in purple light because of our football team. Talk about botched up priorities.

Sat Jan 13, 11:36:00 AM EST
Maurice Bradbury said...

Actually he's the most over-rated solo performer.
Most over-rated musicians= the Beatles, whose wussiness ruined rock n' roll.
(Though some of the stuff they did while they were on drugs is ok.)
Thanks for putting the link up, ver.

Sat Jan 13, 11:45:00 AM EST
Maurice Bradbury said...

Or should I say, "the wussiness of whom"?
Copyeditors, holla, rep ya desk...

Sat Jan 13, 11:46:00 AM EST
Maurice Bradbury said...

Jaime, that is a REALLY good idea. I would have loved that when I lived in CV. That kind of "you know horrible shit is going on but you don't know what or where" feeling was absoloutely the kernel for this here project.

The car-break-ins alone... try to figure out how many there were, assuming at least $200 to fix every broken window (and sometimes $500+)... paid out-of-pocket, too, b/c it's always just right under the deductable...

Sat Jan 13, 01:54:00 PM EST
John Galt said...

The border checkpoints in your area are delineated by the JHU campus patrol vehicles. If they don't really patrol your block, you could be in Balt B.

As for judges, actually, they have dedicated police surveillance, so as to maintain their independence.

I've distributed the crime maps in CV. Many people don't think it affects them until it's someone they know well. THEN they want action, but only on that block. Many CV homeowners come home by 5:30 and lock the door, staying in. They figure their house is safe, since they don't go out at night, so why protect any of those people walking around? In spite of all of what they preach about 'community', they only care about themselves.

I've already asked the Governor and State Police to intercede. They cannot without an invitation from... the NEW governor, who has eevery reason to deny that there's a crime problem here.

Baltimore, be leavin'.

Sat Jan 13, 02:06:00 PM EST
John Galt said...

Jaime, look on charlesvillage.org and find your at-large quadrant representative to the CVCBD Board of Directors using the quad map on the site.

You should ask that elected official what he/she is doing with your tax money and remind them that it was created to provide security, not to play Planner.

Sat Jan 13, 02:23:00 PM EST
John Galt said...

CVCBD used to be very interested in crime reduction and routinely compiled a pretty good crime map.

Then they decided their bread was buttered with concealing the crime instead, so they just insist it's somehow very low, which they call 'promoting the neighborhood.' The real job would be to improve the crime incidence and then promote the (truthful) safety of the place. Call the Executive Director and insist that they accurately map the part I crimes daily and publish the map to their website.

Sat Jan 13, 02:29:00 PM EST
John Galt said...

Lenny Hamm says "There's nothing we could have done about most of these [15] murders, even if we had a cop oon every corner. They were like executions." Well, the teenager who got killed on Harford coming to the aid of his friend sure wasn't. Take a look at the gun violence in today's police blotter.

Then Sun's article on policing by the incoming administration indicates that he will be moving away from Zero Tolerance (this was zero tolerance ???) and toward 'community policing', which he identifies with Boston's Cease Fire.

I have news. Zero Tolerance intercepts criminality at the level of misdemeanors, so that many offenders never really make it to felonies. Jail them for break-ins and the murderous ones will already be in prison, away from decent people. Zero Tolerance, practiced in New York, is a very manpower-intensive strategy. It takes a very high density of patrol officers per square mile, but it works. Notice, I said NOTHING about false arrest. New York doesn't do that, largely because they provide adequate manpower.

So, what then is Cease Fire ?? Boston had a spike in inter-gang violence and called in the gang leaders to announce that gang violence on their part would result in a shutdown of their lucrative drug distribution operations by police. They were told to control their members as to gun violence, in exchage for a free pass on drug sales. It worked, largely because Boston has a highly structured drug trade, with control vested in the hands of a small number of large, powerful gangs with well-defined hierarchies. It was a good example of collective responsibility for the misdeeds of a member.

How about Baltimore? It has from 1300 to 2600 adult gang members distributed among about 170 different organizations, so they're small. Of 100 crips and 400 known bloods, these are broken into numerous smaller sets, which do not coordinate activities with one another.

In the middle and high schools can be found perhaps 100 gangs with 1,000 juvenile members. Cease Fire cannot be well applied to juvies. Mostly, juvies operate independently of major gangs.

Basically, from the perspective of Game Theory, this is a very difficult group to control through delegation, because the interdependencies are not tight. I would not recommend Cease Fire here. It may even encourage the territorial growth of the smaller, more aggressive independent gangs, in which case the larger ones will have no choice but to drive them out through murder.

But Mr. Hamm doesn't get it. He really doesn't understand any of the criminal justice theories well, because he's basically a police middle-manager, not a top notch Police Chief.

Newsflash: there is no magic that will allow an inadequately-staffed police department to regulate the streets of Baltimore. You need a lot of cops, or you need to close down much of the city's surface in its forsaken neighborhoods. Completely devoid of residents or activity. Then you police (adequately) only the areas designated as habitable.

There's no magic theory out there. They all have requirements, either in terms of structure or in terms of resources. You have to decide whether you're going to pay for what you want. There's no such thing as a free ride and as long as the Dixon administration is looking for one, the violence will continue.

Sat Jan 13, 03:57:00 PM EST
Anonymous said...

"because he's basically a police middle-manager No!!! he's a college campus rent-a-commish!!!!!

Sat Jan 13, 08:04:00 PM EST

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