After work today, I walked into an arrest in progress: a young man (18 years old, at most) was handcuffed and on his knees on the street right in front of Singha Thai while our company’s traffic cop called the arrest into HQ. What happened to cause this situation wasn’t apparent, but as the scene trailed into the distance, I wondered how soon the guy would be back on the street like this kid.
Between our broken system of law and order and schools, what do the children of New Orleans have to live for? They have nothing to lose – neither self-esteem nor respect for others. If NOPD and the courts cannot rein in the older and hardened criminals, more success may be had working with kids before the city is filled with more older and hardened criminals. And, the abandoned buildings and broken windows in the CBD definitely exacerbate the situation downtown. New Orleans is open for business, is it?
First a recent fatal shooting outside my friend’s Uptown home and then witnessing this today. Can you say Stress Hormones, kids?
Related Link: da po’ blog – Crime Numbers
Don’t forget to check out Fox’s new teevee show about New Orleans’s Finest, y’all!:
http://fox.com/programming/new/kville.htm
It bothers me greatly that everyone likes to identify as a champion for children, but in reality kids are the ones who always get the shaft. They get the least amount of our resourcs. There is no kid’s union. There is no American Association of Young People that has political power. We put our children in schools whose conditions are about as good as most jails and prisons other than OPP which is pretty much the worst jail in the country. We don’t provide programs or social services for them.
It is a tremendous hypocrisy that we as adults express outrage at the behavior of children and criticize the juvenile crime rate (which is actually down tremendously) when we fail to hold ourselves accountable as adults who are actually the ones in charge. Yes, parents should be held accountable first, but really it is on all of us.
*end rant*