EDITOR’S NOTE: Starting today, the very smart and talented Taylor Walker is helping me gather stories. Eventually Taylor will be doing a story-gathering and commentary section of her own. But right now, she’s helping me curate and write these multi-story posts. More about—and from—Taylor Walker soon.
NEARLY 50 PERCENT OF AMERICANS SAY THAT TOO MANY PEOPLE ARE IN PRISON & WE COULD LET 20 PERCENT OF ‘EM OUT….SAYS NEW PEW STUDY
The Pew Center on the States has the results of a new survey out that measures attitudes by Americans about who we should incarcerate and for how long.
Turns out that the majority of Americans think that there are “more effective, less expensive alternatives to prison for non-violent offenders and expanding those alternatives is the best way to reduce the crime rate.”
There’s lots more and it’s quite interesting. So check out the summary of the rest of the report here.
ANTONIO GOES LOOKING FOR GANG PREVENTION AND INTERVENTION $$ IN D.C.
The LA Times reports that mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was in Washington DC this week for a gang-violence reduction summit meeting with leaders from Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Memphis, San Jose and Salinas.
Sunday, he also met with Attorney General Eric Holder, to hit up Holder for some federal money to help to fund LA’s GRYD programs (Gang Reduction and Youth Development), These were the programs that were gathered under the mayor’s umbrella in 2007, and got up and running in 2009.
Last year, the combined prevention and intervention GRYD programs were budgeted at $26 million, made up of federal, state and local monies. Villaraigosa wants the feds to come across with a good chunk of those millions.
Hopefully he’ll get the money he/we need. I just wish that when the mayor made his pitch he didn’t have to try to attribute LA’s drop in gang crime to GRYD, since even his own evaluators from the Urban Institute say otherwise (namely since the parts of Los Angeles that aren’t served by GRYD have had exactly the same drop).
Yeah, yeah. Picky, I know.
ACLU ISSUES REPORT SHOWING HOW MANY POLICE DEPARTMENTS ARE TRACKING US THROUGH OUR CELL PHONES WITHOUT ANYTHING PESKY LIKE, SAY, A WARRANT
A huge pile of information gathered by the ACLU on law enforcement cell phone tracking protocols was released to the New York Times on Saturday. The report returned results that differed considerably between about 200 agencies that agreed to provide information about how they were using our cell phones to track us. Departments across the U.S. are grappling with the lack of concrete boundaries set in place for officers in regard to cell phone tracking. While some agencies state that they are only using tracking without a warrant in life-threatening situations (and sometimes it does save lives), others are using it when they damn please, including in California where state prosecutors advised local police departments on ways to get carriers to “clone” a phone and download text messages while it is turned off.
(About that text downloading function, unreasonable search and seizure anyone? Seriously, how in the world is that not a 4th Amendment violation?)
In order to get the information, 35 ACLU affiliates filed over 380 public records requests with state and local law enforcement agencies to ask about their policies, procedures and practices for tracking cell phones.
This is from the ACLU’s statement:
What we have learned is disturbing. While virtually all of the over 200 police departments that responded to our request said they track cell phones, only a tiny minority reported consistently obtaining a warrant and demonstrating probable cause to do so. While that result is of great concern, it also shows that a warrant requirement is a completely reasonable and workable policy.
They’ve got a point. And, given this recent SCOTUS decision, I think the SUPREMES may think so too.
LGBTQ BOX TO CHECK MAY SHOW UP IN CAL STATE COLLEGE APS…SO IS THIS A GOOD IDEA? BAD IDEA? MANY ARE NOT SURE
Within the next year, students may see optional sexual orientation check-boxes on their application forms for California state colleges. While the purpose may be to gauge the size of the LGBTQ community on campus, and thus offer better services, some fear it may be an invasion of privacy or that the information may be improperly used or wrongly divulged. The LA Times reports.
The last significant gang violence decrease in Los Angeles that I can recall took place in the 1990s. A lot of factors can be attributed. One that I believe can be attributed is gang members themselves forming a pact, or truce, to not attack each other or anyone else for that matter.
The book, “The Mexican Mafia”, by Tony Rafael, details the organizational power of prison gangs like the Mexican Mafia, that have significant control over LA’s street gangs. Clearly the chain of command is there. Imagine if it could be turned the other way.
The power that LA’s high ranking gangsters hold has to be considered in any serious discussion about ending gang violence in Los Angeles. And I think that someday soon this idea will come to fruition, especially with so many of LA’s city officials starting to come from gang neighborhoods, like the mayor himself, Tony Villaraigosa, who’s from City Terrace, EastLos.
Anyone who’s from the streets of LA knows gang life is embedded in LA street culture. And LA’s gangs themselves need to be a part of any process to end gangs. Any solution that isolates them and declares them an enemy will be a failed one, as so many have before.
The most significant reduction in violent crimes over the last several years can be directly contributed to 1. aggressive law enforcement and 2. Three Strikes. There is no touchy feely way around it. Violent animals need to be locked up. One can argue how terrible it is to have such a large inmate population, and I agree. But the causes are many and deep. Broken homes, lack of role models within the family structure, drugs, gangs etc. Billions of dollars have been thrown at this problem and today, it is still a problem. It is what it is, we have a very free and permissive society. Consequences are something that children do not learn anymore at home and at school.
Killers, rapist, drug dealers and career criminals can do very little harm if they are locked up. Asking or thinking that “gangs themselves need to be a part of any process to end gangs” is a very niece but unrealistic approach. It has been tried and failed over and over. I hate to sound draconian, but the only solution is to build more prisons. The thought of “non-violent” criminals, who are really drug dealers and drug users, you know, the very people who break into your homes and rip you off, stick a gun in your face and demand money or steal anything that isn’t welded to the ground, are the very people you want to be released on probation. Treat drug addicts all you want, they made a choice, 96% will remain drug addicts and die early in life, but not before they destroy innocent people.
Wish all you want for nice things, gang members are what they are. Bad people are what they are and you are not going to change them. If you think I’m wrong, go tell that to the parents of innocent murder victims who are slaughtered daily in our communities by assholes who would just as soon shoot you than look at you. See what kind of response you get from the survivors.
Billions of dollars have been thrown at law enforcement too, not just for gangs, but also for the War on Drugs. And, both are still a problem. So, if we’re going to use this logic, that the mere persistence of a problem is cause for eliminating any programs designed to prevent them, some major overhauls (and perhaps even eliminations) will need to be made in law enforcement as well.
As far as gang truces being unrealistic, I would recommend researching the truce between two Watts gangs in the 1990s, the Grape Street Crips and Bounty Hunter Bloods. This truce lasted from around the time of the Rodney King uprising to, according to many experts, 2003, when a melee broke out between the two gangs at a concert put on by a local radio station. There were several other truces that took hold in Los Angeles after the Rodney King uprising as well, truces that lasted for years.
True, a cynic of gang truces could easily point to the dissolving of these truces as evidence that they don’t work. But the fact that the Bounty Hunter/Grape Street truce lasted over a decade is still profound. It’s a result. Not an absolute, permanent result, but an idea that had positive results, nonetheless. It certainly serves as an event to consider when discussing solutions to gang violence.
And, talk about things we throw a ton of money at that don’t work, let’s take a look at these prisons. The California prison system was the birthplace of gangs like the Mexican Mafia and the Nuestra Familia. The very respective blue and red bandannas worn by Surenos and Nortenos today, the rank and file of these two prison gangs, started in these prisons. The violence between black and Latino gangs in Los Angeles, which had gotten the attention of civil rights watch groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center, started in the California prison system. Not only are we lacking results by building additional prisons, for some reason these prisons are also serving as breeding grounds for gang violence as we know it! Our prison system needs scrutiny, not another open checkbook.