Official Greater Philadelphia Area Crime Thread (Wall: shopping center, garage door, roof)

[ilovephilly79]

Originally Posted by jazzy jeff

I believe most people can take a liberal view on one issue and a conservative view on another. I call that "middle of the road". In the end they vote based on their own individual priorities. People that are hard left or hard right are a minority.

But they are the loudest people. And nowadays, you don't have to do much to confirm or join a movement. It just takes tapping an icon on your smartphone and it looks like you have joined the movement.

[Hedonism]

Originally Posted by Redddog

Don't get me started on AOC. She is as dangerous to the greater good than T-rump. Maybe more, if that is even possible.

Awwww ... you still mad, bro? LOL!


(Stomping feet with fists clenched) "I hate him! I hate him! I hate him! I hate him! I hate ..."


You should be more concerned with the direction your party is headed.


As lame and cowardly as the Republicans are, at least they don't have any extremists in positions of power like the Democrats (and there are many more than just Cortez).


Look no further than our city ...

[Hedonism]

Originally Posted by thedirtypirate

I have spent plenty of time just walking around Center City in my over year of 'working from home' so far. I mean it's the same old same old with the bums near the convention center. I don't go down into the patco tunnel ever, but I heard it's been mucked up by people camping. Life is pretty normal outside of that from my own observations, but maybe I am missing something.

Somebody reported to 311 that there's a group of derelicts living on the streets at 13th and Sansom who are raising hell and making people feel unsafe.


Pretty sure this was reported by someone who lives in the area.

[MarketStEl]

Originally Posted by Hedonism

Cops aren't wrongly 'killing people every damn day.' Maybe more criminals need to not fight with police? And, yes, 99% who ARE wrongly killed put themselves in that position in the first place. Doesn't make it right, but looking at you floyd.

That sounds an awful lot like "she deserved to be raped because she wore alluring clothes" or something like that.

Yes, there would be fewer incidents if the miscreants complied with orders, but once the officer has obtained compliance, there's no need to pile on. (Literally, in Floyd's case. I note that that incident seemed to flip a light switch in the brains of many non-Black Americans.)

[Hedonism]

Originally Posted by MarketStEl

That sounds an awful lot like "she deserved to be raped because she wore alluring clothes" or something like that.

Eh ... no.


That's quite a reach.


Your analogy may have worked if you said "That sounds an awful lot like a girl deserved to be raped because she was drunk at a party scantily clad and grinding on guys."


Nobody deserves to be raped, but don't put yourself in dangerous situations.


STOP FIGHTING WITH THE POLICE, IT WILL NOT END WELL FOR YOU!


And it doesn't matter what race you are.
My dad had that talk with me. What's up with the black community?

[NoHyping]

Originally Posted by Hedonism

Awwww ... you still mad, bro? LOL!

(Stomping feet with fists clenched) "I hate him! I hate him! I hate him! I hate him! I hate ..."

You should be more concerned with the direction your party is headed.

As lame and cowardly as the Republicans are, at least they don't have any extremists in positions of power like the Democrats (and there are many more than just Cortez).

Look no further than our city ...

This is getting like a cross between a AOC and Trump hissy-fit. We all have to remember!!! When you accuse everyone else of extremism and rage. Sometimes we need to look in the mirror at ourselves and OUR STYLE OF POST.

I have read yours in the Politics forum too. I still wonder why some ..... especially if young and educated. Do not plan their move a area they feel more politically like most for many many many miles.

On radicalness.... Pick a decade. You will find similar issues that get enflamed, enraged and engaged as we solve nothing, we divide even more now and BLAME to the point of HATE.

Too many radical post gone personal.... we know what happens....

[selhars]

Someone told me about a video -- which he said was real. He was showing it to a coworker.
Of a white person in his car with a gun in his lap -- arguing with the police....telling them about his 2nd amendment rights. Cops argued with him for minutes, he argued back about how he wasn't getting out -- and he said in fact...I'm driving off. And he did.

Now how did he manage to not get shot?
How did a white mass shooter recently manage to not get shot?

Black people in their own homes and garages get shot. But white males who argue and don't comply....-- AND storm the capital of the country -- somehow THEY're not shot. (ONE person was out of all those people...ONE person shot. Cops were RUNNING from the crowd!

So don't talk to me about complying and not arguing with the police. A black person moves to comply -- and they get shot while they're doing what the frigging cops told them to do.

Is someone really going to argue that blacks shouldn't have a fear of police? Really?

Let's stick to trim in Philly, please.

[moneymkt]

Originally Posted by selhars

Someone told me about a video -- which he said was real. He was showing it to a coworker.
Of a white person in his car with a gun in his lap -- arguing with the police....telling them about his 2nd amendment rights. Cops argued with him for minutes, he argued back about how he wasn't getting out -- and he said in fact...I'm driving off. And he did.

Now how did he manage to not get shot?
How did a white mass shooter recently manage to not get shot?

Black people in their own homes and garages get shot. But white males who argue and don't comply....-- AND storm the capital of the country -- somehow THEY're not shot. (ONE person was out of all those people...ONE person shot. Cops were RUNNING from the crowd!

So don't talk to me about complying and not arguing with the police. A black person moves to comply -- and they get shot while they're doing what the frigging cops told them to do.

Is someone really going to argue that blacks shouldn't have a fear of police? Really?

Let's stick to trim in Philly, please.

Dont forget about the black guy who was Lieutenant who did comply and spoke to the cops in a nice pleasant way and was still pulled out of the car and pepper sprayed.

[selhars]

^^ In uniform!!

[MarketStEl]

Originally Posted by Hedonism

And it doesn't matter what race you are.
My dad had that talk with me. What's up with the black community?

It goes back a while.

And I have never fought with a cop when I've been stopped by one, and I doubt I ever will.

But there are cops out there who assume we're all bad to the bone and behave accordingly, and generally speaking, people live up (or down) to the expectations others set for them.

I've been telling people of late that part of the problem was that, for many Blacks, "Officer Friendly doesn't patrol their neighborhood."

I was just listening to a (left-leaning — not always what you think it is when considering NPR programs) NPR documentary on the history of policing in America this afternoon. It was largely based on this history written by a Penn grad who, when he was an undergrad there (and I was working there at the time this happened), got really rough treatment from a campus cop when he and some other Black students were making off with the entire day's press run of The Daily Pennsylvanian as a protest. He didn't get belligerent with the cop, but the cop kept giving hin all kinds of hassle until he proved he was a Penn student, at which point the cop's attitude did a 180.

This was presented as an intro to the documentary: The UPPD placed the cop on administrative leave and the administration scheduled a hearing before an arbitrator to determine whether the student's civil rights had been violated. The police rep at the panel kept peppering the student, who had graduated and gotten a job in accounting in between the incident and the hearing, with questions meant to make him lose it, but his persistently polite answers led the cop to lose it instead, ultimately blurting out, "You're supposed to have a record!"

My dad said something about assuming. It definitely applied in this case, except it made an a$$ of only one person. And the experience led the guy to abandon a career in accounting to pursue one in history instead so he could figure out why we had cops like these.

I might recommend you give the episode of "Throughline" on "Policing in America" a listen. It's available on all the major podcast platforms. There's a history behind what we're witnessing now that isn't that widely known. But I think some people have become aware of some of this, which may explain why the George Floyd incident seemed to flip a light switch in the brains of many white folks.

I think at this point, however, I should go on the record as saying that "defund the police" actually set back both the cause of police and criminal justice reform and those Democrats committed to it (Joe Biden one of them, fwiw). I do think that we ask cops to do things we should be sending social workers in to do, and that both makes them less effective at the intervention and keeps them from their real task, but I also think that the sort of changes in police culture that we need will require more, not less, money for the cops, at least in the short run.

As for what those changes look like: All I have to go by are the press reports, but I hear there's been some very positive trends in Camden's crime rates since that city abolished its police department (as a cost-cutting measure) and the new county-run department that replaced it got a chief who made it clear to the officers that Job 1 would be getting to know the people they were supposed to serve and protect. They held cookouts, knocked on doors, threw block parties, the sorts of "retail" public relations that turn strangers into familiar faces and occupying forces into guardians. At least from what I've read, the strategy has worked. One reason why: The residents now tell the cops about what's going on and who's up to no good now that trust has been established.