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East Side Broken Windows: Why isn't the City . . .?
Why isn't the City putting all the weight of it's resources and agencies to correct the quality of life imbalance extant in Mt. Hope in comparison to all other East Side neighborhoods. Is the City racist? Do the City's policies toward Mt. Hope reflect institutional racism? Is criminality allowed to prosper in Mt. Hope because there is a small, influential minority population in Mt. Hope who are invested in the Drug Trade and who wield a disproportionate influence on how the police police and the City governs? To the detriment of the Real Mt. Hope? The law abiding, tax paying citizens of Mt. Hope?
Just look at these disgusting pictures of boarded up houses and drug dealing locations!
Knowles Street near the corner with Pleasant Street
Pleasant Street
Camp Street, corner of Camp & Grandview
Boarded up houses on Knowles and Pleasant, a house on Camp Street home to notorious drug dealers who operate in broad daylight with the windows blocked with heavy doors and a garage around back where drugs are peddled and is the site of public drunkenness on a daily basis?
I defy you to provide evidence of any other such properties in similar condition in any other East Side Neighborhood: any other open air drug markets on the East Side. It is just not tolerated in other East Side neighborhoods.
Why?
My best guess is that Mt. Hope is the only East Side Neighborhood with a measurable African American demographic. Drug dealing and dilapidated housing, clearly in violation of criminal law and housing codes, simply is not tolerated in other East Side Neighborhoods.
Institutional racism? Call it what you will, the situation exists.
Is this the fault of the African American Community in Mt. Hope? I think not. The embedded drug trade in Mt. Hope is embedded in the political/social institutions in Mt. Hope who have enabled the drug trade to flourish. Those who are part and parcel of the drug trade who masquerade as community activists and so-called pastors. Preying on their own community, contributing to Black on Black violence. The larger African American community in Mt Hope are victims of these entrepreneurs who prey on their own people with drugs and death.
Drug dealing in Mt. Hope is an African American run business: is that why the City is impotent, or even loath to enforcing the law. Is it institutional racism. The old, "Let them destroy each other, let them kill each other", as long as it doesn't spread to other, predominately white neighborhoods?
From the WPRI report:
Lt. David Schiavulli says "It's kind of the broken windows theory. If the neighborhood looks rundown, and the neighborhood looks unkempt, it invites crime."
The Broken Windows Theory
Hmmmn. Lt. Schiavulli may be a visionary up against the powers that be. I'm sure that if the Lt. had his way Mt. Hope would be free of drug dealing and rundown housing. But he is up against the entrenched political establishement who try to tie his hands behind his back so as to not upset the apple cart and the vote generating machine in the form of M-O-N-E-Y.
Politics is ugly, dishonest, and the new liberal residents of Mt. Hope do not deign to dirty their hands with inconvenient truths.
How convenient.
Yet politics means speaking up for your rights, politics means righting wrongs, setting things straight.
Where is Code Enforcement in Mt. Hope? Where is the Drug Squad, the NOCD, of the Police Department? Where is our Councilman, Kevin Jackson on the embedded drug trade in Mt. Hope.
Are any of you asking these people where they are, what they are doing about these problems?
I guess it's just too embarrassing or scary to make waves, eh?
Not really! Not for a few! Anonymous tips have been rolling in along with cellphone pics. So, keep them coming.
Soon GCCC wil be doing some fundraising to upgrade this website, establish a dedicated tip phone line and to hire a top law firm to represent GCCC and Mt. Hope.
Keep your ears to the ground and continue to be proactive with phone calls to Code Enforcement and to the Police NOCD.
And click on the link below to send anonymous information.
Posted at September 20, 2008 10:56 PM