Two women are dead. One a lawyer for Kansas Dept. of Education who was traveling down Cleaver Blvd. after seeing a show at Starlight. The other woman was sitting at a bus stop on Troost. The two women probably had little in common on the surface other than the apparent random bad luck of being in the exact wrong spot at the worst possible time. I had two reactions, which I'll readily admit. It's the same reaction most people had, even though most won't admit it. The lawyer heading home to Lawrence, who caught a bullet with her mother and daughter sitting inches away in the same car, drew a surprised reaction. The lady on Troost, probably a black woman, whose death was just as tragic, just as random, and who is just as dead, ....well it was on Troost, not that big of a surprise. I don't make this admission absent of the knowledge that it's wrong headed, or the automatic assumption that one woman was a successful white woman, the other a less fortunate black woman. Both deaths are equally senseless, equally tragic, and should be equally shocking, but they aren't. Hold that thought, we'll get back to it.
GANGS and The Police. Lets just blame it on gangs, and guns of course, throw drugs in for good measure, call it war between rival gangs over drug turf, slap a bow on that box O bullshit and call it a day.
"I've heard there are gangs going on that are in disputes," says Melba Curls, the Third District At-Large city council woman. Really? No shit? You could stand a dozen council people, activists, and columnists in a line, and they would all readily buy that bullshit about "Gangs, turf battles, drugs, and guns". Ask those same people why it is so easy to catch a stray bullet, and they will blame the police. They will also be quick to do a hatchet job on the KCPD for buying cars, racial profiling, lack of manpower, complacency in relation to the urban core, the east side, and black folks in general. People want it both ways, and they want to shift the blame away from their own part in it. Is there a gang problem in Kansas City, sure. Do the police target random young black guys who just happen to be rolling through the hood with only their parking lights on at 2 in the morning, yep, you betcha. A 21 year old kid in a 60,000 dollar car rolling down prospect, is probably going to get stopped. There in lies the problem. The catch 22.
I can say with 99.999 percent certainty that stray bullets coming from 59th and Walrond, or 34th and Troost were not fired from the barrel of guns owned by pasty white guys preaching door to door for the Mormons. I may be off a little on my figures, feel free to jump in and correct me right after you call me out as a racist middle aged white guy, but I believe somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 percent of the 60 something homicides in this city were committed by young black guys, with an equal number of the victims being, young black guys. The problem with making the statement, if you are white, even though it's an undeniable fact, it will be deemed racist.
Groups and activists are calling out the police for complacency, for doing too little, for not giving a shit, because it's black folks being killed. These same people would scream racism, and do, if the police did what was really necessary to stem the flow of blood in the streets. You need look no further than the City of Los Angeles. When gang or drug related violence was reaching it's zenith in L.A., folks raised hell, pointed fingers at the cops for not doing enough. When the police put the hammer down and started kicking in doors and cracking heads, the violence tapered off and the cries of racial profiling were followed by lawsuit upon lawsuit. We want it both ways. We want the streets to be safe from rolling predators. Animals who think nothing of squeezing off a dozen rounds while rolling down a major road less than 3 blocks from the police station, or in a residential area intersected by a major highway. In the same breath we don't want the police to be too rough or insensitive.
The problem isn't gangs, drugs, or racism. It's fear. The police are afraid to take a really hard stance, to really apply pressure. That shit will get you sued, cost you your job, and in some cases get you tossed in jail, which isn't an attractive proposition for your average law enforcement type. If the police would go back to the police that I grew up avoiding, the ones who would peel your cap back for you when they caught you dirty, we would have a lot less violence in the street. If they would go back to those mass raids on strings of dope houses, rounding up known drug dealers, and suspected gang members, violent crime, especially these random killings of innocent bystanders would cease to be so commonplace. I'm not suggesting that the cops go all Rodney King and start beating down young black males in the street, just the ones who are dirty. Look, it's simple, do the math. A small number of young, black, thugs, have created an environment that is unsafe, be it sitting at a bus stop or a stoplight. Absent fathers, piss poor schools, lack of jobs, racial disparity, all of these factors play a role in breeding the predatory criminals who are running the streets of this city. All of these issues need to be addressed, shit needs to be fixed, that's how you deal with preventing crime in the future. To deal with the here and now, you need more cops in the streets, more drug house raids, and taking a hard stance on the current school of sharks who roam the streets, who would kill you just as soon as look at you. Pretending that you can reason with these guys is moronic and only enables them to continue destroying the lives of innocent people, their own people. YOU CAN'T ALTER THE FUTURE IF YOU DON'T DEAL WITH THE PRESENT. Period.
The urban core isn't made up of drug dealers , crack heads, and extras from Boyz in the Hood. The people in the most crime ridden neighborhoods are by and large, honest, decent folks, who want the same things as the next guy. They want to sit on their porch in the evening without fear of catching a bullet. they want their children to have the life they never knew, never will know. What keeps them from realizing this most basic of desires, is a small minority of thugs, who operate with impunity. Most of these folks would welcome whatever it takes to clean up the streets, short of targeting innocent people, or just taking the perp to an alley and putting one in their brain pan. The bleeding hearts, over educated white folks who take it upon themselves to lay all the blame at the feet of the wealthy, or the complacency of the police. The activist groups who put ex cons on the payroll in the hopes of guarding the chicken coop with a reformed fox. The community leaders who march up and down the street screaming racism because the cops don't do enough, or because they went to far. They all have blood on their hands. They saddle the cops with the burden of "protect and serve", then wait to pounce when they don't approve of their tactics. They want it both ways. You can't go hand fishing for piranhas, unless you want to pull back a stump. You can't rehab a predatory criminal through hugs, drum circles, and candlelight vigils. The problem isn't oversized white T shirts in the Power and Light district, it's the guy who is dressed like that who is slinging dope from some rundown shit hole while making his neighbors lives miserable. It isn't hard to tell one from the other, and I'm not advocating going after the countless young black kids who dress that way, just the criminals.
I realize more than a few people will say that this post is full of racism. Just the ramblings of an out of touch white guy. The problem with that view is these people either go out of their way to blame it all on the cops or white folks in general, or they get all of their opinions from some book on societal ills and racial disparity. I watched these young guys walk the prison yards, I've seen them in action both in prison and on the streets of Midtown. Blaming it all on the typical bleeding heart rhetoric, or denying it's existence altogether, is a huge part of the problem, and it's largely the reason the streets of Kansas City aren't safe. I'll retract every single word that I've put in this post, just as soon as someone can show me one instance of a drive by being perpetrated by pasty white Mormons on 10 speeds. You can't develop your way out of the problem, you can't pray your way out of the problem, and you damn sure can't just politely ask the bad guys to stop killing each other ,and whoever happens to get in the way. You have to deal with hard cases in a hard way. If you combine support for the police with education and development of the urban core, then you might see a turn around. In the meantime, you might want to avoid this city altogether, because it ain't gonna happen anytime soon if ever.
