Juvenile Crime

[White Shogun]

Interesting story on the AP Wire today about juvenile crime.

Daytona Beach is apparently plagued by juvenile crime. A school was broken into and vandalized. Police arrived to see the gang running from the school - a group of kids ranging in age from 7 -14, with most in the 8-10 range. The photo showed a bunch of little black kids running away from the camera.

The story actually included some interesting statistics. Daytona Beach is 1/3 black, and half white. But 8 of 10 juveniles arrested are - you guessed it - black. Of course, this is because they all live in poverty and have no recreational facilities or programs to work with them. I'm still curious what vandalism, joy riding, and assault have to do with poverty, but I digress.

I don't know about you guys, but I grew up dirt poor myself. But I never spray painted a bridge, broke into somebody's house, or a school, or stole a car. I played stickball, or football, or tag, or hide and seek, or something else. We were always busy, and spent a lot of time outside. I never once attended a 'program,' or joined a Boys and Girls Club, or had any other kind of activity at school or elsewhere designed solely to keep me out of trouble.

And yes, I was raised by a single mother, along with my grandmother, til I was well into my teens.

This stuff is just bullsh*t, and has little to do with poverty, imo. If they were committing crimes because they were that damn poor, they should be shoplifting at the grocery store, not breaking into a school and breaking sh*t.

 

[Ground Fighter]

I believe it Shogun. My friends and I hit Daytona Beach for spring break a few years back and the city itself looked a little seedy to say the least. We missed a fatal stabbing at a nightclub on A-1A Boulevard by literally a half hour, and then two tattooed trailer park-looking skanks tried to run a pool hustle on us in another bar an hour later (I kept my beer close to me at all times because I swore one of these tricks was going to try and drug one of us). It was an interesting week down there to say the least. Some cities in the south just have a "strange" vibe to them, and Daytona Beach defienitley fit that criteria. The criminal element down there is very sneaky, and they're not blatently out in the open like other major cities like NYC or L.A. Everything they do is a carefully calculated hustle or scam. To be honest, I'd rather have some monkey pull a knife on me and ask for my wallet than deal with some of the wierd crap that goes on down there.

Lets just say that I have no plans on going back to that city any time soon.Edited by: Ground Fighter

 

[Colonel_Reb]

There are definitely some bad and seedy places in the South. As a Southerner, I wouldn't want to spend much time in Boston or Montreal. I found some areas of those cities to be very seedy and crime ridden. I can understand the careful calculations you mentioned Ground Fighter, but that is the way we have to be in the South. Otherwise the fed. gov. comes in and we lose more of our freedoms. You learn to adapt to things like that, and sometimes it requires craftiness to survive.

 

[Bronk]

We were always busy ...

It's true, idle hands ARE the devil's workshop. Hey, stop laughing at me, damnit! It IS true!

Here's one for you: A friend of mine told me that last Friday on the final day of school, a friend of his son, white kid, 15-year-old-freshman, was walking to the bus on the campus of his high school. He walked by three black kids, one of whom -- out of the blue -- sucker punches him in the temple knocking him out cold. The poor kid it the ground like a sack of potatoes and cut the side of his face open on the sidewalk requiring four stitches.

This isn't the first time this has happened in that town. Last year on the last day of school, another kid waiting for her mother to pick her up at junior high, had a black girl walk up to her and do the same thing, just waylaid her with a punch to the face and dropped her.

"It's a black thing," my says to me.

It's gal-damn savagery.

 

[PhillyBirds]

This kind of random violence thing occurrs with some frequency in my high school, but one particular event will be stick with me as long as I live (as well as my revulsion towards it).

Early in my junior year, a massive fight erupted in the cafeteria between two groups of black students from different neighborhoods. Several students were detained and a few innocent bystanders were injured in the brawl (the fight only lasted a minute or two. Our ex-Marine disciplinarian came in and laid down the law. Still not sure how he escaped scrutiny after putting his hands on black students, but I digress.).

One of said bystanders was a Jewish kid. this sparked some outrage among the unusually high Jewish population at the school. The end result was a group of students from the Jewish Defense League (or some such iteration) beating up the prime offenders over the span of a couple days.

The school went into high-security mode and the police were called in to investigate. The end result of the investigation was two white NON-JEWISH boys being taken to the police for questioning. The whole school knew they were wrong, and the administration did what, you ask?

Nothing.

The two boys were questioned and later released, and the school went back to life as usual. I am, to this day, astounded at the audacity of administration to do NOTHING while two groups of violent perpetrators went unpunished while innocents were sent to the gallows. Schools need to get over their delusions and realize that minorities are wont to fight now and again (if not more inclined to do so).

Educators need to notice the demographic of the majority of school violence, and try to remember that events such as Columbine, however tragic, do not encompass the majority of violence in our schools.

Just how I feel...