Regarding the recent bystander homicide, my question would be, when was the last time this happened in THIS neighborhood? I'm aware of a young boy who was shot on the northside. But the other case I really remember happened at University and Hamline in St Paul. And back in the middle 90's, a black man became the victim of a shooting while waiting for a bus on East 38th Street across from Sabathani Center.
The reason I bring this up is that several list participants are talking as if this is an ongoing problem. As if the Rolling 30s have been a constant threat. Yet my observation is that the Rolling 30s have been doing whatever they do without harm to bystanders for quite a few years. So it seem to me that there has been a change in the last couple of years. Has the DEA turned violent again, because a nationwide crime surge followed the declaration of all-out war by Reagan in 1986. There was a very striking increase in violent crime from 1986 to 1992. And Minneapolis became "Murderapolis" during that countrywide surge. In fact, the Gary and Detroit gangs arrived in some numbers and violence between the homegrown and import gangs generated a lot of our "local" violence. My theory was that home turf became too "hot" for these guys, so they came hear in search of a business venu with less of the heat. And it may even be the process of breaking into the market that caused the violence. Well, CODEFOR and whatever else made it too costly for them, so maybe some of them went away, and then the main cause of inter-gang violence may have disappeared (there was still violence between Hmong and Latino gangs, but my impression is that most of the Hmong stuff was in St Paul). The police would have to supply the real data to explain this outburst, and they don't overdose the public with what they know. Which may be why we can't help very much till it is too late. I'm asking the city to change that. Until they do, we can only guess why THIS outbreak came. One can only hope Tyesha's murder wasn't due to a public left in the dark. I notice that AFTER she was dead, they found the suspects very quickly. But we do seem to be back in the "respect" and "payback" mentalities that cause so much gangbanger activity. That tells me the gang members are really tense. Now since my philosophy is that it shooting and drug-selling, not BEING a gang member, that threatens society, the circumstances that lead the gang members to fear each other more than normal has to be an increased perception of threat. And the media (bless 'em) has left us totally in the dark on these developments. They SWARM to report a bystander killing, but they fail utterly to give us objective accounts of the state of society which causes the breach of peace. I know people at the Strib, who do fantastic work in this area, but they apparently are on assignments that are considered more important. But now that Minneapolis residents feel much more vulnerable, maybe the "I teams" will be turned on this matter and will tell us what our law enforcement at local and national levels are doing. ===== Jim Mork -- Cooper Neighborhood ________________________________ Help stop spam -- Join SpamCon Foundation, http://www.spamcon.org __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
