Re: [Mpls] RE: Plan to hire more MPD officers call the mayor

[WizardMarks]

Jennifer L. Rubenzer wrote:
Sounds like a cycle that more cops won't necessarily solve....I think people are the answer. Parents need to see value in RAISING their kids.  Teenagers need to see value in waiting till marriage to have sex.  Kids need roll models that
show them the path to college, not the path to thug life. 

This is a typical answer, but it doesn't get anywhere near being a 
workable solution.
The folks we are talking about ARE raising their kids according to the 
values with which they are acquainted. They have not been part of the 
mainstream for two or three or even four generations. Girl children, in 
general, have their babies when they are the age their mothers were when 
they had their babies. They are using the role models available to them. 
TV "role models" are just TV. It has nothing to do with real life as 
they experience it.
Their homes generally involve material want and abuse, verbal and 
physical. The people with whom they come in contact because their 
parents invite them in display the same behaviors. These are homes 
without beds, quite frequently. Without furniture except TV and stereo 
(or CD player). With more month than money. Their kids come to school 
hungry every day and, according to a school principal I know, get angry 
when the holidays approach because they will be hungry for two weeks 
because they are not getting fed at home. They steal to eat.
All the moral high ground you can describe is a foreign land to them.

The police serve the function of trying to make areas quasi-livable for 
those who have no part in this tragedy, but who haven't the money to 
move further away from it than one lot, one house, one building, one 
apartment.

WizardMarks, Central 
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