A key point of the affidavit is that these people are getting kicked out of BHA apartments, but keep returning to the project to hang out and shoot people. Apologies if I didn't make that clear enough by pointing it out more than once in my post.
We are paying for their housing, weather it be them living in a project under a GFs name, relative or friend, their section 8 once kicked out or their prison cell once eventually incarcerated.
Add in healthcare, food and cash assistance they have it made.
Until you are willing to fight the real problem behind all of this - the War on Drugs that has had criminalization of addiction and militarization against supply where a disease and public health approach combatting demand was needed - you are the naive one dear.
When the US criminalized alcohol, it led to violent gangs of criminals shooting each other in the streets while making insane amounts of money. So during Nixon's reign, it was decided to do it all again.
I think I put the word insane in the wrong place, there...
NY daily news - are you sure that blabber wasn't written by that ShauChel KingLezal critter? Also, didn't Nixon also say something about that whole "keep them voting Democrat for the next 200 years" thing?
Users are not criminals, they're suffering from a deadly disease. Dealers, on the other hand, are the ones knowingly spreading the disease and should be dealt with accordingly. Would you feel bad for someone who was going around stabbing people with an HIV-infected needle if he gets strung up on the nearest tree?
I agree, drug addiction is a disease, like HIV, and needs to be treated. And in swirlworld, it's perfectly all right for HIV-infected folks to purposely go around and infect others and get paid while they're at it - after all, it's just a disease, amirite? No difference whatsoever between someone who suffers from it and someone knowingly infecting and eventually killing others for profit? Both are simply unfortunate HIV-infected souls and should be treated the same?
To wit, it would appear that everyone and their brother (except for me) wants to see marijuana legalized. The thought is that the criminal element would no longer be involved. Great, except the the criminal element would just concentrate on crack and heroin. Legalize them (which I don't think anyone wants) and the criminal element would move on to some other drug.
Legalizing gambling (see the lottery) did not end illegal gambling. In places like Amsterdam and Hamburg, legalizing prostitution did not end illegal prostitution in those areas. Yes, both has been lessened, but somehow there will always being people wanting illegal drugs. A fine example, prescription drugs. They are legal and controlled, but there is a whole market for them.
A developed Western country decriminalized all drug use15 years ago. They have not experienced any increase in drug use, and have seen drug-related deaths decline.
Well, the immediate problem here are housing projects. I feel it has been pretty well shown that they don't work - by concentrating poverty into a dense area it creates a sense of hopelessness which perpetuates poverty. The ideal would be to remove housing projects and convert to mixed income housing, so the poor, middle class, and rich/market rate interact in a single community. A good/model example would, of course, be Columbia Point here in Boston. The war on drugs I think is a much broader issue, and while it is a problem, I am not sure if I would put it as the root cause in this particular situation.
That sounds nice in fantasy world, but really, think about it, how many law abiding citizens with children and a paycheck would CHOOSE to live in an apartment complex that houses rapists, drug dealers, and gang members in the apartments adjoining theirs? Too scary. Bullet going right through to your child's bedroom? Would you live there? Don't be a hypocrite.
i love when people bash the war on drugs as if those dealers weren't making tons of money while inflicting horrendous amounts of damage to the community.
Make no distinction between dealers and users, to them it's all the same. And while addiction is indeed a disease that should be treated, what would we do to someone who got caught going around and purposely injecting people with HIV-infected blood?
Yet we have been since they were kids as illustrated else where. They 'are' getting kicked out. They have not been as of yet. We should be finding them new long term public housing in Walpole but we all know that wont be happening for any meaningful amount of time.
But here's one that's been bugging me for a while.
There are new attitudes towards law enforcement doing anything about drug dealing, typified by the book The New Jim Crow. What happened in Lenox Street is a prime example as to why activities like this need to be cracked down upon. Reading that book, you get the idea that the author has no memory of what it was like in cities across the nation back in the 1980s, and this is what people were thinking about when talk turned to the "war on drugs." This entire housing development essentially became the sovereign territory of a gang. The quality of life suffered. These guys need to be sent away for a long time. The gang needs to be destroyed.
And before someone starts going on about a certain weed, yes, you might have a point, but then again, small time dealers of that tend not to go away for long sentences as is, and I am okay with that. On the other hand, I want to see more people disappearing behind the walls at Walpole (or wherever) for heroin. Yes, treat the addicts, but disrupt the supplies, too.
So many people forget that those tough sentences for drug dealers were born out of a time when housing developments and neighborhoods were complete war zones. They forget the families destroyed by addiction and the people forced to live in fear.
All you hear now is that the war on drugs was an evil racist plot. There comes a time when serious sentences need to be imposed and federal charges need to be leveraged, and in this case, this was the time. If these charges were all going through a Massachusetts court these people would be out in no time.
That is not what the New Jim Crow is about. Did you actually read the whole book to understand the author's points, or did you grab this opinion from some close-minded pundit?
I also read D'souza's book on Obama the same year. Same crap, different topic. She thought it was a good thing to be tough on crime, but decades later she saw that a side effect was to essentially disenfranchise a lot of black men. She gave a brief mention about personal responsibility. I mean, she did believe in personal responsibility, but was punishing these young men harshly really a good thing? Well, if one wants to pretend that crack and crack dealers didn't destabilize African American communities, yes, it was harsh. However, if Ms. Alexander were presented with what happened at Lenox Street, would she really think that the Feds are being harsh to these gentlemen?
Are residents actually calling the police when these parties in the hallways happen? Are they calling 911 when there is a fight, or people loitering? Or are they going to the BHA office to complain about it instead?
BHA is soft they don't address problem tenants properly. Most of these baby mommas and family members who are letting the dealers stay with them, will cry when they are told their housing is now it jeopardy. As if its this big shock and they didn't even have an idea that this might be frowned upon. BHA makes more of a point to tell you that you can't smoke in your apartment than they address criminal activity when you are signing a lease.
Residents need to be reminded to call 911 each and every time they see loitering, smell marijuana smoke in the hallway, hear a fight or whatever else it may be that is disturbing the peace. They need to report broken door locks and lights that are broken out. Highly doubt that BHA will help with that reminder. After all, most of the office staff will go home at 5pm and maintenance even earlier. What do they care?
That would be great if BPD actually showed up. If you live in a minority area and call about loud parties, drugs being done in a parked car, suspicious vehicles, loitering, trespassing, etc... it's a waste of time. Basically unless you say you see a gun, the dispatchers don't take your call seriously and if BPD shows up at all it will be an hour or more later.
I lived in Allston, and I used to call in things that appeared to be out-of-control (ex: a continuous party that went on for hours every night, screaming like someone was being murdered, someone throwing lit fireworks out the window.)
The response I'd get from 911 dispatchers:
"Can you buzz the officers into the building? (No, it's the building next door.) Then we can't do anything."
"What is the exact location of the people you hear screaming like they're being attacked? Can you get them to stay where they are until the police arrive? If you can't see them, we can't send a car."
"We can't report the activity unless we have the exact apartment number, if you're across the street we can't do anything."
"The officers couldn't hear any noise from their squad car (because the noise was in an alley-facing apartment) and didn't stop."
"You say there is a trespassing homeless man covered in urine passed out in the vestibule of your building? Have you tried waking him up and asking him to leave? Could you do that before we send a car?"
So let's say people in one of these problem complexes calls the police and gets such an answer: The police can't do anything unless you go to the perpetrators, identify their exact location, ask them to stay where they are, see if they need medical attention, and then escort the police to the perpetrators. In a neighborhood where gang members openly target "snitches," will people bother calling it in? Or will they give up and just stay inside their apartment as much as possible?
Not true. If you call 911, Boston Police respond. There is a separate number to call housing police directly if you so desire. Housing Police are not even full time in some developments.
The music can be a cover for where the money is coming from. Youtube will pay if you generate enough traffic. This isn't about music first and these guys don't care about good influences. They want to be the baddest and scariest and good influences or intentions can't change that.
yours was my first thought when I saw mention of the video clip (haven't been able to watch yet). I didn't say anything because I just could not bring myself to believe that any other UHubbers would have heard of him.
Good on you and the (now defunct?) conscious movement!
Comments
Why are we paying for these
Why are we paying for these peoples housing again? They probably have more cash than most of us.
We're not
A key point of the affidavit is that these people are getting kicked out of BHA apartments, but keep returning to the project to hang out and shoot people. Apologies if I didn't make that clear enough by pointing it out more than once in my post.
How naive you are
We are paying for their housing, weather it be them living in a project under a GFs name, relative or friend, their section 8 once kicked out or their prison cell once eventually incarcerated.
Add in healthcare, food and cash assistance they have it made.
Yawn
Until you are willing to fight the real problem behind all of this - the War on Drugs that has had criminalization of addiction and militarization against supply where a disease and public health approach combatting demand was needed - you are the naive one dear.
That is what we call an
That is what we call an assumption. Of course the WOD is directly intertwined in this.
Exactly
When the US criminalized alcohol, it led to violent gangs of criminals shooting each other in the streets while making insane amounts of money. So during Nixon's reign, it was decided to do it all again.
I think I put the word insane in the wrong place, there...
And if you want the REAL reason
for the WoD:
Awww
NY daily news - are you sure that blabber wasn't written by that ShauChel KingLezal critter? Also, didn't Nixon also say something about that whole "keep them voting Democrat for the next 200 years" thing?
Oh, you don't like the NYDN?
How about UPI?
Harpers?
Reason?
Washington Post?
Face it -- they sold us a plate of BS. You don't have to keep eating it.
Agenda-driven BS
Just like faux news - different color, same crap.
Eventually you will come around...
....because drugs are now impacting white people more and more.
And there is no way they can be labelled criminals.
Reading comprehension problems?
Users are not criminals, they're suffering from a deadly disease. Dealers, on the other hand, are the ones knowingly spreading the disease and should be dealt with accordingly. Would you feel bad for someone who was going around stabbing people with an HIV-infected needle if he gets strung up on the nearest tree?
Good old swirly
I agree, drug addiction is a disease, like HIV, and needs to be treated. And in swirlworld, it's perfectly all right for HIV-infected folks to purposely go around and infect others and get paid while they're at it - after all, it's just a disease, amirite? No difference whatsoever between someone who suffers from it and someone knowingly infecting and eventually killing others for profit? Both are simply unfortunate HIV-infected souls and should be treated the same?
Yea right.
Legalize drugs and these gangbangers will just turn to other crimes (kidnappings, armed robbery, etc).
The majority of these punks aren't smart enough for some of your ID/credit card fraud, but it is becoming more common.
If drugs were legalized ...
wouldn't these folks be running a small shop nearby, selling them legally? Just like a local liquor store? No need for guns or violence.
Except
They would move on to something else.
To wit, it would appear that everyone and their brother (except for me) wants to see marijuana legalized. The thought is that the criminal element would no longer be involved. Great, except the the criminal element would just concentrate on crack and heroin. Legalize them (which I don't think anyone wants) and the criminal element would move on to some other drug.
Legalizing gambling (see the lottery) did not end illegal gambling. In places like Amsterdam and Hamburg, legalizing prostitution did not end illegal prostitution in those areas. Yes, both has been lessened, but somehow there will always being people wanting illegal drugs. A fine example, prescription drugs. They are legal and controlled, but there is a whole market for them.
Skip the half measures
A developed Western country decriminalized all drug use15 years ago. They have not experienced any increase in drug use, and have seen drug-related deaths decline.
Portugal, 12 Years after Decriminalizing Drugs
The article was published three years ago, and the situation is still as described then.
We talked about this in another thread.
Although the US is a rich country at various levels, places like Detroit, Bridgeport CT, and Camden NJ do not exist in countries like Portugal.
Are you sure about that?
Have you been there, and surveyed the place? I think you missed something.
The question is crime rate
Have murders and assaults also gone down?
Yes
You could look it up.
Well, the immediate problem
Well, the immediate problem here are housing projects. I feel it has been pretty well shown that they don't work - by concentrating poverty into a dense area it creates a sense of hopelessness which perpetuates poverty. The ideal would be to remove housing projects and convert to mixed income housing, so the poor, middle class, and rich/market rate interact in a single community. A good/model example would, of course, be Columbia Point here in Boston. The war on drugs I think is a much broader issue, and while it is a problem, I am not sure if I would put it as the root cause in this particular situation.
That sounds nice in fantasy
That sounds nice in fantasy world, but really, think about it, how many law abiding citizens with children and a paycheck would CHOOSE to live in an apartment complex that houses rapists, drug dealers, and gang members in the apartments adjoining theirs? Too scary. Bullet going right through to your child's bedroom? Would you live there? Don't be a hypocrite.
i love when people bash the
i love when people bash the war on drugs as if those dealers weren't making tons of money while inflicting horrendous amounts of damage to the community.
Those clowns
Make no distinction between dealers and users, to them it's all the same. And while addiction is indeed a disease that should be treated, what would we do to someone who got caught going around and purposely injecting people with HIV-infected blood?
What would we do?
We'd put them on trial for assault and battery with a dangerous weapon ...
And why did we give you a
And why did we give you a free public education to not know the difference between weather and whether?
Yet we have been since they
Yet we have been since they were kids as illustrated else where. They 'are' getting kicked out. They have not been as of yet. We should be finding them new long term public housing in Walpole but we all know that wont be happening for any meaningful amount of time.
BhA orders them out and do
BhA orders them out and do NOTHING to reinforce the order. This is why they continue to return...
No tresspass is more of a suggestion it seems
BHA couldn't give two craps about what is going on, long as the paperwork is completed and the rent is (sometimes) paid.
This troubles me on many levels
But here's one that's been bugging me for a while.
There are new attitudes towards law enforcement doing anything about drug dealing, typified by the book The New Jim Crow. What happened in Lenox Street is a prime example as to why activities like this need to be cracked down upon. Reading that book, you get the idea that the author has no memory of what it was like in cities across the nation back in the 1980s, and this is what people were thinking about when talk turned to the "war on drugs." This entire housing development essentially became the sovereign territory of a gang. The quality of life suffered. These guys need to be sent away for a long time. The gang needs to be destroyed.
And before someone starts going on about a certain weed, yes, you might have a point, but then again, small time dealers of that tend not to go away for long sentences as is, and I am okay with that. On the other hand, I want to see more people disappearing behind the walls at Walpole (or wherever) for heroin. Yes, treat the addicts, but disrupt the supplies, too.
thank you
So many people forget that those tough sentences for drug dealers were born out of a time when housing developments and neighborhoods were complete war zones. They forget the families destroyed by addiction and the people forced to live in fear.
All you hear now is that the war on drugs was an evil racist plot. There comes a time when serious sentences need to be imposed and federal charges need to be leveraged, and in this case, this was the time. If these charges were all going through a Massachusetts court these people would be out in no time.
That is not what the New Jim
That is not what the New Jim Crow is about. Did you actually read the whole book to understand the author's points, or did you grab this opinion from some close-minded pundit?
I read the whole danged thing
I also read D'souza's book on Obama the same year. Same crap, different topic. She thought it was a good thing to be tough on crime, but decades later she saw that a side effect was to essentially disenfranchise a lot of black men. She gave a brief mention about personal responsibility. I mean, she did believe in personal responsibility, but was punishing these young men harshly really a good thing? Well, if one wants to pretend that crack and crack dealers didn't destabilize African American communities, yes, it was harsh. However, if Ms. Alexander were presented with what happened at Lenox Street, would she really think that the Feds are being harsh to these gentlemen?
I just want to know
How someone ends up with the nicknames "Shizz" AND "Buns."
Those are two very butt-related nicknames...there must be an interesting back story behind them.
Are residents actually
Are residents actually calling the police when these parties in the hallways happen? Are they calling 911 when there is a fight, or people loitering? Or are they going to the BHA office to complain about it instead?
BHA is soft they don't address problem tenants properly. Most of these baby mommas and family members who are letting the dealers stay with them, will cry when they are told their housing is now it jeopardy. As if its this big shock and they didn't even have an idea that this might be frowned upon. BHA makes more of a point to tell you that you can't smoke in your apartment than they address criminal activity when you are signing a lease.
Residents need to be reminded to call 911 each and every time they see loitering, smell marijuana smoke in the hallway, hear a fight or whatever else it may be that is disturbing the peace. They need to report broken door locks and lights that are broken out. Highly doubt that BHA will help with that reminder. After all, most of the office staff will go home at 5pm and maintenance even earlier. What do they care?
That would be great if BPD
That would be great if BPD actually showed up. If you live in a minority area and call about loud parties, drugs being done in a parked car, suspicious vehicles, loitering, trespassing, etc... it's a waste of time. Basically unless you say you see a gun, the dispatchers don't take your call seriously and if BPD shows up at all it will be an hour or more later.
And
Why do you think it's happening?
I don't believe you. Do you
I don't believe you. Do you live there and called and they never came?
I believe it
I lived in Allston, and I used to call in things that appeared to be out-of-control (ex: a continuous party that went on for hours every night, screaming like someone was being murdered, someone throwing lit fireworks out the window.)
The response I'd get from 911 dispatchers:
"Can you buzz the officers into the building? (No, it's the building next door.) Then we can't do anything."
"What is the exact location of the people you hear screaming like they're being attacked? Can you get them to stay where they are until the police arrive? If you can't see them, we can't send a car."
"We can't report the activity unless we have the exact apartment number, if you're across the street we can't do anything."
"The officers couldn't hear any noise from their squad car (because the noise was in an alley-facing apartment) and didn't stop."
"You say there is a trespassing homeless man covered in urine passed out in the vestibule of your building? Have you tried waking him up and asking him to leave? Could you do that before we send a car?"
So let's say people in one of these problem complexes calls the police and gets such an answer: The police can't do anything unless you go to the perpetrators, identify their exact location, ask them to stay where they are, see if they need medical attention, and then escort the police to the perpetrators. In a neighborhood where gang members openly target "snitches," will people bother calling it in? Or will they give up and just stay inside their apartment as much as possible?
Most cops are good, regular
Most cops are good, regular people. We're all still responsible for our own safety, though.
Agreed
But if you put too much of a burden on the citizen to report, then the citizens will stop reporting.
As described this is a
As described this is a problem with the bureaucrat dispatchers answering the 9-1-1 call, not the actual police officers themselves.
Boston Housing Authority (BHA)
Has their own police. They would respond first, not the BPD.
Not true. If you call 911,
Not true. If you call 911, Boston Police respond. There is a separate number to call housing police directly if you so desire. Housing Police are not even full time in some developments.
What the hell are they then?
What the hell are they then? Somewhere between a university police force and mere rent-a-cop security guards?
For a bunch of criminals and
For a bunch of criminals and so called "gangstas", they sure are obsessed with the BPD in that video.
they
I think they needed to say the N-word a few more times in that video /s
seriously, every other word was N-word.
*closes youtube window*
Annual sweeps aren't working
Maybe the BPD and the ATF should try a different strategy. The non-criminal residents deserve to feel safe in their own homes.
You're welcome to go down
You're welcome to go down there and take some of those naughty boys by the ear and pull them to the library.
Boston rappers
What's with all the gang garbage? This is the city that produced Guru, Edo G and Akrobatik. Use them for influence.
The music can be a cover for
The music can be a cover for where the money is coming from. Youtube will pay if you generate enough traffic. This isn't about music first and these guys don't care about good influences. They want to be the baddest and scariest and good influences or intentions can't change that.
Or they just want to send a message
There were some explicit messages in that video, if not quite as explicit as the ones
A shout out for Akrobatik! Wow!
yours was my first thought when I saw mention of the video clip (haven't been able to watch yet). I didn't say anything because I just could not bring myself to believe that any other UHubbers would have heard of him.
Good on you and the (now defunct?) conscious movement!
Akrobatik and Edo G were
Akrobatik and Edo G were awesome. RIP 88.9 @ Night.
Cool it Now...
just knowing it's in Roxbury, home of New Edition, I'd love to see guys named "Ronnie, Bobby, Ricky and Mike" as part of the gang.
Then find a way for courts to
Then find a way for courts to keep the bad guys off the streets by not having a revolving door court policy