Analysis Spot On

If we don't find a way to alter the unequal distribution of wealth and all of the benefits included in this nation the challenge posited will not only continue but will accelerate. Read history. Just ask Louis and Marie or Nicholas and Alexandra for an opinion.

From a PBS News Hour interview: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/week-of-violence-sparks-national-dialogue-on-race-and-policing/

Milwaukee Police Chief EDWARD FLYNN: “I think what we’re finding on the streets of our cities is a level of license being taken by the offending community to challenge officers on the streets of our most disadvantaged neighborhoods, where our efforts are the most important and most requested.

I think what we need to do is step back from this binary discussion we’re having right now that, on the right hand, we talk about police use of force, when it’s right or when it’s apparently wrong, and then on the left hand, we talk about the fact that the greatest disparity of race in America right now is as a crime victim, all right?

Our central cities, our communities of disadvantage characterized by intergenerational poverty have the highest rates of violence for what we like to call the industrialized society. We’re the most heavily armed, most violent society in the industrialized West.

And it is our African-American communities of disadvantage that suffer the most from it. Their partners in dealing with it are the police, who are often placed in difficult or ambiguous circumstances and sometimes do the wrong thing, but overwhelmingly are the community partners.

If we’re going to have that community discussion, we have to talk about it all at the same time, because the same neighborhoods with the highest rates of violence have the highest rates of poverty, unemployment, substandard housing and lack of education.

We haven’t had that conversation in 40 years.

We have been delegating America’s social problems to the police.”

Posted by Paul Hunter