One From the Vault 2017: that is just as true today

Lance-Bottoms off to a terrible start in the 2017 Mayoral Race (one from the Vaults that is apropos today and indeed one of reasons I write such good books)

Months ago, I called Felicia Moore out on the disingenuity of having a “plan” to solve crime on Bankhead/Hollowell and related areas of urban Atlanta by hiring more police, equipping more police vehicles with license plate reading and other database technologies and putting up more cameras in the area. I argued then that any Republican could have come up with the same exact policies as he insisted on doing something about the crime problem in minority communities and been tarred, feathered and lambasted as racist by Black rabble rousing politicians, preachers and community activists. Instead of an original idea or one validated by actual research into poverty and its evil twin crime, these same Black elected officials will rave about some new government program, recreation center or feeding program for kids. At one point that was Kasim’s solution to youth crime, more recreation centers, now he’s just given up on the youth crime problem and simply ignores it.  

More Police, that’s a really easy answer to the ‘crime problem’. It’s the easy answer for Republicans and apparently it’s the easy answer for Democrats. It’s the answer you come up with when you don’t want to think and thus reach only to the intellectual low hanging fruit of complex socio-economic problems. It’s like trying to solve a complicated equation not by working through the equation step by step but simply answering “5” because it feels and sounds right. More police is the apparent and self-evident answer at least in part. But are more police, more cameras and more enforcement really the only answer in 2017? Is the only way urban Black communities can feel safe is if they are very visibly and heavily policed? Are we really comfortable with that as African Americans…..mainstream Americans?

In the wake of Keith Scott, Terrence Crutcher, Eric Garner, Walter Scott, our own Kathryn Johnson of Felicia Moore’s home district and other Black people that have died under unusual circumstances after contact with the police, are we comfortable with the idea that Black people’s communities need more police and stronger enforcement? I don’t think Felicia would tell any of the families and communities to their faces that they need more police. Right in the Bluff Kathryn Johnson died because of overzealous policing. Police shoot unarmed men in the back and wrestle 128 pound Black women to the ground like rag dolls ENFORCING busted tail lights. Stop and frisk, driving while Black, etc ad infinitum and in light of all that in 2017 Felicia Moore and Kecia Lance Bottoms offer of leadership to the Black community is that we need more police? I am by no means suggesting there is automatically something criminal about the police. Most police (including the ones in my family and that I grew up with) are wonderful human beings just trying to do a very difficult job. But the job is very difficult and if there are other ways to reduce crime than more police, big guns, big data and police that are ethically unencumbered by ‘all the rules’ as Donald Trump says our police are stifled by, all the Black Lives Matter protests then maybe we should try some of those alternative measures aimed at preventing crime before we settle for more police. 

The Black community is already more heavily policed and criminalized than any other segment of American society. A Black man can’t walk in the mall without being followed, can’t walk in an exclusive mainstream neighborhood (whether he lives there or not) without inviting the attentions of his neighbors who have already dialed 911 and reported a suspicious man; all because we live in a society that has criminalized us as Black men while we were yet children. 

Our schools are policed by real police and thus criminalized. Is the only way our children can feel safe in school (notwithstanding whether or not they are actually being educated) is if there are metal detectors and 2 or 3 real police damn near in SWAT gear (not retired or disabled police) literally patrolling the hallways. Really? What is wrong with us that we tolerate such a criminalization of our children? Is the only way to feel safe having actual police on guard at the gas station with guns visible and at the ready? Is that the only way to be safe in a civilized post-modern society; like we are living in a Third World Country? Kecia and Felicia the easiest answers are so easy because they are the status quo in disguise. You are making a willful choice in your effort to combat crime but you’re choosing between cleverly disguised variations in the status quo…..and none of the above. 

And in the whole process of intelligent Black women getting on television and the media talking about how to make “us”, the Black urban low income, low scholastic level, low economic development level safe by suggesting we need more police no one is talking about the 800 pound Gorilla in the room! These are our Black boys and young men responsible for most of the carjacking and mayhem. These are our boys, our children! It is as though Kecia and Felicia were talking about stray dogs and thus their solution to the problem of stray dogs or unwanted animals is simply to hire more dog catchers and speed up the process of “adoption” and euthanasia. Kecia and Felica are telling the Black community we’ve got to get more professionals, the police and law enforcement to do something about this! But they are our boys; pants saggin, hoodie wearing, filling up the 6 o’clock news with tales of mayhem, murder and reckless child endangerment. Terrified elderly, middle aged and suburban adults envision it as some dystopian urban future where they will carjack and kill you for your car only to drive it less than 2 hours and abandon it somewhere. 

Young White Yuppies, Asians, Hippies, Metrosexuals, Millennials, Gays, hipsters and other colorful words to describe “not you Negro” are scared and need protection from Kecia and Felicia as they ‘help gentrify’ formerly blighted communities and end up getting robbed of their cell phones and wallets in the seedier parts of Midtown, Little 5 Points, Virginia Highlands, on Marta and the West End. Our boys have even stolen a car at the gas station only to dump the car on the side of the road a few miles away with a baby inside. Our babies are kidnapping babies in the name of cars, money, quick fixes and Facebook driven infamy. 

Our babies are targeting old women at the bank on the 1^st and shooting people over turf, colors and gang squabbles. That’s bad for Atlanta’s image as a progressive city and as a City too busy to be hate in but apparently not too busy to be carjacked in at the gas station. Supposedly mindful of all that, Kecia and Felecia told us the solution is that we need more police and enforcement technologies. Why don’t we just make everybody the police and go straight to the Gestapo and Politburo headlong and head over heels in the name of safety. “If you see something say something”. 

Apparently the only way to solve the issue of crime in the Black community, never minding creative solutions like economic development, improving schools, improving family stability and increasing the capacities of urban minority civic groups and institutions such as churches, mosques, temples and fraternities and sororities to step in the gaps where strong parents with middle and upper middle class salaries enrich suburban children’s lives in ways urban children many times don’t have access too. No, for Felicia and Kecia that’s too complicated and the easy answer is that we need to turn our communities into a police state. That’s the easier answer to crime that keeps the aforementioned Metrosexuals, Hipsters and Gays out of Kecia and Felicia’s office complaining about crime in the area they are dutifully trying to ‘help’ and gentrify. Turning our communities into a police state may indeed prevent crime but at what price and cost; criminalizing an entire community and giving that community’s boys a one chance shot at a decent life where one mistake can put them in jail ruining not only their adolescence (such that it is) but their young adulthood as well and in some cases their entire future productivity as men and probably fathers.

We see the crimes our boys are doing on the 6 oclock news. But we never see the crimes done to our boys from birth through 15 when they carjack somebody. We see the crime the kid did, but what about the little boy with no daddy and no supervision who never ate a good meal until the local dope boy took him under his wings (literally) and took him to the restaurant Crickets for the first time in his life. Are we really mad at and going to blame the boy for admiring the dope boy? Felicia and Kecia didn’t take the local boy whose parents are on dope and don’t provide for them to Crickets, the local gang leader did. Is it even the gang leader’s fault that sympathizing with a kid and recruiting him are two sides of the same coin? Is it the kid’s fault that because of lack of parental and familial support he came to school woefully underprepared to be on grade level behaviorally or academically in Pre-K and dropped out of the school system by early high school? So if we are holding our 15 year old boys accountable for their crimes, who is holding parents, our extended families, our churches, mosques and temples, our communities and yes our Negro elected officials accountable for the crimes we did to those children by completely ignoring those circumstances until all of sudden we are at the gas station and a 15 year old Black boy has grabbed you by the neck and thrown you out the car as he got in and sped off in your car damn near running you over in the process. 

Ruthless and violent as that is, at 15 he is still a child. We bourgeois elites and Black elected officials never even think to ask what has been done to that child or what he has seen in his short life that he could violently manhandle an old woman like that at 14? We don’t know and apparently we don’t care that one of our children who was still peeing in the bed twice a month a year and a half ago is now knocking people over the head and taking their possessions. For Felicia and Kecia it doesn’t matter just call the dog catcher on them.    

There is another reason Felicia and Kecia’s police push is ridiculously counterproductive. Part of their push (which has since been struck down) was to make gas station owners liable for paying for extra security. No politician with any idea of, let alone actual plan to create environments that encourage economic development would say with a straight face that the onus should be on gas stations and other high volume business owners. Did we tell Mercedes that? Kecia’s plan to make them pay was essentially functioning as extra tax…the price of doing business in the Black community. What company would locate its facilities or headquarters in an urban area not only known for being high crime, but you have to pay extra to be there too. Really? Is that a recipe for “luring” companies concerned about increased competition, shareholder gains and increasing profit margins to your city….by charging them an extra $300,000 a year for them to be there for the sole reason that “the natives are restless”? 

And if a Republican Congressman from some rural town pitched to a corporation thinking of relocating to metro Atlanta that because of the crime problem in Atlanta the company should locate its corporate headquarters in his county Felicia and Kecia would be screaming bloody murder and calling him a racist. But their policies are equally as racist and insulting and the effect of their policies on crime is just retardant on economic and social development in urban Black communities.   

An Aside about youthful indiscretions

I remember when I was in college in NC but back home in Atlanta for Freaknic 93’ and my friends and I were drinking and driving, smoking weed, somewhat lewd, more so lascivious, and non violent in downtown Atlanta at the BP station on the corner of North Ave ostensibly getting gas and seeking convivial companionship. But when the urge to urinate overcame my drunken 22 year old body I whip my meat out and start pissing. I’m 22 pissing in a lighted downtown gas station at a gas pump like I’m pumping gas in my car, however with people all around (however not necessarily looking at me not that I would have noticed). In 93’ look at that dumb nigga, he is fucked up. But in 2016….

BP has camera surveillance including my tag number of me whizzing on pump 14. Everyone around me, those with me and those who simply happen to be in the parking lot have their phones with cameras and so everyone can post the footage to Instagram and Facebook about their experience of the guy pissing at the BP April 23^rd at 12:35 am….hashtag “its wide open as fuck down here”. Complete with my license plate. Thus I’m tagged in 80 Freaknic 2016 pics. 

Bottoms and Arrington Mean well….but

I’ve already detailed the 800 pound gorilla in the room regarding these carjackings and a holistic approach to reducing their occurrence. But I must continue my attack on political posturing and disingenuity because it is not only not funny anymore; it is worse than not funny because the politicians still want us to laugh even though we’ve heard the joke a hundred times before. It’s worse than simply not funny because the negative consequences of their ignorance is actually hurting the Black community. Bottoms and Arrington have imposed what amounts to an additional tax on gas stations that are located in high crime areas. 73% of the carjacking happen in SW Atlanta and South Fulton. Not only have Bottoms and Arrington created an additional tax burden but it de-incentivizes businesses to locate in high crime, urban, i.e. black areas because of the additional costs and legal liabilities. As bad as that is, it is not the worst part in this “Opera Comique”. The worst part is that if a white CEO said he’d rather not locate his business in the Black community because of the additional costs of working in a high crime environment Bottoms and Arrrington would be the first ones screaming ‘bloody murder’ and hollering loudly as if they found an ‘overt racism’ smoking gun with fingerprints on it and the victim’s blood. The only thing really smoking is their ‘liar-liar pants on fire’ political ambitions. 

Bottoms and Arrington’s socio-economic malfeasance will result in even higher prices at these gas stations and so called ‘convenience’ stores as owners simply pass these new government imposed costs on to the consumers that shop there; many of whom have no other option because of transportation limitations. I’m tired of taxpayers paying the bills and living with desultory results as Black elected officials posture, pontificate and play politics while the Black community has to pay the disastrous consequences of the incompetence of our elected leaders. Perhaps you think I’m being too hard? Just consider that Bottoms and Arrington advocate policies (with teeth as they are leveraging liquor licenses and fees) that de-incentivize businesses to locate in Black communities. There are already lower levels of economic development in urban communities. Does this not make an already bad situation worse? The costs will be passed on to the Black consumers in the community. 

I can rant and rave because it happened to me at the Texaco at the corner of Fairburn & Campbellton Rds. I got carjacked. I parked in front of the convenience store at 3 a.m. in the morning to get beer and cigarillos. I left the car running cause “shit, I grew up in this neighborhood”. I rode my bike to this muthafuckin gas station in elementary school to get candy. I’m cool with most (if not all) the local dummies and knuckleheads. I got out and went into the store. A nigga I hadn’t noticed jumped in as I went in the store screeching and spinning out of the parking lot heading North on Fairburn Rd. I chased the car out of the parking lot and up Fairburn Rd on foot as I hurriedly dialed 911. And as an aside, this is another reason why I don’t rag on the police. 

In such distressing circumstances I did not call Black Lives Matter. I didn’t call Al Sharpton. I didn’t even call the Nation of Islam and they have a regional headquarters up the street on Campbellton rd. I called 911 “panicking like a bitch” (to use a phrase) and breathing heavily and hard as I quite inelegantly chased my own car up Fairburn Rd. I detailed the situation to the 911 operator and walked about a mile home trying to figure out how the hell I was going to tell my mama I got her car carjacked at 3 A.M. on a beer run. I’m a grown ass man, but damn. By the time I walked home APD called me back and said they thought they found the car. About 3 miles away the carjacker saw a police car, panicked thinking the police knew what happened and sped off. The policeman later told us he wouldn’t have noticed the guy if he had not panicked and sped off making himself look suspicious. A brief chase ensued ending in the carjacker jumping the curb at the Shell on the corner of Cascade and Utoy Springs Rd. The car got stuck in the mud and he got arrested.

Four months ago I was on my way to the now infamous Raceway on the corner of Campbellton and Barge rds (in the day time this time getting gas thank you). As I got nearer to Campbellton I noticed two teenage boys holding their pants up (I’m not making this up) running full speed down Barge towards Greenbriar Parkway. WTF I thought, them niggas ain’t running that hard in street clothes for nothing. But it had nothing to do with me so they passed and I went on. But about 250 yards up the street when I turned in the Raceway gas station I saw an exasperated vehicle owner excitedly telling gas station and other patrons that two dudes tried to carjack him. “I just saw them running down the street” I added…..way too late to be of any consequence. Like me, the vehicle owner in this case was lucky. The boys jumped in the running car only to realize it was a stick (manual transmission) and couldn’t drive it. So after a couple ‘fits and starts’ as the angry vehicle owner and now alert and concerned fellow gas patrons got closer they panicked and bailed out of the car leaving it coasting. The owner wisely let them go and jumped in his now free rolling car which was about to either hit somebody, another car or a fuel pump all of which could possibly have been disastrous in the extreme.