I’m a cop. If you don’t want to get hurt, don’t challenge me.

Young black men (and there's plenty of government statistics on this). And the program doesn't even require government intervention. It requires the neighborhood to take matters into their own hands.

Gang members kill a little kid in a shootout? Make it known that they have 48 hours to turn themselves into the police, or else there will be retaliation against multiple gang members. See how well they do when they face a mob of hundreds of people angry about the child's death. They'll be begging for the police to pick them up.

 

Sure, that sounds like a simple and effective solution. :

Gangs are not going to back down to angry residents. I agree that the communities need to step up, but every inner city has people doing good work to try to prevent this from happening. It's not working, and I think it is largely because the police and the public don't pay as much attention to the inner city.

 

When has anything but the people themselves solved anything for the poor? The only people who escape poverty are those who recognize that it's up to them.

For 50 years now, everyone single person who waited for the government rescue them from poverty either died poor or is still living poor. The ones who escape poverty are the ones who recognize that it's up to them to stop doing the things that make people poor. So they stop skipping school. They study. They work hard. They get their education. They get a job, no matter how "demeaning" the Al Sharptons and Jesse Jacksons of the world tell them it is. They don't have babies they can't afford with men or women they aren't committed to. It's hard work, but they eventually get ahead. They get their college degrees. They get the better job, the better car, the better home. And then they get married or -- if they're already married to an equally committed, hard-working spouse -- they start having children and pass along that work ethic, that morality, that love of being educated that it takes to make their children grow into moral, hard-working adults.

Then we have the ones who think that a government check or a government program is what will magically get them out of poverty. They're still poor and they're still waiting. And, remarkably, they're still voting for the party that has kept them in their "waiting" chains.

How many trillions have we spent on the War on Poverty since LBJ declared "I'll have those n*****s voting Democrat for the next 200 years"?

 

How do you know they won't back down to angry residents? They thrive upon residents fearing them, instead of being angry.

 

They murder children and you want to hire them? (Sorry, that's my favorite misused word.)

 

Because more than likely they outgun them

 

Are the angry residents going to be armed? Real gangs generally don't blink before pulling a gun. Are the residents supposed to confront that and risk their lives? Get real. I understand the idea, but it only works on paper.

 

It doesn't work on paper, either.

 

Yep, they should be armed. These are dangerous people who are putting your families in harm's way. Deal with them as they would deal with your family.

I remember reading about a father in Oakland, whose 6-year-old son was shot and killed by a stray bullet during a gang shootout. He was begging the witnesses to come forward. Gang members started threatening the dad to shut him up. The dad told the reporter that that he was scared of retaliation for merely asking witnesses to come forward to catch his child's killer.

Fuck that. Kill my child, and then threaten me? They don't walk another 10 feet.

 

Yeah. It's easy to say that. Doing anything about it is another matter.

 

A father getting killed by gang members trying to stand up to them and leaving his kids without a dad is the way to go.

 

Sure they would.